5 Ways to Clean and Optimize El Capitan hard drive
Is OS X El Capitan running slow?
Are you experiencing slow Mac performances after free upgrade to OS X El Capitan 10.11? If yes then you must look into factors that are making the El Capitan hard drive run slower than before. These factors are responsible for slow Mac startups, the sluggish running of applications such as browsers and media players. You wonder why OS X El Capitan is slow despite having enough RAM? Let’s now go through those five factors that should be applied for the smooth running of OS X El Capitan.
1) Clean Mac El Capitan hard drive
You can significantly improve the performance of VLC and QuickTime players, Safari and Chrome browsers by removing unwanted caches files from the OS X folder. Additionally, get rid of System junk files, Logs, Trashes and large unused files to get more free spaces for El Capitan startup disk. Regain free spaces for Macintosh HD by running free Mac hard drive cleaner tool.
Benefits: Removal of unwanted caches will result in the creation of new cache files, which will improve the slow Mac performance of applications. The OS X El Capitan hard drive will gain more free spaces by removal of all the junk files collectively.
2) Remove futile applications
To get more free spaces for the El Capitan hard drive, uninstall software, applications, and widgets that are unproductive.
Benefits: Same as cleaning up a hard drive for claiming extra spaces.
3) Optimize El Capitan disk
El Capitan is freely upgraded from an earlier version of OS X., Right? The possibility of the fragmented hard drive cannot be ruled out which occurred due to read-write on previous OS X. But Disk Utility doesn’t allow or permits defragging the Mac hard drive since it automatically defrags files of size up to 20MB. However, larger files (>20MB) will be left fragmented, and these data will cause Mac to slow down on many occasions.
Steps to defrag Mac El Capitan hard drive
- Arrange a large external drive and clone app. The external USB must be bigger than El Capitan Drive
- Clone OS X El Capitan to this large hard drive using clone software
- Erase the Macintosh HD. This will reallocate sectors on the hard disk.
- Now restore OS X El Capitan from cloned external hard drive to Macintosh HD
Benefits: The above process will help OS X remove fragmentations from your hard disk and restore the OS X to contiguous memory location from the USB drive.
4) Repair El Capitan hard disk drive
Deal with corruption on Mac hard drives by running Disk Utility<<First Aid on startup disk drive. Take a breath of relief if you receive the message saying:
The Partition Map appears to be OK
Benefits: Will repair corrupt disk & application files for the smooth running of applications.
5) Monitor Bad Sectors
Like Defrag, Disk utility won’t allow you to check the presence of bad blocks on the Macintosh HD. You might take help of third party software to run Surface Scan and Backup all the data in case of bad sectors. Also, check the temperature of Macintosh HD and mounted partitions. You might never know if Mac is running slow due to overheating of the hard drive.
Benefits: Timely discovery of bad sectors can save your precious data from becoming inaccessible due to the failure of the hard drive.



How much gb of junk files can Stellar Speedup Mac clean?
Hi Synder, you can free clean up logs, system junks, trashes, leftovers using trial version of Stellar Speedup Mac utility. The amount of GB will depend upon the quantity of mentioned junk files. Hope this helps. Do try the free trial version.
I want to clean and optimize OS X El Capitan 10.10.2. Do I need the registration key for Stellar Speedup Mac?
Hi Sean,
Please download Stellar Speedup Mac software and start free cleaning of OS X El Capitan hard drive. Regards.
Safari slows down and then crashes everytime I view Youtube videos. I am running OS X El Capitan 10.10.2.
Hi Craig, I recommend you run Stellar Speedup Mac utility to clean system junks and caches. it will help you speed up slow apps. Thanks.
I submitted my email details but haven’t received Stellar Speedup Mac software?
Hi Ricky,
Have you check the Sp.am folder? Might be that the mail went to this folder.
Is Stellar Speedup Mac available for OS X Tiger?
Hi Romily, You can search the PowerPC version of Stellar Speedup Mac from the website macpowerpc.com. Hope this helps
How I can clean my 2 TB of Mac based hard drive? Actually, my drive is badly cluttered and I think a lot of junk files is accumulated my on hard-drive. Please tell me what is the procedure to clean my Mac Safely?
I suggest you to use some good app that do the job for you. But, before that try to make sure that you have a good backup available. I would start with Stellar Speedup Mac Software. It will delete all the junk files from your system with affecting other important files. Another important thing, which you can do, is to clear out all the old files so that you have at-least 1-20% of the drive free.
How can I get Stellar Speedup Mac registration key?
Visit buy page to register Stellar Speedup Mac software and you will receive activation code within few hours.
Can I clean iTunes and iPhoto duplicates with Stellar Speedup Mac software?
Sure Keith. Stellar Speedup Mac supports cleaning of duplicate files from iTunes, iMovies, iPhoto, iWork, Aperture and other duplicates that exist on Mac hard drives. You can also remove duplicate data from a SD card and external hard drive using Stellar Speedup Mac utility.
My 250 GB SSD is running out of spaces and I am unable to figure out what exactly is occupying my SSD. Can you help?
@Gerald, You need to check the Storage Space to know what exactly is occupying your SSD. In general, old caches, logs, system junks, trashes, binaries, unwanted language packs, duplicates, iOS backup files etc. adds up to eat memory spaces on Mac hard drives and Solid State Drives. I recommend you free run Stellar Speedup Mac to free up 1 GB of spaces on SSD. With registered version of the software you can clean more gigabyte if junk files from Mac SSD or HDD.
Thanks for sharing this useful blog post. But, in my opinion the very first thing, which a Mac user should have to do for improving the speedup of his /her system, is reduce the startup programs and other useless apps that runs in the background without notifications. They can make a system to run slow. Hope, you will add this point in your updated post.