My 27" Late 2012 iMac is very sluggish

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My 27" Late 2012 iMac is very sluggish

Any help that can be offered will be much appreciated.

My 27” late 2012 iMac is very sluggish with spinning beach balls and programs taking forever to open. It frequently takes up to 10-minutes, sometimes longer, for my Mac to become useable. It churns away for ages and has a very slow response time when loading programs such as Excel, Word, Safari, Acrobat Reader etc. However, once my Mac has been operating for a while, the performance does seem to improve a bit, but shutting down sometimes takes a while as well – occasionally up to 5-minutes.

I upgraded my RAM a few years ago from the standard 8GB to the max 32GB. RAM was purchased from OWC.

I am still running macOS Mojave as I use a few programs that have not been upgraded to work with Catalina. The last time I reinstalled the OS (High Sierra at the time) was March 2018. My drive is a 1TB Fusion Drive, with about 13% still unused.

I don’t run many memory intensive apps, other than Safari and I will admit to having a lot of tabs and windows open simultaneously – pure laziness on my part.

I ran EtreCheck to see what the problem(s) might be. This is the report I received:

My EtreCheck Report

Posted on Jan 27, 2021 6:53 AM

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Answer 1

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kensmith26 Author

Level 1

10 points

Feb 9, 2021 6:46 AM in response to Jack-19

I reinstalled macOS Mojave over the weekend. First I erased then deleted the original Macintosh HD volume, ran First Aid on the HDD and APFS container to make sure that there were no issues there, then created a new Macintosh HD volume. After reinstalling Mojave, I ran Etrecheck which reported that the overall performance was "Excellent" with no major issues, although the report continued to state that the SSD was showing poor performance. The Write/Read speeds were 229 MB/s and 458 MB/s respectively. My system is running much more smoothly now and programs load quite quickly. For equipment that is essentially obsolete, that is OK so hopefully I should be able to forego replacing my iMac for a bit longer, at least until Apple releases its new iMac models with their own chips.

I reran Etrecheck this morning to see what the performance looked like after reinstallation of all my software and after running the system for a couple of days. Performance said to be "Good", again with no major issues and with Write/Read speeds were 178 MB/s and 446 MB/s respectively. Report attached FYI.

Thanks again for all your help. It is much appreciated.

Ken

Etrecheck Report - Feb 9/21

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Answer 2

Jack-19

Level 8

46,266 points

Jan 27, 2021 3:31 PM in response to kensmith26

Hi there,

First, delete these apps:

CleanMyDrive
ExpressVPN

What is "myAddress"?

Also, the following are concerning:

SSD too slow - SSD is showing poor performance.

Heavy RAM usage - Apps are using a large amount of RAM.

Apps crashing - There have been numerous app crashes.

Unsigned files - There are unsigned software files installed. Apple has said that unsigned software will not run by default in a future version of the operating system.

System modifications - There are a large number of system modifications running in the background.

Low performance - EtreCheck report took an unusually long time to run.

Vintage hardware - This computer may be considered vintage.

Heavy I/O usage - Your system is under heavy I/O use. This will reduce your performance.

Write speed: 31 MB/s - This could mean there is a hardware issue.

Read speed: 168 MB/s - This could mean there is a hardware issue.

Try running the report again after deleting those apps, Quit all open apps except EtreCheck, and removing any external hard drives or anything else connected to your Mac that is non-essential.

Cheers,

Jack

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Answer 3

Jack-19

Level 8

46,266 points

Jan 30, 2021 2:37 PM in response to kensmith26

I think that you may have a failing hard drive, based on this reported speed "Write speed: 43 MB/s".

First, backup the entire computer, then perform an erase and reinstall of macOS. When backing up, do not use Time Machine. This would just restore issues. Rather, use an external hard drive to drag and drop, or copy and paste, files to backup, then to put back.

Backup all files, as shown above.
Go to System Preferences > iCloud > and Sign out.
Shut down the iMac
Turn on the iMac, and immediately press and hold Option + Command + R until you see a spinning globe.
Once it is booted in Recovery mode, verify you are on WiFi in the top right corner.
Go to Disk Utility.
In the top toolbar, click "View", then "Show All Devices."
Look for a drive named either "APPLE HDD", "APPLE SSD", or "Fusion Drive".
Select it, and click "Erase."
Use the following EXACTLY:
Name: Macintosh HD
Format: APFS
Scheme: GUID Partition Map
Click Erase.
Quit Disk Utility
Go to the "Reinstall macOS" app.
Follow the prompts to install macOS. Do not disconnect from WiFi or shut down the Mac.
Once complete, setup the Mac and restore data.

Cheers,

Jack

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Answer 4

kensmith26 Author

Level 1

10 points

Feb 9, 2021 7:14 PM in response to Allan Jones

Thanks for the suggestions. I deleted the cleaning apps and definitely noticed an improvement. I reran the EtreCheckPro report - performance rated as "Excellent" although Write/Read speeds are little changed at 200 MB/s and 431 MB/s. I guess that's probably the best I can expect given the age of my iMac and the SSD being tagged as showing poor performance.

Here is the latest EtreCheckPro report:

Thanks again

Ken

Etrecheck Report #2 - Feb 9/21

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Answer 5

Jack-19

Level 8

46,266 points

Feb 9, 2021 7:19 PM in response to kensmith26

The only other app you should delete is ExpressVPN. VPN is not needed on macOS, and may result in issues.

Cheers,

Jack

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Answer 6

kensmith26 Author

Level 1

10 points

Jan 30, 2021 7:54 AM in response to Jack-19

Hi Jack

Thanks for the suggestions - I have been busy the last few days so only got around to implementing them this morning. I also deleted a few other programs that I rarely used and were running in the background (Fitbit and Blackberry Desktop). After rebooting I did notice an improvement in load times - not super fast but certainly better.

I re-ran Etrecheck - latest report below. Would appreciate your thoughts.

Thanks

Ken

My Etrecheck Report

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Answer 7

kensmith26 Author

Level 1

10 points

Feb 9, 2021 8:02 PM in response to Jack-19

I use it to watch a lot of US or UK Netflix content that I can't access in Canada. If there is a better VPN, I am open to suggestions. My ExpressVPN subscription expires next month so that would be a good time to change.

All the best

Ken

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Answer 8

Jack-19

Level 8

46,266 points

Jan 27, 2021 3:32 PM in response to kensmith26

Deleted, as duplicate post

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Answer 9

Jack-19

Level 8

46,266 points

Feb 9, 2021 9:41 PM in response to kensmith26

If you must have a VPN, I would recommend the Malwarebytes Privacy VPN: https://www.malwarebytes.com/vpn/

Cheers,

Jack

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Answer 10

kensmith26 Author

Level 1

10 points

Feb 10, 2021 7:59 AM in response to Jack-19

Thanks. I'll check it out Hopefully it will work with Netflix and BBC iPlayer, which are the main streaming services where I watch content.

Best regards

Ken

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Answer 11

Allan Jones

Level 9

78,788 points

Feb 9, 2021 8:36 AM in response to kensmith26

You still have cleaning apps installed.

User Login Items:

[Running] App Cleaner Helper (Nektony Limited - installed 2020-12-28)

Modern Login Item

/Applications/App Cleaner 7.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/App Cleaner Helper.app

[Not Loaded] AppCleaner SmartDelete (Julien Ramseier - installed 2021-02-08)

Modern Login Item

~/Dropbox/Software for Mac/AppCleaner/AppCleaner.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/AppCleaner SmartDelete.app

Also possibly "Memory Clean."

For 20 years the macOS has cleaned itself without your having to think about it, and third-party cleaning scams will only slow your computer as they conflict with the very elegant self-maintenance features Apple builds into OSX. We cannot give you a full diagnosis until those bits of useless scamware are out of the way.

Performance said to be "Good", again with no major issues and with Write/Read speeds were 178 MB/s and 446 MB/s respectively.

I collect Etrecheck drive score reports and the slowest iMac Fusion drive report so far in the database is this:

Write speed: 379 MB/s

Read speed: 1027 MB/s

Yours are far below that. My 2012 MacBook Pro with a cheap after-market SSD does 500MB/s for both tasks. Like rkaufmann87, I feel something is amiss with your Fusion drive, now the slowest in my meager collection, and likely with the mechanical portion. Apple uses two separate devices liked by software to create a fusion drive. You have a smallish blade SSD in a logic board slot, and a conventional roto-drive in the drive bay.

⚠️ However, cleaning apps have been demonstrated here through Etrecheck reports to slow drive performance, so your low drive scores are hard to characterize accurately until all the cleaning apps are fully removed.

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Answer 12

rkaufmann87

Level 10

148,534 points

Feb 9, 2021 7:55 AM in response to kensmith26

You SSD is under performing so I agree, it's likely your hard disk. Remember the computer is now 10 years old and if the HD is original it is pretty old by HD standards.

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My 27" Late 2012 iMac is very sluggish

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