My 2012 27" iMac is starting to get slower and slower and l am seeing a lot of the spinning beach ball. I am considering buying a new iMac but am hanging on just in case there is a new model this year. The question is do l go for the HDD or specify an SSD Drive and what size drive?
Thanks for any replies
iMac 27", macOS 10.15
Your hard disk is quite possibly failing.
What you’re reporting about getting slower is one of the ways how a failing hard disk can fail.
Get a backup.
Get a backup, like, yesterday.
Don’t try repairs or verifications or other heavy-I/O activities.
Not until you have that complete, current backup.
If your HDD is not actually failing—which is certainly possible here—and the Mac has some cruft installed, well, now you have a good, current backup.
As for the replacement, probably SSD. Not HDD. HDD devices are cheaper and larger, but (far!) slower.
As for SSD size, at least the capacity of your HDD, and probably larger. How much larger is subjective, and based on your plans for this Mac.
As was mentioned above, I’d avoid the bottom end iMac and the Fusion drive if you replace this iMac with a newer one; the 8 GB / Fusion config is.... slow. That iMac is good for FaceTime and email and Messages, but a number of postings from folks here have found it... slow.
Your hard disk is quite possibly failing.
What you’re reporting about getting slower is one of the ways how a failing hard disk can fail.
Get a backup.
Get a backup, like, yesterday.
Don’t try repairs or verifications or other heavy-I/O activities.
Not until you have that complete, current backup.
If your HDD is not actually failing—which is certainly possible here—and the Mac has some cruft installed, well, now you have a good, current backup.
As for the replacement, probably SSD. Not HDD. HDD devices are cheaper and larger, but (far!) slower.
As for SSD size, at least the capacity of your HDD, and probably larger. How much larger is subjective, and based on your plans for this Mac.
As was mentioned above, I’d avoid the bottom end iMac and the Fusion drive if you replace this iMac with a newer one; the 8 GB / Fusion config is.... slow. That iMac is good for FaceTime and email and Messages, but a number of postings from folks here have found it... slow.
I would get a SSD
the fastest normal hd I measured was around 200MB/sec sustainable transfer rate
where the SSD's m2 can easy manage 3.5GB/sec
of cause with it being external it would likely be held back by the interface, thunderbolt would be the fastest but most external external ssd so if it was me then I would get an usb-3 supporting external ssd or external usb-3 enclosure one can mount a ssd oneself into.
size is very subjective ones user data and media lib and the likes could still be placed on the internal hd or some of them
SSD without a doubt
If you go for a new one avoid these 3 things...
i3 CPU, paltry 8GB of RAM, 5400 rpm drive, get an SSD;
SDD or HDD
