Imac 2015 miserably slow. Etrecheck report included

In the absence of the "usual" suspects ( ported anti-virus and "cleaning" apps) these scores must indicate a failing hard drive:

Performance:

System Load: 1.84 (1 min ago) 1.66 (5 min ago) 1.67 (15 min ago)

Nominal I/O usage: 5.64 MB/s

File system: 47.92 seconds

Write speed: 49 MB/s ⚠️

Read speed: 37 MB/s ⚠️

Based on a collection of EtreCheck drive scores I;ve collected, your iMac with these drive specs:

disk0 - APPLE HDD ST1000DM003 1.00 TB (Mechanical - 7200 RPM)

Internal SATA 3 Gigabit Serial ATA

should post scores of 100- 130MB/sec. Stll slow for todays operating system versions. Yours it 1/3 to 1/2 expected performance.

The most cost-effective option is not to replace the internal drive, which today feels slow even if healthy, with an external USB 3.1 external solid-state drive (SSD) set as the boot volume. Based on recent posts the USB 3.1 can approach 900MB/sec. A USB 3.0 SSD can do 400MB/sec.

See:

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

In addition to BDAqua's suggestions, I would also offer the following observations / suggestions:

• Your iMac only has 8 GB of RAM. This will cause a performance hits when running multiple apps/processes on your Mac. You can tell that is an issue from the Virtual Memory Information section of the report. Note the Swap Used value. It should be 0 MB. The fact that it is not, is indicating that there was not enough RAM memory to run the multiple apps, and some of those apps were swapped out to the system HDD.
• Although this Mac has a speedy 7200 RPM drive, its read/write data transfer values are dismal. You can see these values under the Performance section of the report. They are reporting at: 49 MB/s for writes, and 37 MB/s for reads. I would have expected these values for the slower 5400 RPM drives. This could indicate a failing drive. An excellent diagnostics app for drives is DriveDX. It is a great tool to keep in your "troubleshooting toolbox."
• Google Chrome is a known memory hog. I would suggest that you completely remove it from your Mac. Two great alternatives, if you don't care for Safari, are: Brave & FireFox.
• I suggest that you take the advice under the Clean up category to remove these "missing" apps. It appears that their respective uninstaller apps did not do a throughout job of removing all of their "hidden" support files.
• The Diagnostics Information section was relatively "clean," but did indicate that you had one app that crashed. At this point, it may just be worth monitoring it to see if it repeats. Should it do so, and you still need this functionality, I would suggest that you make sure to download the latest software from HP and install it.

Hopefully this will help. Otherwise, there are a few other options you can consider, going forward:

• Backup this Mac. Then completely erase it, and then, reinstall macOS. Restore only the data you actually need.
• Should the DriveDX report any drive errors, you can swap out the current HDD for a much faster SSD. Outfits, like OWC, make this really easy ... but it does require "cracking open" the iMac to get to its internals. To get an idea of what that would entail, I suggest that you visit the iFixIt site and look up your iMac model.
• If you do decide to upgrade the drive, you might also want to consider upping the amount of RAM to, at least, 16 GB.

The key to all of this is, will it be worth it for a Mac that is now in Apple's Vintage support category, and soon will reach the Obsolete one where Apple will not be able to provide any support for it. You will also need to consider security issues. The report is indicating that most of macOS security has been disabled. As a minimum it should be re-enabled ... but more importantly this Mac is running macOS Big Sur. Apple basically stops providing security updates after three macOS revisions. With Sonoma being the most current, that means any version of macOS before Monterey may not get these updates.

FFDawson wrote:

@MartinR "not much you can do about APFS but see what you can do to clean up your HDD, preferably reducing it below 50% full." I'm fairly incompetent at cleaning a hard drive. I would have no idea what to delete and what to keep. Aside from ditching our library of photos, songs, etc...

...

You have a 1TB internal HDD and have used over 800GB of the drive's capacity. In most cases, macOS + apps don't take up more than about 50-60GB, so you have a LOT of user data - photos & songs as you mentioned, plus probably videos, documents, perhaps iPhone/iPad backups, etc. The user data is what I was talking about cleaning up (meaning, remove what you no longer need ... and ... move to an external drive what you want to keep).

The simplest thing would be to get a good external drive (like an OWC Mercury Elite Pro) and copy as much of your user data to the external drive as you can. For example, if you are using iPhoto, iMovie, Music, TV, etc. you can actually move those libraries to the external drive and use them there. They don't have to be on your internal drive. Similarly, other user data such as documents, spreadsheets, presentations, etc. can all be stored on an external drive; they do not need to be on your internal drive.

Also in the interest of improving performance & extending the usable life of your current iMac, I'd strongly encourage increasing RAM to 16GB. You can add 8GB for only about $20, giving you a total of 16GB.

rkaufmann87 wrote:

In addition, someone as disabled the security on your Mac. This is really bad!

Your EtreCheck report revealed:

Apple security disabled - Apple security software is disabled. This computer is at risk of malware infection.

The OP's Etrecheck report indicates that SIP is enabled & Gatekeeper is alive, not disabled. He/she has only disabled automatic & security updates, which can be re-enabled in System Preferences.

From the OP's Etrecheck report:

Security:

Gatekeeper: App Store and identified developers

System Integrity Protection: Enabled

Automatic Updates: Disabled

Security Updates: Disabled

Antivirus software: Malwarebytes

In general, your Etrecheck report doesn't indicate any overt problems.

Personally, I have never liked Zoom or Chrome as they both can consume loads of system resources. But if they are your apps of choice, you have to live with that.

I'd at least turn on security updates and suggest also enabling automatic updates.

What I think is going on is that you have a mechancal hard drive (HDD) that is formatted as APFS and is 80% full. APFS is not especially kind on HDDs to begin with; and at 80% full your system will certainly feel sluggish. Not much you can do about APFS but see what you can do to clean up your HDD, preferably reducing it below 50% full.

Delete these files & restart...

/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.p5sys.jump.connect.service.plist

~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.amazon.music.startup.plist

~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.amazon.music.plist

~ tilde indicates your home folder

Apple hid the Users' Library folders...

Method 1:

1 From the Finder, select the Go menu at top of the screen, and choose Go to Folder.

2 In the window that opens, enter ~/Library, and click Go.

Any change?

In addition, someone as disabled the security on your Mac. This is really bad!

Your EtreCheck report revealed:

Apple security disabled - Apple security software is disabled. This computer is at risk of malware infection.

To fix this please do the following:

Enable System Integrity Protection

To reenable SIP, do the following:

1. Restart your computer in Recovery mode.
2. Launch Terminal from the Utilities menu.
3. Run the command csrutil enable.
4. Restart your computer.

I'm glad that DriveDX did not report any errors. We can, at least, remove the Mac's internal drive from being the culprit for being faulty ... but it still is slow and not sure why at this point.

Clean up:

/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.p5sys.jump.connect.service.plist

/Applications/Jump Desktop Connect.app/Contents/MacOS/JumpConnect

Executable not found

~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.amazon.music.startup.plist

/Applications/Amazon Music.app/Contents/MacOS/Amazon Music

Executable not found

~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.amazon.music.plist

/Applications/Amazon Music.app/Contents/MacOS/Amazon Music Helper

Executable not found

The Clean up section has identified that there are three .plist files that should be deleted. These files are used to store user configurations for their respective apps. Those apps, according to the report, are no longer installed ... but their .plist files still are.

Also provided are the respective folder paths to where to find them. I highlighted them for your. You would then just enter each path in Finder > Go > Go to Folder...

For example, for the first one, enter: /Library/LaunchDaemons to access this file. Then just delete it. The next two are in the same folder, so just enter: ~/Library/LaunchAgents

It won't allow me to run a newer IOS version will it? Which means the further out of date my IOS is, the less functional all the apps and systems become... right?

That is correct.

It won't increase my macs internal RAM will it? (The 1TB of storage refers the the capacity of the SSD to store files, rather than the available RAM for operation correct?) But will it help free up some of the available RAM?

No, just upgrading the storage, does not directly affect the Mac's system RAM. Yes, that is correct. It will only provide more storage space for swapping apps out of RAM.

A quick search of new Imacs shows the 8GB of RAM is still pretty standard... How would purchasing a new Imac change my situation? I realize that 10 years is a pretty acceptable lifespan in terms of a technology product, but I don't want to plunk down $1500 on a new rig if this one still has some life in it, and more importantly if a new one wont't necessarily fix my issues.

Upgrading to a new Mac will solve a number of the issues you are currently experiencing with your Mac:

• You can order it with additional RAM. Again, I would suggest, at least, 16 GB, 32 GB may even be better.
• You can order it with a 1 TB (or larger) SSD for much faster internal storage.
• A new Mac can run the latest version of macOS ... currently Sonoma.
• A new Mac will be completely supported by Apple for security updates.

FWIW, I still have a few older Macs: a 2008 Mac Pro & a 2006 Mac mini. I keep them around to basically help folks here at this forum who also have these older Macs with their questions/issues. I did have two MacBook Pros (a 2010 & 2011 models), but they both finally "gave up the ghost recently, and I decided not to keep them running as it was both not cost-effective, and also because they posed more of a security risk.