I’m not sure what the issue is and I’m hoping for some suggestions. I would like to rule out a couple of things before I have to make a genius appointment. I’m doing all this from and external drive that is a CCC clone of the internal HD.
Configuration: 8GB RAM 1TB HDD (not fusion)
Situation, the iMac is extraordinary slow. It takes minutes to launch anything. I’ve booted into to recovery mode and the run disk utility - disk first add and it didn’t find anything. I’m currently running Tech tool pro 10 to see if anything shows up there. So far everything has passed. I’m wondering if the PRAM got corrupted. I haven’t tried resetting that yet.
I have the same model at work and it’s been acting the same way. Truthfully, it has never been the speediest of Macs I’ve had. But it’s become terribly bogged down recently and I look forward to seeing other responses.
In my rare downtime at wrok I’ve been working through the Take Control book on Speeding Up Your Mac, and have already reset the PRAM without any improvement. I’ve been really busy at work so I haven’t gotten much beyond the easy basics.
Like you, Disk Utility and Techtool Pro (but version 9) have not turned up anythng. Neither has Sophos or Malwarebytes.
My main computer is a 2015 MBP and I’m used the the SSD drive speed on it. The imac is the family computer and while it has been slow. The recent change has taken it to a whole new level. The last CCC clone said there were issues with the clone the back up but the history didn’t signal out any file copying issues. About a year ago the orginal HD died and I had it replaced.
I have a late 2012 iMac with 3tb fusion and 32gb memory. It was always fast and speedy until I installed High Sierra. For whatever reason that seriously slowed down my iMac and introduced all kinds of graphics issues. I then recently upgraded to Mojave which made it significantly better, but I still have the slowness and graphics issues. I don’t know if my iMac would go back to how it used to be if I go back to Sierra, but I don’t want to waste my time trying. I was hoping for an all new iMac refresh a few weeks back in order to replace this machine. I’m now toying with the idea of getting a maxed out Mini and 34” ultrawide LG monitor to replace the iMac. I could get a iMac Pro, but the Mini is intriguing with all the ports and getting an ultrawide monitor seems like a nice switch to make from having an iMac all these years (this is my 2nd).
@pmconaway. You didn’t mention which OS you’re running, which may have something to do with your performance issues. I have a late-2013 iMac that got slow and had what I can only term as weird stuff happening. When I realized I couldn’t resolve any of them any other way I did a nuke & pave. I was running Sierra at the time—it was the current OS and I reinstalled it during the process. Yes, it was a bit of a pain making sure I had all the app information I wanted to reinstall. Since then I’ve upgraded OS’s at each opportunity and had no problems with the computer.
Great idea. I’m hoping not to have to nuke and pave. The Machine is on High Sierra. I’ve made some progress on the determining some of the issues. I’ve removed all non Apple prehiperals from the Mac and that seems to have made a difference. I’m hoping the issue was a compatibility issue with High Sierra. Not a problem with the USB ports. My 2002 USB printer just died and I’m hoping that didn’t mess up the USB ports. (Printer refuses to power on anymore) The only thing that was connected was a logictech mouse. I’m planning on updating the Logitech control center. I’m still waiting for techtool pro to finish it’s run. It is currently doing a surface scan. Which if the time estimate is correct it will take another couple of days. The iMac was unusable before I started my troubleshooting and there are other macs in the house that family members can use.
@timmo - I’ve been thinking the same thing. This is the family desktop and not my main computer. I haven’t decided what I want to do yet. The Mini can also handle a eGPU, which will improve graphics. I just have a hard time getting rid of a computer that actually works well most of the time.
I’m also wondering if a nuke and pave upgrade to Mohave will solve some of the issues. I’m having. I’m really trying to avoid having to carry the 27” iMac into an Apple Store they really aren’t portable at all.Carrying the computer from the car to the store wasn’t enjoyable last time I had to take it in.
If the nuke and pave option works for you, let me know (maybe that will motivate me to do the same). And I hear you on carrying the 27” beast into the Apple store. I’ve done it about 4 times now over the years - major major pain. Pro tip - call ahead of time to the store and tell them you will drop it off at the back of their store by driving up to the pickup/drop off area. Soooo much easier (they should have a bell to ring by the back door).
Will do and great advice about the drop off. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that I can get to the back of the store. It’s not apparent where the exterior rear of the store is for my particular store.
I have a 2011 Mac Mini. I have 500 Gb SSD and 16 Gb RAM on an i5 chip. I found it was just getting too slow so I did a “mini” nuke and pave, which was back up (twice). Enter recovery mode, reformat my hard disk then reinstall everything from Carbon Copy Cloner. This helped significantly and allowed me to keep all my settings etc. Hope this helps…
JonathanL, yes that helps. Currently I’m using Tech Tool Pro to run a surface scan on the internal HD. When that finishes I will probably do another backup and then nuke and pave. The imac has become more responsive once I removed the Logitech usb dongle that my logitech mouse connects to. I’m beginning to think that is was an issue with out of date software or maybe the dongle shorted.
Only 8G Ram? I have a mid 2011 imac that runs pretty well with 32G ram (yes, maxed) and an SSD + HDD mod.
I have a bunch of things installed and it’s sitting at 9G of usage. That explodes to 20G+ as soon as i start any adobe thing though. But I can still load photoshop, lightroom, illustrator and premiere all at the same time.
Get an 8G stick (should take it to 12) and see if things improve. If it does then add another 8G.
I was in the exact same situation with what sounds like the same machine. I purchased a 1TB SSD and an USB3 enclosure on Amazon, migrated the spinning drive to the SSD, and have been amazed at the difference in speed.
To give you a couple examples: Safari now only bounces once on launch. Excel bounces four times.
More RAM might help with having lots of RAM-hogging apps open at once, but my computer has problems simply booting. It takes a long time. ANYTHING I want to do on it takes a long time, even the simplest of tasks. That’s not a RAM problem. I am not sure, but I bet the OP also has a slow boot time, too.
I could ask my employer to boost the RAM, but their solution is more likely to be to upgrade the computer. I would like that, but they know I’m gong to retire soon so I bet they drag their heels and hope the existing one lasts until I do. Maybe I should drop hints that I want to stay a lot longer.
Just saw on The Wirecutter that the EVO drive I am running is what they recommend, and is now on a crazy good sale. <$130 for 1TB. Add an enclosure for not much more. https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-ssds/
It’s been a few days and I thought a status update is in order. Using tech tool pro 10. I did a surface scan. It didn’t. Find anything. I decided that there maybe a corruption issue on the drive so I decided to erase the drive and restore from a CCC clone. Well that took 54hours to restore 773.66GB. Somethings not right with the drive. I’ve purchased a second external HD (WD easystore 8TB from Best Buy for $120.) and I’m in the process of setting that up. I’m going to use the 8TB drive as my boot drive and still clone to the 2TB drive. I’ve partitioned the 8TB drive into a 1TB and 7TB partitions.
I had been using the 2TB ED mybook studio as a CCC clone backup. I want to still be able Clone the iMac to an external drive.
My plan going forward is to take the Mac into the local apple store and have them do a diagnostic on it to make sure there isn’t anything else wrong with the computer. If there isn’t anything else wrong, I will be updating the internal drive to an SSD a little later.
My guess would be that spinning hard drive is starting to show its age. Have good backups! If you can boot from another source and the machine feels faster, it may be that drive.
@Ismh, good thought but I had apple replace the drive in Oct 17. The original drive died. I know drives can be finicky but I would think that the “new” drive (the one I’m currently sort of having an issue with) should still be okay. The machine is booting from the internal drive at the moment and I’m making sure everything is updated and backed up.
