Late 2009 27" iMac Slow. Here's my EtreCheck. Can you help?

Whodoyouthink, I would check with a local computer repair company about the cost of a new SSD drive for the computer if you want to keep the computer. OtherWorldComputing (Macsales.com) has a SSD for $130. Plus any installation costs from your local computer store that works on Macs.

One thing I would do immediately is backup your drive. The report says it is failing. No idea how long it will be before it completely fails. You are at the risk of losing ALL your data on the drive if it does fail. It will cost $1000s to recover the drive from a service if you decide to go that route.

Let me know if you have more specific questions.

I hope this helps.

Paul

First, make sure you have a current backup.

Second, uninstall this CC Cleaner useless stuff.

Third, make a new backup without that stuff and you may have solved the "slow" problem.

The report took 26 minutes to complete; it should be doing it under 10 minutes. From your report, I can't see any of the usual "suspects" but the drive may well be failing. It has lasted about 12 years, which is ancient by electronic standards.

Personally, I would not spend anything on a 12 year old computer. All electronics fail sooner or later - yours has lasted a very long time. You can buy refurbished models at the online Apple store which saves some money. That is where I buy all of my devices.

https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished

The hard drive is failing and considering the age of the computer (about 13 years) it is time to replace it. It has no value so spending money on fixing it is a waste and should be channeled to it's replacement. As you have not backed up the 2009, you will be starting fresh and have likely lost all of your data, I know that is painful and most experienced users have been through the same one time or another. This is why a solid backup plan (Time Machine and another 2nd form of backup) is CRITICAL, not something you "should" do its something you "must do" to preserve your data!!

If you cannot afford to pay cash for a new Mac then there are many alternatives available to you.

• 1 example is Apple offers financing, take advantage of that!
• Another example, Apple Refurbished Macs are identical to new, come with the same warranty as a new Mac, are eligible for AppleCare and can save hundreds of dollars. If you cannot find a configuration you want or cannot afford a refurb then go to the next solution.
• Buy a used Mac from a reliable reseller, NEVER EVER buy from E-Bay, Craigs List, etc. Buy from a reseller that offers a warranty and actually has done some refurbishing such as Macofalltrades.com or Macsales.com.

Good luck!

Hi WhoDo,

(Etrecheck partially bases failing hard drives on how long it takes to run the report?)

Partially. Dreadfully low write/read speeds are likely triggering the EtreCheck drive warning:

Performance:

System Load: 4.69 (1 min ago) 9.93 (5 min ago) 6.38 (15 min ago)

Nominal I/O speed: 1.55 MB/s

File system: 122.15 seconds (timed out)

Write speed: 29 MB/s

Read speed: 55 MB/s

Compare to this. We have a working iMac with the same hard drive specs (SATA 3GB/sec and 7200 rpm) and it posted this in the same test:

Performance:

    System Load: 1.62 (1 min ago) 1.67 (5 min ago) 1.87 (15 min ago)

    Nominal I/O speed: 0.05 MB/s

    File system: 38.28 seconds

    Write speed:  112 MB/s

    Read speed:  91 MB/s

To me, that says your HD is in deep chocolate.

Last Resort #1: you can try removing two totally useless utilities, CCleaner and App Cleaner, and rerunning the test. Some of those cleaning apps severely retard HD read/write speeds. NO Mac running macOS 10.X (from 2000 to today) needs a cleaning app because the macOS, like a cat, cleans itself with cleverly designed automated maintenance routines you paid Apple to include. Adding something like a "cleaner" app or anti-virus conflicts with the built-in protection and your get "issues."

NOTE: MalwareBytes is not included in that condemnation. It is properly written for Mac and good at purging adware.

Last Resort #2: you might try testing with your external drives disconnected. I've had bad slowdowns with WD external enclosures, specifically MyBooks. The drive inside is fine but the enclosures were designed to go on sale every other weekend. That's easy enough to check.

SSD speed notes:

• Because pre-2011 iMacs have a 3GB/sec SATA drive bus, the fastest data transfer rate you can achieve with an internal SSD upgrade is about 250MB/sec, or over twice what your current drive should do were it not gasping its last.
• The oft-quoted external USB SSD solution is not applicable to pre-2012 iMacs because it requires a USB3 port.

Well, removing the dungware helped helped the read/write speeds but the test still timed out.

Performance:

System Load: 1.86 (1 min ago) 3.95 (5 min ago) 3.42 (15 min ago)

Nominal I/O speed: 1.03 MB/s

File system: 120.41 seconds (timed out)

Write speed: 51 MB/s

Read speed: 62 MB/s

so that seem fairly conclusive that the drive is the big issue.

I think this is the TM issue, or rather a non-issue:

Backup:

Time Machine information not available without Full Drive Access.

Full Disk Access is only available with macOS 10.14 Mojave and newer, which your iMac cannot run, As long as the externals are working and the time Machine menubar icon show a date or time for the last backup, you are OK there:

or in System Preferences > Time Machine:

you backups are working fine.

WhoDo, cost, well that could very a lot depending where you live. I'm in the US and in my area of the country last time I checked labor costs were $60/$80 an hour. About 2 years ago, for my 2012 iMac I spent $500 for a new drive, more memory (8GB additional ), an external HD case and the installation. The HD was a 1TB SSD. I would get an estimate from your Local Apple Authorized Dealer/Repair Shop.

I'm not sure what Etrecheck bases itself failing HD diagnoses on but 11 years is a long time for a hard drive to still be working.

Seamless restores - that depends on a lot of factors. For me it has been easiest to clone the drive (current internal) to an external SSD and then get the drive replaced. My next step is to boot from the cloned external drive and then restore back to the internal drive (new one) and then reboot from the internal drive. I use Carbon Copy Cloner from Bombich.com to accomplish this. I don't use TimeMachine for my backups so I don't know exactly how easy it would be to get back to the same state on the new drive. My educated guess is that the new drive would have a base OS install on it with no users and then you could use Migration Assistant to bring all your information over.

Your original post stated what to do without purchasing a new computer. I was very hesitant not to just suggest that. As I think you are looking at, at least $300+ for total cost. Spending a little more will get you a newer faster computer.

Also, I didn't go into any troubleshooting suggestions/questions? How full is your HD? I try to always have 100GB free on the drive.

If you have more questions just let me know.

Paul