iMac (late 2013) continually freezes every few mintues

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Level 1

4 points

iMac (late 2013) continually freezes every few mintues

Hello everyone,

Hoping the apple community can lend me some help here.

I currently have a late 2013 iMac computer running High Sierra 10.13.6. I got this only a few years ago and it has always ran great. Recently though, the computer started freezing periodically every couple minutes. I can still move the mouse around the screen, but everything else is frozen. If I'm watching a video, the video will freeze but audio will continue. I've done a lot of the action items other threads have suggested (factory reset, disk utility, reset NVRAM, etc.) and nothing has fixed the issue.

I keep pretty much everything stored on external hard drives, I don't have many apps running, I have 963.36 GB available of the computer's 1 TB storage, I don't leave it running for long periods of time. I will say that when I last did a complete factory, everything was running fine for a few weeks. But then the issue came back and so far has not gone away.

I know it's an "old" computer, but it really does run great except for this one issue with the freezing. I'm just curious if anyone else experienced this and, if so, what did you do to fix it?

Thanks!

Posted on Sep 25, 2023 6:30 AM

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Answer 1

den.thed

Level 10

92,626 points

Sep 26, 2023 7:24 AM in response to kobaza

The report doesn't look too bad for a Late 2013 iMac.

It looks like the Freezing, Delay or SBBOD is coming from accessing your User Libraries.

Diagnostics Information (past 7-30 days):

2023-09-26 09:06:00 logd Crash (85 times)

Executable: /usr/libexec/logd

What exactly is on the WD 1.5T External Drive?

If your User Libraries are stored on the 1.5T WD external drive,

then it should be formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and not MS-DOS FAT32.

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Answer 2

den.thed

Level 10

92,626 points

Sep 26, 2023 9:41 AM in response to kobaza

kobaza wrote:

Ok gotcha. So I should move everything off of that drive, then reformat it to MAC OS Extended (Journaled). Once that is done, should I be okay to move everything back onto that drive?

Yes

And just for my own reference, what exactly is User Libraries?

User Libraries are where your Photos, Music, Doc’s and other macOS Application Files are Stored.

Normally those files are kept on the Internal drive. However it appears that you are accessing some of those files from the WD external drive.

I also see that you have plenty of free space on your iMac’s internal drive. So it might also be a good idea to Import the Photos and Music files into the Applications on the internal drive instead of accessing them from the slower external WD drive.

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Answer 3

den.thed

Level 10

92,626 points

Sep 25, 2023 6:47 AM in response to kobaza

One way to possible get to the bottom of the issue, is to get and run EtreCheckPro.

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

Then post back here with the EtreCheckPro report if you need help deciphering the information in the report.

How to use the Add Text Feature When Post… - Apple Community

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Answer 4

den.thed

Level 10

92,626 points

Sep 27, 2023 11:02 AM in response to kobaza

Good work.

From everything you have reported, the problem is starting to sound more like a hardware issue with the GPU. Sadly there is no real good test or easy way to fix the GPU and my advise is to consider a new or newer replacement.

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Answer 5

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Sep 28, 2023 3:17 AM in response to kobaza

I have to agree with den.thed, sounding like a Hardware issue that only Apple could take care of.:(

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Answer 6

kobaza Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 26, 2023 7:55 AM in response to den.thed

The 1.5 T External Drive has most of my file backups on there. Word documents, music, movies, pictures, etc. I use a separate drive for time machine backups.

Do I just need to reformat that drive? And if so, will I need to move everything to another drive so everything is not lost?

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Answer 7

den.thed

Level 10

92,626 points

Sep 26, 2023 8:04 AM in response to kobaza

Reformatting will wipe all of the data on the WD, so you must move everything to another drive.

Another plus to having your User Libraries on a Mac OS Extended formatted drive, is that it will be included in your Time Machine backups.

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Answer 8

kobaza Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 26, 2023 8:29 AM in response to den.thed

Ok gotcha. So I should move everything off of that drive, then reformat it to MAC OS Extended (Journaled). Once that is done, should I be okay to move everything back onto that drive?

And just for my own reference, what exactly is User Libraries?

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Answer 9

kobaza Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 27, 2023 10:28 AM in response to den.thed

EtreCheck report #2

OK so I moved everything off the 1.5T hard drive, reformatted to Mac OS (Journaled, Case Sensitive). All of that drive's contents I moved to the 2T drive that was housing my time machine backups.

Everything seemed to be working fine until I hosted a zoom call. The same freezes came back now (video freezes, audio continues, mouse still movable). So I unmounted the 1.5T drive and it got a little better but still was freezing. I unmounted the 2T and there was no real change.

I did another Etre report (attached here) without either of the external drives mounted. Does this look like it gives any info as to what the problem might be now?

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