Etrecheck Report Review - computer is too slow, don't understand etrecheck report findings

Before doing anything else, use the developers' instructions to remove that WD software. It has never been Mac-friendly, and even some WD techs have advised Mac users to not install it. You should have a Western Digital utilities folder, which should have a uninstaller.

That alone, after a restart, might help your Fusion drive speeds, which are already close to nominal speeds given the way Apple set up Fusion in the space constrained 21.5-inch models. Our File System score of ~19 seconds is good. Failing drives I've seen have posted File System values over 60 seconds.

It behooves you to see if getting rid of the WD interference helps before spending money, because the most common incarnations of the external SSD boot volume, an SATA 6G SSD in a USB3 enclosure, are slower than you have now, at about 400MB sec for both Reads and Writes. Thunderbolt externals will do very fast speeds —over 2500MB/sec— but cost more.

This isn’t quite the lowest-spec iMac sold, but it’s one very busy 28 GB SSD Fusion cache away from lowest.

It’s out of main memory. It’s using a hard disk drive heavily within its Fusion drive, too. And as for performance, hard disks are very slow.

In aggregate, whatever apps and data doesn’t fit in main memory gets pushed out to that slow hard disk, and then pulled back in from slow hard disk. And reduces what can be cached. And the 28 GB SSD cache within the Fusion can’t mask that activity.

The Microsoft 365 (Office)and related apps and the Google apps are not lightweight.

One option that can potentially help is switching to an external SSD, as upgrading the internal storage and adding main memory is a bigger project, and substantial investment in a five year old Mac that might not be worth the costs.

This is the lowest-spec iMac:

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

Your iMac is hitting that hard disk heavily, too.

This is how to boot an external SSD:

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

It’s also possible the hard disk drive is failing, too.

Apple Diagnostics can report hard errors, but can miss transient errors:

• Use Apple Diagnostics to test your Mac - Apple Support

There are other tools to check for any hard disk errors, but I’d start with the above Apple Diagnostics tool. And in the event that the hard disk is failing, the most likely response will still be to add and boot from an external SSD.

EtreCheck is not good at spotting a failing HDD in a Fusion drive, either.

You will want to get Time Machine or other backups going too, as the only way to mark data as being valuable is with backups:

• How to back up your Mac - Official Apple Support

And if this is failing, you’ll probably need to use that backup.

Under-purchased or overloaded with apps, depending on your preferred frame of reference.

I would start by checking the health of the internal HD on your computer and just as importantly testing the health of ALL the external HD's attached to the computer. Your computer uses a Fusion drive which you likely know is a combinaiton of a small SSD and a 5400 RPM (VERY VERY VERY SLOW) hard disk. You also use:

com.paragon-software.ntfs.loader.plist (Paragon Software GmbH - installed 2023-09-21)

which is a hack to share a HD with a PC and Mac. This can be problematic too!!

To test all of your drive's health download DriveDX and test the HD portion of your Fusion Drive, not the SSD and not the Fusion Drive just the HD by itself!!! Also use DriveDX to test all of the external HD's. If any of the drives have any errors that indicates the drive is failing and must be replaced. So test first and if any do have errors, let us know what drive(s) are affected and we can tell you what can/should be done.

Also, you bought a pretty lightweight iMac and are running professional grade apps, i.e. MS Office on it. These are RAM taxing and as MrHoffman noted your computer is out of RAM. This means it is time to upgrade to a newer Mac that has more RAM and to be completely honest any new Mac 2021 or later will be a HUGE upgrade in performance than your current device.

To use a car analogy, you bought a Ford F150 pickup truck and are hauling 10 tons of gravel everyday. It can do it but it's definitely not the right truck for the job.

2019 iMac so slow?

I purchase in 2013 a iMac in 2013,with Mountain Lion on the imac!

Later i upgrade to Mac os Mavericks.

I read a lot of Mac os,in 2010-to..... when i came from Windows,and i learn that a ,Time machine Back-up is necessary,to a Mac computer!

So i do a Time Machine Back-up on an external Harddrive,after i had purchase my first iMac!

Mr.Hoffmann,and ,Allan Jones, and R.Kaufmann87 ,are the experts on this Apple Community.

My english is not the best,but i hope you understand me?

Good Luck to you!