Beachballing on 2 year old mac and no help 1.5 hours later from Apple support - etrecheckpro states hard drive failing?

Yes, I would continue to use the MyPassport drive for backups. No reason to get another at this point.

If your iMac is still under warranty, you should book an appointment at the Genius Bar for hardware service. Take it in and let them diagnose the issue. The read and write speeds (51MB/s, 48MB/s) of your startup drive are very low. If they find a problem they will (should) replace the drive. But, they'll replace the drive with another like unit that also spins at 5400 rpm. You'll receive no upgrade there.

If the iMac is out of warranty, you might look for an AASP (Apple Authorized Service Provider) who would be willing to swap an SSD into the machine to replace the internal drive. But that's likely to take a couple hours of labor at some $, plus the expense of the SSD.

If this were my iMac, I'd use an external SSD as a startup drive as I mentioned earlier. It's fairly easy and not too costly.

As for reloading the OS... if the drive is failing then reloading the OS won't fix that. However, before you spend the money on external devices, it's not a bad idea to reload the OS once and see if anything changes. Maybe there is some software glitch that is affecting the performance. This would help figure that out.

Hello, tbuer.

Sorry you're having this problem with your iMac. Good job getting the EtreCheck report posted. The report looks pretty clean as far as software goes.

As you stated, though, it does appear that the biggest problem you have is the very slow 5400 RPM hard disk drive, which may be failing. Even when they're new, the 5400 rpm drive is generally too slow for any tasks that aren't just email or web browsing.

I think you would do yourself a great favor if you would buy an external SSD, install your OS on that and use it as the startup drive. You'd see a speed increase that would make you think you'd just bought a new computer.

The drive products at Macsales (https://macsales.com) are often recommended by users here in the communities. You should take a look. And the folks there really know their Macs and are pretty good at providing support.

Check out these EHDS by OWC (MacSales.com). They are very reliable, economical and with good warranties:

• Envoy Pro EX with USB-C or USB 3 - best from a speed vs price standpoint
• OWC Envoy Pro EX with Thunderbolt 3 - fastest if you have a Thunderbolt 3 port but more expensive
• OWC Mercury Elite Pro 7200 RPM Storage - excellent choice for Time Machine use. 

Contact Customer Support at OWC to find out which would be best for your machine and intended use.