iMac is working very slow after upgrading to macOS Big Sur 11.7.10

In the "Top Processes Snapshot by CPU" section, that EtreCheck report shows

mds 10.20 % (Apple)

The man ("Unix manual") command says that "mds is the metadata server.  It serves all clients of the metadata APIs, including Spotlight. There are no configurations to mds, and users should not run mds manually."

On my Mac, right now, mds is using 0.0%. (It briefly went up to 0.2% before dropping back to 0.0%.). So I think that we can conclude that Spotlight was a busy little bee on your Mac when you generated this report.

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Your computer appears to have a 1 TB Fusion Drive with 128 GB of SSD storage. That drive is nearly full (1.04 TB of 1.12 TB TB used). If Spotlight is building a new reverse index (as I suspect), it is going to be reading (crawling through) just about every file stored on that drive. While it may be taking 10.20% of your CPU cycles, I suspect it is taking nearly all of the bandwidth to your drive that it can get. So anything else that needs to access the drive suffers.

Giving Spotlight time to finish its indexing should help with that. But even then, that disk is getting a little bit too close to full for comfort. You may want to see if you can move some files off to external drives.

Marcusbarnet wrote:

You are perfectly right! It is spotlight that is trying to re-indexing every single file.

In fact, till few minutes ago, I wasn't able to use the Spotlight search because nothing could be found.

Now, the indexing is completed and the system is running pretty well also on my main account!

I agree with you that I need to move the files from the Fusion drive because it is almost full!

That near-capacity state means the Fusion drive is working.

Fusion combines a big and inexpensive and exceedingly slow hard disk with a smaller and more expensive and much faster SSD into what appears to be one storage device.

Fusion can sprint, but performance falls off hard past that sprint.

Fusion performance drops to the (glacial) speed of the HDD whenever the SSD either doesn't have the data, or has to churn the data either to or from the HDD. if you're writing a lot of data to your Fusion, you'll be writing at the speed of the HDD, just as soon as the SSD approaches its capacity.

Put differently, Fusion uses that SSD as a cache. As long as what you need is either in that cache or can be written to that cache, it's pretty speedy. Just as soon as the data fills the cache and needs to be moved to the HDD, or the data isn't in the SSD cache and needs to be read from the HDD, the Fusion runs at HDD speeds. Which are slow.

In recent years, SSD prices have dropped substantially, and performance has massively increased. Which means HDDs and Fusion storage configurations disappeared from new Macs.

You need to get backups going. Best not be the next person to learn about data loss.

It will help us get a good idea of what is causing your problem if you provide a report of your system, that way we do not have to play 20 questions with you. The report we are requesting does NOT provide any personal information and is extremely safe to use. Please navigate towww.Etrecheck.com and download the free version of EtreCheck. Once you have you downloaded the app and installed it, please run the report and save it. This report will help us get a good idea what has been installed on your system and help us be able to diagnose what may be wrong.

When you have your report, you can attach it when you reply to this message and we can then review it and help you determine what is needed to get your system running well again. 

For instructions on how to download your EtreCheck report and attach it to your reply to this message please click How to use the Add Text Feature When Post… - Apple Community It is helpful to us if you download the report to your Deskt

Do you have any of the following third party apps installed on your Mac?

       •      Antivirus Apps

       •      Cleaning Apps

       •      Security Apps

       •      VPN Apps

       •      Maintenance Apps

You might want to leave the computer turned on for a couple of days and nights and see if things get better with time.

It is quite possible that Spotlight wants to build a new index of all of the files on your startup disk from scratch. If you have a mechanical hard drive, and Spotlight has decided to re-index everything on it, that can drag down the performance of your system for some time.

On such an old computer (By the way it is obsolete and considered vintage by Apple) there are bound to be issues. To be honest, it is way past time to retire it. However your EtreCheck report showed the following:

1. No Time Machine backup - Time Machine backup not found. This is a MAJOR problem that needs to be fixed ASAP. Operating any computer without a sound backup plan is a 100% guarantee of lost data. Think of it like this, if you knew your bank did not have any backups of your financial information would you use that bank, no of course you wouldn't. At the very least you should be using Time Machine ( Back up your Mac with Time Machine ) which requires an external HD. I recommend the OWC Mercury Elite Pro however any will do, you need one 2TB or larger. Every Mac for the past almost 20 years has had Time Machine pre-installed, all it requires is the External Hard Disk which are reasonably priced. What I am saying is the is NO reason to not backup your computer, please take care of this ASAP before you have lost all of your data!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2. Low disk space - This computer is running low on free hard drive space. You need a second External Hard Disk to move large libraries (typically photos, music and movies for most users) and then teach the computer to "learn" where the new libraries are located. This is VERY easy to do, Apple explains how for your Photos library, the same process is used for movies and music. Apple explains this in Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support. Because your HD is almost full, when it reaches capacity it will freeze and not be operable. This also needs to be handled ASAP and is part of the cause of the computer running very slow!
3. Apps crashing - There have been numerous app crashes. This can be caused by multiple uses, including out of date third party apps and more importantly a failing HD which I would not be surprised about with an 11 year old HD based computer!!! This is why you should STRONGLY be considering replacing your computer!. To test the HD, download DriveDX and test all the HDs. If any errors appear, that means a HD is failing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In short, you should be worried about your computer and yes, please get it replaced. I know that is not what you wanted to hear however it really is what needs to take place. Also, please fix backing up the computer and you can use the same External Hard Disk with the current machines replacement.

Good luck!

Marcusbarnet wrote:

this is my main mac and all my work is there!!!

If you aren't keeping Time Machine backups, I'm hoping that you are making backups in some other way – e.g., using Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper!, and/or a cloud-based backup service.

If your work is only on your Mac, it would take only one catastrophe for that work to be gone …

I runinnig 11.7.10, on a Old Vintage Macbook Pro from 2013.

"Big Mistake" for you"?

No Time Machine, for you but it have saving, my behind several times making, a Time machine on an External Back-up,on my imac, or Macbook´s.

Happy new Year to you MarcusBarnet.

Marcusbarnet wrote:

I have a iMac 5K 27 inches late 2014 with 8gb RAM. It worked pretty good and it was super fast till yesterday.

Since it's operating system was very old, I wasn't able to use Teams, Firefox, Chrome, Skype and so on anymore, I decided to upgrade to Big Sur 11.7.10.

Big mistake!

After the installation, the system is totally stuck, it needs several time to open the finder or the browser. It is not possible to use the system anymore! It is even not possible to restore the system if the screensaver is on because it gets stuck!

I tried to boot in safe mode, to scan the disk for errors, to clean the icons from the desktop, but nothing solved the problem.

I was thinking to upgrade the RAM, but checking activities panel, CPU and RAM do not seem to be overloaded.

What can I do to solve the problem? Should I downgrade the system?

Please help, this is my main mac and all my work is there!!!

Thank you

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

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Happy New Year, MarcusBarnet!

No Time Machine! You Said: "I not use Time Machine data"

You have your resond,on this issue............I presume?

Happy New Year!