imac is slow

Hello!

I believe you should create an EtreCheck report. EtreCheck is a simple, helpful utility to diagnose and identify both software and select hardware issues.

If your Mac is experiencing an issue, such as poor performance or running slowly, kernel panics, apps freezing or quitting unexpectedly, storage issues, and many more, generating an EtreCheck report is a great place to start for troubleshooting issues with your Mac while getting help at Apple Support Community. EtreCheck was developed by a highly respected member of these very Apple Support Community forums, and it is trusted by many users.

Downloading

To get started, download EtreCheck:

https://etrecheck.com/en/welcome.html

Click “download” on the site. The app will be downloaded to your Mac to your downloads location, which is the “Downloads” folder by default. This can be accessed by going to the Finder > Go (in the top menu bar) > Downloads.

Open the app, and generate a report

Open the downloaded application, and follow the initial steps to open the app. Choose a problem in the drop-down menu, and click Start. Creating a report typically takes 2-4 minutes on a healthy Mac.

View your report, and upload a copy to Apple Support Community

Once you have your report generated, you can upload it to Apple Support Community for us to review and provide suggestions. Please refer to this document with instructions for uploading your report and using the “Additional Text” function of Apple Support Community:

How to use the Add Text Feature When Posting Large Amounts of Text, i.e. an Etrecheck Report - Apple Community.

If you need help in the meantime, please let us know!

Jack

gludlam wrote:

Is there a brand you would recommend? we have a 2015 21.5" iMac

Follow these steps for setting up an external SSD:

Use an external SSD as your startup disk … - Apple Community

It will make your Mac much faster.

Jack

You’re out of memory, with a somewhat-faster-than-an-HDD Fusion.

The HDD is looking quite worn, but also isn’t showing immediate evidence of failure.

He kernel panics—mostly timeouts, possibly due to load, or maybe due to an HDD that’s getting even more sluggish than its usual 5400 RPM HDD sluggishness—are concerning, but whether that’s the overload, or some buggy add-on software, or some other hardware or software issue? That Grammarly keeps tossing errors is concerning.

Fusion performance looks slow too, and that can be hindered by insufficient physical memory.

The workaround for a worn HDD in a Fusion is similar to the workaround for a sluggish HDD; adding and using an external SSD,

For now… Remove Grammarly, and MalwareBytes, that 2009-era CouponPrinter stuff, and some of those plug-ins look like they can be removed. Given the 8 GB, keep removing stuff that you don’t absolutely need. You don’t have the available memory budget for what is installed here.

Plan for an external SSD as an interim measure, and then for wholesale replacement.

gludlam wrote:

Wonderful, thank you. Will we be able to use the La Cie 500mb mobile ssd with new computer when we end up purchasing?

Yes. In the future with a new Mac it can be used for additional storage or a backup disk.

Usual: Why is my hard disk drive iMac so slow? - Apple Community

It appears your Fusion Drive may be failing. To check, please create and upload a DriveDx report for both your internal hard disk and SSD:

How to use DriveDx - Apple Community

Jack