AndyO said:
POP account, 16G of 95G available
Even though 5GB database is somewhat large, I don't think that size for a
POP account would be that slow. I suspect it could be a hardware problem.
The amount of free space is supposed to be at least 10% so you are getting
close. If this is severely fragmented space this would tax your system even
more. This free space is used as virtual memory. Using the Activity Monitor
you can view these activities.
Pageins or pageouts are how many times a page of memory is swapped out from
disk to memory and vice versa. If the total pageouts is low compared to the
number of pageins after having used your Mac for hours of work, you may have
sufficient RAM.
When you run out of RAM, virtual memory allows an operating system to escape
the limitations of physical RAM by using hard disk storage to hold data not
currently in use. This hard disk storage is sometimes called the ³swap²
space because of its use as storage for data being swapping in and out of
memory. Using "swap" space can significantly slow down your Mac.
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