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 I’m beginning to think that is was an issue with out of date software or maybe the dongle shorted.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.
Here is a link to my original post. (I did not enable TRIM.) OS on external SSD, leave data on spinning drive?
Steve
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.
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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.
Wishing you the best.
It’s frustrating and unsettling when computers have a death rattle. Especially when they are glued/taped together.
Thanks for that. I got a chuckle out of that. You are so right. I may turn the imac into a target display. Apparently this model will go into target display mode.
It’s not uncommon for components like hard drives to fail early in their (intended) lifetime.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Bathtub_curve.svg
I wouldn’t rule the drive out just because it’s relatively new.
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Thanks for the info. I hadn’t thought about that. The first drive replaced in Oct 2017 lasted 4 years. I was hoping for a simular performance out of the replaced drive. 
Hate to say it, but that’s assuming they put a new drive in. Could have been scavenged from another dead Mac.
Apple doesn’t use “scavenged from another dead Mac” parts. Especially Hard Drives!
That is a poor way to do business…
Dave
- Apple may use parts or products that are new or equivalent to new in reliability and performance. Apple will retain the replaced part or product that is exchanged as its property, and the replacement part will become your property. Replaced parts are generally repairable and are exchanged or repaired by Apple for value. If applicable law requires Apple to return a replaced part to you, you agree to pay Apple the additional cost of the replacement item.
I’ve got sort of another issue. I’ve partitioned the new 8TB drive into a boot partition and a data partition. My current problem is that the imac doesn’t see the boot drive on startup (holding option key down when I here the chime)! 
All 3 drives, with bootable systems appear in the Startup Disk system preference. The easystore boot partition was created/restored from a bootable clone.
I’ve been searching Apple’s support area. And I am wondering if the boot partition has to be the first partition on the drive?
iMac configuration
Internal 1TB drive -
My Book Studio - 2TB external (available on boot- with option
Easystore. 8TB - (not available on option boot)
I’m trying to create a configuration that doesn’t use the internal HD until I can get it to the Apple store to make sure that there aren’t any issues with the drive.
Did you use GUID partition map?
That’s a prerequisite for creating a bootable macOS drive.
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