Takes a long time to open apps, search within some apps, should be plenty of storage and RAM and I've removed potentially problematic startup items. Thought it might be a RAM issue, but removed and reseated the RAM. Too many new apps on an older computer? Etrecheck report attached.
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
iMac (2017 – 2020)
As rkaufmann87 suggested your hard drive is not performing up to what it should be:
Write speed: 277 MB/s
Follow his suggestions on using an external SSD to clone your drive to with Carbon Copy Cloner and use it to boot and run from.
I also support his recommendation of OWC's (MacSales.com) external SSD. You might call OWC's Customer Support and see what they recommend for your Mac model and year, work requirements and budget.
As rkaufmann87 suggested your hard drive is not performing up to what it should be:
Write speed: 277 MB/s
Follow his suggestions on using an external SSD to clone your drive to with Carbon Copy Cloner and use it to boot and run from.
I also support his recommendation of OWC's (MacSales.com) external SSD. You might call OWC's Customer Support and see what they recommend for your Mac model and year, work requirements and budget.
Got your EtreCheck report. Your computer has problems and I think it is a failing HD portion of your Fusion Drive. Please download the free version of DriveDX (Google it)and run a report on the HD, NOT THE FUSION DRIVE and NOT THE SSD on the HD!!!
If any errors appear then that indicates my hunch is correct and the HD is indeed failing and needs replacement. The easiest and least expensive fix is adding an external SSD and using that as your boot up drive. This is easy to do if you follow the instructions in Use an external SSD as your startup disk … - Apple Community. The SSD I recommend is the OWC (www.macsales.com) Envoy Pro SX.
If you do not feel comfortable doing this then simply take the computer to a third party Apple Authorized Service Provider and they will do it. DO NOT take it to an Apple Store, they will not do this for you.
Well they first thing you should do is reboot the computer, it's been almost 30 days since you have!
"System Software:
macOS Sonoma 14.5 (23F79)
Time since boot: About 29 days"
Also, you don't have a recent Time Machine backup so that needs to be done too.
If you suspect your HD (I would after all your computer'd HD is getting a bit long in the tooth) then run DriveDX on the HD (not the Fusion Drive, not the SSD, ONLY on the HD) and see if it reports any errors, if it does the HD is failing and needs to be removed from the equation.
P.S. - If your hard drive is failing, you may want to make backups now.
And you may want to make them to a NEW backup drive - not over top of your existing backups. There is the nightmare scenario where you are updating an existing backup, and the update fails because the failing hard drive causes things to hang half-way through. Then you've got a bad drive AND you have to worry about what shape the backup might have been left in.
Ross Novie1 wrote:
Thought it might be a RAM issue, but removed and reseated the RAM.
You have 40 GB of RAM – which is a lot.
You can check whether lack of RAM is the issue by running Activity Monitor, with the Memory tab open, while you are running a normal workload. Keep an eye on the color-coded (green/yellow/red) Memory Pressure graph – and on Swap Used. If you see lots of Yellows (RAM is marginal for what you are doing) or Reds (RAM is insufficient for what you are doing), or Swap Used is very high, that could be a signal that you don't have enough RAM.
If the Memory Pressure is Green and Swap Used is 0 or low, you don't have a "lack of RAM" problem.
Please show the full DriveDX report. AS OT is pointing out the HD is only operating at 277 MB/s which clearly shows it's pretty sick!
If you still aren't sold then please take the computer to your local Apple Authorized Service Provider and have them thoroughly test the computer, I think they will concur with us.
After making several adjustments (checking hard drive - fine; doing a TM backup), rebooted computer which took about 5 minutes - very slow - and now computer once again very slow to open applications after nothing being open. Updated Etrecheck report attached. Please advise - this is very frustrating and I'm pretty tech-aware of most things. Also, had previously tried rebooting into safe mode and every reboot takes a lot of time.
Thank you for the actionable steps. Will try them all.
Let us know what happens.
One other thing - once the computer is fully booted up, after a few minutes, the performance generally seems to improve and be functional... Able to do work on it... Mostly... Weird.
I ran that - shows no problems (that I can see). Attached.
Thank you both for the advice - I created a new external boot drive after a call with OWC and now everything seems back up to speed.
One final question - the apple support article about setting up an external drive then explains how to erase the old iMac HD. I've already removed the old iMac HD from spotlight indexing, but feel a little wary of erasing the old drive unless it helps in some way. Is there any advice you'd give on that? Is there any benefit to erasing it, or does it not make any difference?
My iMac takes a lot of time to open apps
