Here’s How We Rescued a Client’s Slow, Unresponsive Mac with a Simple SSD Upgrade

We’ve all seen it. The spinning beachball of doom. The slow startup that feels like it’s aging you in real time. Apps that bounce in the dock like they’ve got something to say, but never quite open. That was the scene when a long-time client from Hawthorn East in Melbourne brought in her MacBook Pro. “It’s only a few years old,” she said. “But it runs like it’s from 2010.”

A quick nod. A deep breath. Cue the investigation.

The Device: A Mac That Forgot How to Mac

It was a 2017 MacBook Pro 13″, no Touch Bar, still sleek, still shiny—but sluggish. Very sluggish. Startup took 4+ minutes. Apps like Safari and Word would load after what felt like a polite pause, then stall. System Preferences? Delayed. Finder? Delayed. Even typing in Spotlight had lag. Sometimes it throws up a folder with a question mark when starting up

It had recently been updated to macOS Sonoma, which might’ve been a step too far. The client thought maybe it was a virus. Or maybe her 100 tabs in Chrome. Maybe Mercury was in retrograde. Nope. It was something far simpler.

First Steps: We Don’t Guess—We Confirm

At Computer Technicians, we’re not fans of assumptions. We like proof. So we did the usual:

• Booted into Recovery Mode.

• Checked Disk Utility.

• Ran First Aid.

• Looked at Activity Monitor for rogue processes.

What stood out wasn’t malware. It wasn’t bloatware. It wasn’t too many tabs.

It was the original 128GB SATA SSD, which had a write speed so glacial it could’ve been mistaken for dial-up. The read speeds weren’t much better. The drive was physically fine, no red flags. But it was tired. Worn. Burnt out from too many OS updates, file swaps, and iCloud syncs.

This wasn’t a logic board issue. It wasn’t a software corruption problem. It was storage-based suffocation.

The Fix? A New Lease on Life in the Form of an NVMe SSD

We explained the situation to the client—no upsell, no drama. Just facts.

Her current drive was choking the entire system. It wasn’t a bad Mac. It wasn’t even old. It was a strong machine, held back by its weakest link.

Solution? Swap the factory drive for a blazing-fast NVMe SSD via an adapter (yes, older Macs don’t natively support NVMe, but we know our way around that). We recommended a 500GB Samsung 970 EVO Plus. Excellent speeds. Great reliability. Cost-effective.

The Install: Surgical Precision and Coffee

We shut down. Disassembled. Removed the bottom cover with our trusty P5 Pentalobe. Disconnected the battery. Pulled out the original SSD. Slotted in the new one with a Sintech adapter. Reassembled. Coffee break.

Then came the clean macOS install.

We installed macOS via USB bootable installer—Sonoma, same version. Then migrated the user’s Time Machine backup (thankfully up to date) back onto the new drive.

The Result: Mac Resurrection

Boot time? Dropped from 4+ minutes to under 25 seconds.
App launch lag? Gone.
System Preferences delay? Instant.
Beachball? Now just a memory.

The client’s jaw actually dropped. “What did you do?” she asked. We told her the truth: “We just let your Mac breathe again.”

And that’s often all it takes. You don’t always need a new machine. Sometimes, you just need to replace the digital heart that’s been pumping under stress for too long.

What This Means for You

If you’re reading this on a MacBook that creaks every time you open a browser tab, you’re probably in the same boat. If your system is sluggish but otherwise physically fine, it’s likely not a software problem—it’s your SSD crying for help.

That’s where we come in. We don’t send you to the Apple Store for a quote that makes your eyes water. We don’t recommend a new device unless you truly need it. We believe in saving tech, not scrapping it.

If your Apple machine is dragging its digital feet, our mac repairs service can breathe life back into it. SSD upgrades, macOS clean installs, backup recovery—we handle it. Fast. Local. Friendly. And with a screwdriver in one hand and a cup of strong coffee in the other.

Why Clients Trust Us With Their Macs

At Computer Technicians, we’re not Mac snobs or Windows purists. We’re just fixers. Real people solving real problems for real humans who need their tech working—now, not next week.

We don’t talk down to clients. We don’t make things more complicated than they are. We explain. We repair. We follow up. And we do it with a personal touch you won’t get from a Genius Bar booking that sends you down a corporate rabbit hole.

We’re based in Berwick. We serve Melbourne’s South East. Same-day. On-site. No jargon, no fuss. Just honest work, done right the first time.

Here’s the Bottom Line

Your Mac might not be broken.
It might just be bottlenecked.
Let us fix that.

📞 Call Us: 0484 357 559
📍 Serving Melbourne
🌐 www.computertechnicians.au