Hello everyone,
I have the 21.5 Retina 4k iMac 2017, it's been running slow after upgrading to the new OS, I am looking for advice to make it fast enough, I ran the Etrecher Pro please find the report below
Thanks in advance.
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
iMac 21.5″ 4K, macOS 13.6
The problem is that at the time of purchase the iMac you got was the slowest one Apple offered: 8GB RAM and a 5400 rpm hard drive. The drive may be failing by the very slow read and write numbers:
Write speed: 73 MB/s
Read speed: 70 MB/s
You will definitely see improvement with an external SSD that has a Carbon Copy Cloner clone of your boot drive on it and you boot and run from it.
This user tip describes how to clone your boot drive to an external SSD: Using Carbon Copy Cloner to Make a Bootable Clone of Intel Mac. I can get read and write seeds with a totally non-optimized setup of a bare SSD connected to my iMac by an USB-SATA adaptor of around 470 MB/s write and 510 GB/s read. With an optimized setup 2 w/external case and chip you can get around 3-4 times those speeds.
If you go the external SSD route I recommend you contact Customer Support at OWS (MacSales.com) and see which of their several units they recommend based on your Mac model and year, intended workflow and budget. OWC is considered the premier hardware supplier for Macs by most of the experienced contributors here in these forums.
The problem is that at the time of purchase the iMac you got was the slowest one Apple offered: 8GB RAM and a 5400 rpm hard drive. The drive may be failing by the very slow read and write numbers:
Write speed: 73 MB/s
Read speed: 70 MB/s
You will definitely see improvement with an external SSD that has a Carbon Copy Cloner clone of your boot drive on it and you boot and run from it.
This user tip describes how to clone your boot drive to an external SSD: Using Carbon Copy Cloner to Make a Bootable Clone of Intel Mac. I can get read and write seeds with a totally non-optimized setup of a bare SSD connected to my iMac by an USB-SATA adaptor of around 470 MB/s write and 510 GB/s read. With an optimized setup 2 w/external case and chip you can get around 3-4 times those speeds.
If you go the external SSD route I recommend you contact Customer Support at OWS (MacSales.com) and see which of their several units they recommend based on your Mac model and year, intended workflow and budget. OWC is considered the premier hardware supplier for Macs by most of the experienced contributors here in these forums.
Hey there!
Your USB 3-equipped Mac with a hard disk can have improved system performance by connecting to an external solid-state drive (also known as an SSD). An external SSD as a startup disk can give your Mac additional performance for system responsiveness, apps, startup, and more.
To learn more, see: Use an external SSD as your startup disk … - Apple Community.
Hope this helps!
-Jack
Shockingly slow HDD speeds...
Write speed: 63 MB/s
Read speed: 53 MB/s
Combined with...
Virtual Memory Information:
Physical RAM: 8 GB
Free RAM: 38 MB
First I'd Disable Google Drive for a test.
Next...
In Disk Utility>View, select Show all Devices, highlight the top left entry.
Run Disk First Aid on all items in the left panel, from top down.
Next...
You can use Drive DX to possibly get a better view of Drive health…
Thanks, an external boot SSD will certainly speed things up, but I don'tthinkit fixes the problem...
Some problem with Bluetooth‽
Thank you BDAqua, i did remove the Google Back application and ran the disk first aid, the performance is slightly better than the last test.
Dose this mean i need update to portable SSD?
here is the new report
I checked the Bluetooth, its working as expected.
Is there a path to make it faster?
I am trying to avoid the investing in the new device
I think we'd have to figure out why BT is crashing sometimes, & not enough info for me to figure out why/what.
+1⁴ 👍
Thank you Old Toad, Based on the feedback i might need to try the external SSD option, thanks for the suggestions and help, will keep this thread updated after I test with the SSD.
A secondary benefit of using an external SSD is that when you upgrade your Mac you can easily take it with you to use as an external storage device.
How do I combat a slow iMac 21.5" running Ventura
