If it's been as long as you say it's been since you've used the Mac why not reformat the drive altogether? Doing so will optimize performance.

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He said that he wanted to see his old school files.

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This would only be done after he recovered said files. I've done this before when I've had a Mac in storage that I did work on years ago--back up the files to some sort of external volume or floppy disk and then wipe the drive, reinstalling fresh copies of the OS and any application I may be using on the machine.