I have a 2017 27" iMac, running Ventura 13.6.7. 1TB storage (using 400GB) 16GB memory. The oerfiormance has started to degrade across all apps, but especially chrome and the MS Office suite. I use OneDrive for shared business docs and this crashes all the time.
I have run the Etrecheck report and I attach it here. Any advice greatfully received. I love my 27" screen!
iMac 27″ 5K, macOS 13.6
There are 2 MAJOR issues with your iMac. First is you have Trend Micro antivirus installed which may be contributing to the loss of performance. At best Trend Micro is absolutely worthless and does nothing to add any additional layer of security that Mac OS does not already possess. What third party AV apps do is the exact opposite of what users want, meaning:
and in return offers ZERO benefits to you or the data stored on your computer! Please locate the developers uninstall instructions and follow them to the letter. To keep your Mac secure simply keep Mac OS up-to-date and restart the computer about 1x per week, other than that please simply enjoy it.
The second major issue is I suspect the HD portion of your Fusion Drive may have problems which means it may be failing. To see if that hunch is correct, download the evaluation version of DriveDX and run it on ONLY the hard disk, not your Fusion Drive or the SSD portion of the Fusion Drive. If ANY errors appear then my hunch is correct and you need to take the HD out of the equation. What we would recommend at that point is rather than major internal surgery to simply get a good quality external SSD and use that as your startup drive. We can give you instructions on how to do this, it's really pretty easy assuming you can follow basic instruction. This option is less expensive than replacing the internal HD and extends the life of the computer too.
There are 2 MAJOR issues with your iMac. First is you have Trend Micro antivirus installed which may be contributing to the loss of performance. At best Trend Micro is absolutely worthless and does nothing to add any additional layer of security that Mac OS does not already possess. What third party AV apps do is the exact opposite of what users want, meaning:
and in return offers ZERO benefits to you or the data stored on your computer! Please locate the developers uninstall instructions and follow them to the letter. To keep your Mac secure simply keep Mac OS up-to-date and restart the computer about 1x per week, other than that please simply enjoy it.
The second major issue is I suspect the HD portion of your Fusion Drive may have problems which means it may be failing. To see if that hunch is correct, download the evaluation version of DriveDX and run it on ONLY the hard disk, not your Fusion Drive or the SSD portion of the Fusion Drive. If ANY errors appear then my hunch is correct and you need to take the HD out of the equation. What we would recommend at that point is rather than major internal surgery to simply get a good quality external SSD and use that as your startup drive. We can give you instructions on how to do this, it's really pretty easy assuming you can follow basic instruction. This option is less expensive than replacing the internal HD and extends the life of the computer too.
You're iMac has a Fusion Drive (a 32GB SSD & a 1T HDD), but for some reason it is split and only running on the slower HDD.
see > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_Drive
To regain the original Speed, Backup, Refuse the SSD and HDD, Reinstall the macOS and Migrate from the Backup.
see > How to fix a split Fusion Drive - Apple Support
Another way to gain even better Speed, is to get and use an external SSD as the startup disk.
see > Use an external SSD as your startup disk … - Apple Community
Great advice from rkaufmann87 so far.
Also...
Delete these files & restart...
~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.trendmicro.itis.uninstaller.plist
/Library/LaunchAgents/com.adobe.ARMDCHelper.cc24aef4a1b90ed56a725c38014c95072f92651fb65e1bf9c8e43c37a23d420d.plist
/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.citrix.ctxusbd.plist
/Library/LaunchAgents/com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.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.
Or…
Use the Command-Shift-period
— I agree with the others' diagnoses. Here is some info on the scale of your drive issue.
Your drive speed scores:
Performance:
System Load: 2.20 (1 min ago) 1.99 (5 min ago) 1.82 (15 min ago)
Nominal I/O usage: 2.28 MB/s
File system: 47.99 seconds
Write speed: 117 MB/s
Read speed: 122 MB/s
clearly indicate that you are running off the slower Fusion drive component alone, the 1TB mech hard drive. A properly working Fusion drive in your iMac model should show Writes between 600 and 900 MB/sec and Reads between 1300 and 2000MB/sec or more.
Example from running Etrecheck on another 2017 iMac 5K with exactly the same Fusion drive config as yours—except healthy:
Performance:
System Load: 0.77 (1 min ago) 0.65 (5 min ago) 0.80 (15 min ago)
Nominal I/O speed: 0.58 MB/s
File system: 35.69 seconds
Write speed: 766 MB/s
Read speed: 2687 MB/s
That is a massive difference. There is no "slow" there.
— I also see a useless "cleaning" app:
[Running] MacCleaner Pro Helper (Nektony LLC - installed 2024-06-26)
Modern Login Item
/Applications/MacCleaner 3 Pro/MacCleaner Pro 3.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/MacCleaner Pro Helper.app
As Macs, catlike, have cleaned themselves for over 20 years, to me that makes any outside apps that claim to clean, tune up, optimize. or otherwise polish your Mac scams. They seriously interfere with elegant self-maintenance routines you paid Apple to build into the system. Don't fall for fear marketing.
— Chrome is not playing well with others:
Top Processes Snapshot by Memory:
Process (count) RAM usage (Source - Location)
Google Chrome Helper (Renderer) (21) 3.02 GB (Google LLC)
Oh yes, for sure, plus I'd replace Crome.
Might try this, it's Chrome Browser without google & without Ads...
This is interesting. Chrome has got progressively worse - I assumed it was the constant updates making mischief.
MacCleaner has gone. Trend Micro gone too. Do you think the mentioned Fusion Drive issues and solutions will improve the drive speed scores?
Many thanks, I've done this and have noticed some imporovement
Many thanks, Trend Micro has gone (along with my $$$) and things have improved in some areas. I'll be attending to the Fusion drive over the weekend.
iMac running slow - especially opening apps
