What to do if my iMac 2019 is running slowly even after clearing storage?

—Completely remove BitDefender according to its developer's instructions. Removing it by another method risks leaving bits of its nastiness behind, like the trace of Creative Suite. It's possible the BitDefender is the sole source of your case of the "slows."

Look how much of your CPU is being gobbled up by that piece of fearware:

Top Processes Snapshot by CPU:

Process (count) CPU (Source - Location)

BDLDaemon 61.98 % (Bitdefender SRL) ⚠️

EtreCheckPro 20.14 % (Etresoft, Inc.)

WindowServer 7.42 % (Apple)

com.apple.WebKit.WebContent 6.46 % (Apple)

kernel_task 2.72 % (Apple)

—Your Fusion drive is working as a Fusion drive, but is well under nominal speeds:

Performance:

System Load: 2.44 (1 min ago) 2.26 (5 min ago) 2.26 (15 min ago)

Nominal I/O usage: 3.73 MB/s

File system: 25.71 seconds

Write speed: 465 MB/s

Read speed: 641 MB/s

That could be BitDefender interference. For your iMac and its specific Fusion config, those speeds should be closer to:

Write speed: 631 MB/s

Read speed: 1396 MB/s

(read from a 2019 iMac 21.5 with a health Fusion drive)

—RAM/Memory: IMHO, this part of the report does not show your Mac was starved for RAM a the time of the test.

Virtual Memory Information:

Physical RAM: 8 GB

Free RAM: 18 MB

Used RAM: 6.70 GB

Cached files: 1.28 GB

Available RAM: 1.30 GB

Swap Used: 117 MB

SWAP under about 3-400MB is low stress, and will reset to zero with a restart. Were your SWAP consistently about a gig or more, I'd lead the parade to the RAM installer for your. But yours was not out of range at test time.

Also, adding RAM to your iMac model requires almost a complete gutting of the computer just to access the two RAM slots. Some Apple Authorized Service Providers won't even attempt this, per Apple. A local provider who will tackle the job told me he has to charge two hours labor at US$75/hour minimum to upgrade RAM in that model. That at least another $150 or more on top fo the cost of RAM and the required reseal kit.

Were it my computer, I would save adding RAM until all else has failed. More RAM will not speed up an underperforming drive that is not full.

bold__16_ wrote:

This mac is controlled by our IT Team, but unfortunately they are not able to make this faster, i have uninstalled all unwanted apps and run EtreCheck one more time, i have attached the report.

Have a complete and current backup.

The issues have not changed, though the degree of degradation does appear to have progressed. A degradation pattern which would be fairly typical of a failing hard disk drive too, and DriveDx (mentioned above) will usually show that degradation in the SMART data when DriveDx is aimed specifically at the hard disk within the Fusion.

If DriveDx shows a failing hard disk, options are a repair and probably an SSD upgrade while the box is open (a repair which won’t be cheap on the iMac 21.5”), or a workaround migrating to and booting from external SSD storage, or replacement with a local spare Mac or with a newer Mac and that preferably a Mac with a more appropriate hardware configuration for your usage.

As additional for details, you did not (and well might not even be able to) remove BitDefender, and your IT team needs a better support escalation path for issues they are unable to address as sending an end-user (you) here to Apple Support Community (us) usually isn’t the best path. We just don’t know the details of your organization, environment, spares, policies, tooling, etc. Put differently, that Mac might be controlled by, but is not supported by IT. Not based on what info you’re providing here. That’s probably the biggest problem here, but one well outside our portfolio.

Hi,

Seems you run lots of applications such as Adobe Suits on 8GB iMac. You'd better upgrade Ram at Apple Authorized Service Provider or stop using memory hangry applications at the same time which could solve your issue.

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Based on the profiles shown, that's seemingly an IT managed Mac, running BitDefender end-point security, and with various details pre-configured by an IT group using those profiles.

IT probably doesn't want changes around BitDefender and some other settings, too.

Check with whoever is managing it about its performance.

That Mac is under-purchased what what is loaded. It has far too little memory, and the Fusion drive — which looks to be working okay, but will be heavily used due to the lack of memory — won't be helpful for moderate or heavier use of the sorts of apps installed.

Microsoft Office, AutoCAD, and Adobe CreativeCloud are not lightweight apps. Not if you're using those at all seriously.

The Intel i5 won't be all that helpful either, but I'd look first at adding memory and running diagnostics on and maybe then replacing the Fusion, and at the potential involvement of the endpoint security.

I'm not sure a service call to add memory and to swap the Fusion for an SSD (while the box is open) is an appropriate investment for an iMac 21.5" Intel i5 8 GB Fusion from 2019. Replacing that Mac with one with Apple silicon, more memory, and SSD storage, is probably a better path for that cash.

Check with IT though, as this looks like a managed system.

Getting worse.

Performance:

System Load: 2.76 (1 min ago) 2.45 (5 min ago) 2.29 (15 min ago)

Nominal I/O usage: 6.05 MB/s

File system: 26.14 seconds

Write speed: 280 MB/s ⚠️

Read speed: 1471 MB/s

and

Virtual Memory Information:

Physical RAM: 8 GB

Free RAM: 22 MB

Used RAM: 6.66 GB

Cached files: 1.32 GB

Available RAM: 1.34 GB

Swap Used: 2.19 GB ⚠️

We cannot effectively help with a managed computer. If your IT crew installed BitDefender, history teaches they will won't to admit it was a mistake.

💡You might suggest they let you change to a less invasive, Mac-friendly security package. MalwareBytes is the work product of a valued contributor here, was developed by a Mac user, and has a small resource footprint than that cr@p ported from Windows.

https://www.malwarebytes.com/mac

And yes, your Fusion drive could be failing with or without BitDefender's help.

+1...

EtreCheck is a FREE simple little diagnostic tool to display the important details of your system configuration and allow you to copy that information to the Clipboard. It is meant to be used with Apple Support Communities to help people help you with your Mac. It will not display any personal info. Give it Full Disk Access.

https://www.etrecheck.com/

Give etrecheck Full Disk Access before running.

Thanks for Old Toad’s etrecheck instructions…

Slow iMac 2017 - Apple Community

Hi,

Try to run Etrecheck and paste the result here.

https://www.etrecheck.com/en/index.html

You can use Drive DX to possibly get a better view of Drive health…

https://binaryfruit.com/drivedx

bold__16_ wrote:

This mac is controlled by our IT Team, ...

Then it is not yours.

That Mac is woefully misconfigured and will never run properly until your IT Team takes their stinking paws off of it. Rule 1 of Macs is don't install junk.

You have also managed to turn off the security on your computer, this is REALLY bad and this needs to be fixed ASAP. If you do not know how, pick up the phone and call AppleCare!! AppleCare Contact Info

Somebody did...

Applications/Utilities/Adobe Creative Cloud/ACC/Creative Cloud.app/Contents/MacOS/Creative Cloud --showwindow=false --onOSstartup=true