Hello everyone, I have a iMac (Retina 4K, 21.5-inch, 2019) bought in October 2020. Ever since I have it, I've noticed it runs very slowly, especially when I start using it after being in sleep mode. I ran the Etrecheck report and it says that the the computer has a hard drive that appears to be failing. What can I do about this?
iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.15
Wait!
You may have a very hard-to-detect issue. It appears you have an Apple Fusion drive that has "split." The Fusion drive consists of a small solid-state drive (your disk0) and a larger mechanical hard drive ( your disk1), linked by software to act as one. Something broke that software link. Here is my evidence:
Drives:
disk0 - APPLE SSD SM0032L 28.00 GB (Solid State - TRIM: Yes)
Internal PCI-Express 8.0 GT/s x2 NVM Express
disk0s1 - EFI [EFI] 315 MB
disk0s2 [APFS Container] 27.55 GB
disk1 - APPLE HDD HTS541010A9E632 1.00 TB (Mechanical - 5400 RPM)
Internal SATA 3 Gigabit Serial ATA
disk1s1 - EFI (MS-DOS FAT32) [EFI] 210 MB
disk1s2 [APFS Container] 1000.00 GB
disk2 [APFS Virtual drive] 1000.00 GB (Shared by 6 volumes)
disk2s1 - m***** - Data (APFS) [APFS Virtual drive] (Shared - 586.92 GB used)
disk2s2 - Preboot (APFS) [APFS Preboot] (Shared - 337 MB used)
disk2s3 - Recovery (APFS) [Recovery] (Shared - 614 MB used)
disk2s4 - VM (APFS) [APFS VM] (Shared - 6.44 GB used)
disk2s5 (APFS) [APFS Container] (Shared - 15.05 GB used)
disk2s5s1 - m***S (APFS) [APFS Snapshot] (Shared - 15.05 GB used)
disk2s6 - Update (APFS) (Shared - 2 MB used)
Were a Fusion drive working correctly, there should be entries under disk0 and disk1 with "Fusion." Nothing shows in your report.
As this is a software issue, you can correct it at home without spending money. Please see this Apple article:
How to fix a split Fusion Drive - Apple Support
If that does not change anything, then you can get that external option that rkaufmann87 has wisely recommended.
I also see a split fusion drive and no Time Machine backup in your EtreCheck report.
Before you do anything to try and repair or re-fuse the drives, you first need to make a Time Machine or other full backup.
1) Get an External Drive and make a Time Machine backup or a CCC clone.
see > https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201250
or > https://bombich.com/
2) Then see if you can re- fuse the drives, as per > https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207584
If the SSD has failed or you can not re-fuse the drives? Then you will need to contact Apple Support and/or your local AASP.
Hi, Thank you for your help! I checked and I only see one drive under storage: a 1Tb SATA DISK. However, in Disk Utilities, I see this:
Could this be part of the problem or is it normal?
Thank you again!
I (an most experienced users would recommend) that you get an external SSD and connect it to the the iMac. Restart in the Recovery Partition (hold down Command + R on startup) and then install Mac OS on the new SSD. Then restart while holding down the Option key and select the new SSD and using System Preferences set the SSD as your startup drive.
The drive I would recommend for a 2019 21.5" iMac is the following:
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/owc-envoy-pro-ex-thunderbolt-3
Extremely fast (major upgrade over your existing system) and extremely reliable.
You have a split Fusion Drive. Use den.thed’s instructions to set it right.
Cheers,
Jack
Hi Jack,
Here you go! Thanks for your time!
Could you post a screenshot of Disk Utility, with "View" > "Show All Devices" turned on?
Cheers,
Jack
Slow Mac - EtreCheck Failing Disk
