etre check says hard drive to slow but drivedx reports no errors, what do I make of these reports

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etre check says hard drive to slow but drivedx reports no errors, what do I make of these reports

I have an older 2014 iMac. Everything was running fine on it, but started to get the beachball every 20min or so. The beachball is starting to last a lot longer when it shows up. I figured this was a sign of a failing drive. So I ran both and Etre Check Report and a DriveDX report to see the health of the drive. The part where I confused is that the Etre Check Report is reporting back that the hard drive is too slow, but the DriveDX report is coming back fine with 0 errors.

Etre Check Report

What can I look for the Etre Check is picking up that I am not seeing.

BTW: Crashplan is installed for back ups

Paragon Software is my external drive

You will see this in the launch folders.

Posted on Apr 8, 2021 5:52 PM

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Answer 1

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Jack-19

Level 8

46,014 points

Apr 8, 2021 6:04 PM in response to Julmbarr

Hi Julmbarr,

Even if the drive is in 100% health, it is still a slower hard drive just by the design.

Also, please upload the DriveDx report.

Notes from EtreCheck:

Delete Paragon software, unless you really need it. Ideally, use an ExFAT drive for sharing with Windows.
Turn on Apple Security Updates.
Turn on Apple Security.
Runaway user process. This may go away with a restart.

Other than that, your Mac is slow due to the 5400 rpm hard drive. Using an external SSD as your startup disk will make your Mac at least 12.5 times faster for storage. For more info and what SSD from Apple.com to buy, please read: How to Setup and Use an External SSD as y… - Apple Community.

Cheers,

Jack

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Answer 2

babowa

Level 9

78,429 points

Apr 8, 2021 6:02 PM in response to Julmbarr

Well, etrecheck reports that you have one of the super slow snail like 5400 rpm spinning hard drives - and, yes, that is slow. I find it unacceptable; had one in a Macbook Pro once and immediately took that out and replaced it with an SSD. So, the other report may just report on it acting like a 5400 rpm drive and working as expected for a super slow drive.

You also have the minimum 8 GB RAM; the newer OS versions do like more RAM; I'd consider 16 GB a minimum.

You also have security updates disabled - not a really good idea.

So, what specific problem made you decide to run the reports?

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etre check says hard drive to slow but drivedx reports no errors, what do I make of these reports

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