Slow boot up on iMac 5K 2015

granger morton wrote:

Maybe it's time to bite the bullet and do High Sierra or Mohave.

Yes, but mostly for security reasons.

Do you think I'd have better performance?

The only time I ever noticed any temporary slowness from a macOS update, was for a very short time way back when iPhoto converted over to Photos.

I tend to think the newer OS's would make older machines slower (more bloated features etc), but also therefore 'encourage' us consumers to shell out on new machines ( I tend to be a little cynical).

I have Mojave running on a couple of 2012 Mac's and they run without any slowness or problems whatsoever. Again, most of the bloat (new features) can easily be disabled, turned off and/or otherwise left unused.

Thanks so much for your input.

No problem, you're welcome!

30 seconds from the Apple logo to up and running is a good time. Sometimes connected external drives and servers can stall or slow getting to the Apple logo. I would try disconnecting external drive(s) and see if it gets to the Apple logo quicker.

Optionally only let the iMac sleep instead of, shutting it down and starting it back up.

Run an EtreCheck report and post back with the results.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/etrecheck/id1423715984?mt=12

https://www.etrecheck.com/

While I don't see any real red flags, I do see a few things that you might want to do and look into.

1. Your iMac is still on Sierra and Security updates is disabled.
2. Your machine is using large amounts of RAM.
3. Your Time Machine drive is to small.
4. Your HDD Performance is a little on the low side 82 MBs/107 MBs for a 7200rpm HDD.
5. Your using Adobe Illustrator C6, which I do not and can not help you with.

1. You should be running at a min. High Sierra, preferable Mojave.
2. RAM usage look OK at the time of your report, but at some point it looks like either the Mac or Adobe is starving.
3. Not a biggie, but Time Machine will or already has been slowly deleting old backup.
4. Might just slow from heavy activity during the report. I would try and curb disk activity and run another report.
5. I'm hoping for some Adobe help from others here at ASC with Adobe C6, because I could be missing something very obvious there.

Did you test it with those external drive disconnected, to see if the waiting and logo to use times improved?

Have you considered Sleeping instead of shutting down and starting up?

FWIW all my Mac's old and new have had no issues with sleeping 24-7.

You're welcome!

Yea' I hear you, Snow Leopard was my favorite OS X as well. Over the years I've strived at turning off, disabling, refusing to sign into or sign up for any of the 1000s of new macOS features. Today I run a very tamed down Mojave and to be honest, it still feels a lot like Snow Leopard did way back when.

Yea' that seems pretty normal. Plus faster to the Apple logo than you first indicated.

You can plug the drive in one at a time and retest if you like. However personally, I avoid shutting down and restarting as much as possible, because IMHO it's harder on the iMac's hardware than just sleeping 24-7.