Yep, SSD is key, an it makes the same machine feel like a whole new computer.
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Big Sur you're so SLOW
- Thread starter jquest68
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You need more memory and an SSD system drive. So yes. If you can wait for M1 iMacs to be available.
Assuming you can get an thunderbolt external SSD that will by itself likely improve system performance.
Baring that, there are things that you can check which might affect your boot time. For example, if launchd starts a process during boot which tries to access the internet, and it has problems, you can get a massive slowdown. Things you can try:
1. Try doing a safe boot
Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support
To help determine whether an issue is caused by software that loads as your Mac starts up, you can start up your Mac in safe mode.
This clears out some things which might make a difference
2. Check the kernel extensions that are loaded. Apple/About This Mac/System Report/Extensions (under Software). Sort by "Obtained From". Anything not from Apple?
3. Check to see if you have any user launchdaemons or agents In Finder/Go
/Library/LaunchAgents
/Library/LaunchDaemons
~/Library/LaunchAgents (~ means your home directory)
Anything there?
I have the fusion drive. As noted, it was lightning fast to boot (13 seconds) on Catalina, and my apps were snappy and smooth, too.
I have nothing in the startup at all- now it takes 30 seconds to boot, and as noted the apps are slower.
I am disappointed that my Mac that I just bought new about a year ago took such a big step backwards performance wise already with an os upgrade...
I had a 2012 4-core i7 MacMini with a Fusion drive. When I upgraded to a 1TB Sandisk SSD I got much better performance. The Apple SSD was only 128 GB and operated slower than the Sandisk SSD. MacFusion=183 MBps vs 286 MBps for the dedicated 1TB SanDisk system SSD. Buy a 1TB SSD USB3 and strap it to the back. If it's still too slow then buy a new iMac when M1 iMacs are released and use the 1 TB SSD for something else.
I agree. I think it was a mistake for Apple to move to a new file system that pretty much requires fast SSD to perform as expected. While the benefits are good, there is no easy way to get older machines to play nice. It seems as though they made some allowances for the last flavor of 10.15, but optimized more for SSD on MacOS 11.
Assuming this is the case, your options are to live with the lag, roll back to the previous OS, or upgrade (either the storage or the entire Mac).
I am typing this on a 2014 MBP running OS 11 pretty darn good...but with SS storage.
Damn, I feel like I'm using a Windows computer. My Mac is so slow it's really pissing me off. With every update, my computer does not improve. I could open 2 things at one time and it feels like forever for one of them to open. For example; I open Safari and while that's preparing to open I click a folder to open and then it's a race to see who opens first.
It won't get better. You have a hard drive, and no OS newer than about 10.13 is going to run well.
It's actually not the OS, it is the file system. No need to get technical, but Apple has kicked HDs to the curb. New(er) Mac or new solid-state storage is the only solution.
Well...technically you could erase your HD and put a fresh install of 10.13 or older on it, running on HFS+ instead of APFS. But that would not be my choice.
I just timed my 2014 MBP with a 1TB SSD and it takes ~47 seconds from initial Apple logo appearance to the Log-in screen. The best upgrade you can do to an older Mac is an SSD.
Man I just installed the latest patch for Big Sur on my iMac thinking maybe Apple fixed the bugs and improved performance, but I was wrong- boot time is incrementally slower yet again- and now I’m seeing the beach ball a lot more when launching apps.
This iMac felt buttery smooth 14 months ago when I bought it and all the way up until this disappointing upgrade to Big Sur- now it feels like I’m back on my 7 year old Mac mini again!
I really wish I could revert back to Catalina- but then again why should I have to compromise like that on a very expensive Mac that’s only just over a year old?? This is just ridiculous...
With Catalina, my iMac with fusion drive was 13 seconds from initial Apple logo to login screen... now with the Big Sur upgrade I’m at 35 seconds... I’m sure an ssd upgrade would help, but this thing is barely over a year old- and was very fast before this ill-advised upgrade to Big Sur.
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Jquest:
Based on your posts, I think the best way for you to go would be to find a local computer shop with Mac experience, and ask about pricing for installing an internal NVME drive. If they know what they’re doing, it should be a straightforward process, it would replace the hard drive in your computer. You could ask them to “clone” your drive to the new drive, and set up the machine to run off the new drive.
The reason your computer is running slowly is all your information is on a hard drive, this is a relatively old technology, most computers have moved on to Solid State Drives, SSDs, which are essentially computer memory chips. They are much much faster, and can be more reliable as well.
If the solution I laid out seems too expensive, your other option would be to buy an external SSD, one that attaches to the thunderbolt 2 port on your computer. These are relatively hard to find now, since new machines have thunderbolt 3 or 4. If you can find one of those drives, you could copy all your data to the external drive, and run your machine from that drive.
Based on your posts, I think the best way for you to go would be to find a local computer shop with Mac experience, and ask about pricing for installing an internal NVME drive. If they know what they’re doing, it should be a straightforward process, it would replace the hard drive in your computer. You could ask them to “clone” your drive to the new drive, and set up the machine to run off the new drive.
The reason your computer is running slowly is all your information is on a hard drive, this is a relatively old technology, most computers have moved on to Solid State Drives, SSDs, which are essentially computer memory chips. They are much much faster, and can be more reliable as well.
If the solution I laid out seems too expensive, your other option would be to buy an external SSD, one that attaches to the thunderbolt 2 port on your computer. These are relatively hard to find now, since new machines have thunderbolt 3 or 4. If you can find one of those drives, you could copy all your data to the external drive, and run your machine from that drive.
That is a noticeable difference, you should downgrade back to Catalina. I seldom shut my MBP down so a ~20 second difference in boot times would not affect me in any meaningful way; BS doesnt feel slower in operation than Ca did on my old Mac so I'm not worried about that aspect of it.With Catalina, my iMac with fusion drive was 13 seconds from initial Apple logo to login screen... now with the Big Sur upgrade I’m at 35 seconds... I’m sure an ssd upgrade would help, but this thing is barely over a year old- and was very fast before this ill-advised upgrade to Big Sur.
Please, man, have you tried that solution? Most external enclosures are bus-powered. The adaptor you’re referring to does not work with bus-powered devices. The OP is looking for an inexpensive solution, a powered tb3 enclosure is not cheap.
Apple should have stopped selling HDs at the very latest when they announced OS 11...and realistically, they should have stopped when they planned 10.13 to use APFS.
But as they sold Macs with HDs (including Fusion Drives) way past that time, only folks that did their homework and knew that HDs were dead in the water—which is a tiny percentage of Mac users—would know and pay for special order Macs with SSD.
That means there are literally many, many thousands of 1-4 year old Macs that will suffer the same terrible slowness as their older brethren.
Fast storage is the only real solution. Internal or external works.
At work, we have several hundred older iMacs that have all been upgraded from HD to SSD. Even the oldest machines from 2013 have benefited greatly, running 10.15 well and still very usable.
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Anybody that chooses to downgrade, keep in mind that you have to:
1. Go all the way back to 10.13 to utilize HFS+ and get decent drive performance again, with a fairly easy install processe.
2. Jump through some hoops (read comments) to get the volume formated correctly to HFS+, and to keep it from being changed to APFS during the install.
3. Users report being able to clone 10.14 from an APFS volume to an HFS+ volume, as an alternative to installing. I also see reports that 10.14 will validate (and not allow) patches to be installed, so 10.14 must be fully updated and patched before cloning over to HFS+ volumes.
But as they sold Macs with HDs (including Fusion Drives) way past that time, only folks that did their homework and knew that HDs were dead in the water—which is a tiny percentage of Mac users—would know and pay for special order Macs with SSD.
That means there are literally many, many thousands of 1-4 year old Macs that will suffer the same terrible slowness as their older brethren.
Fast storage is the only real solution. Internal or external works.
At work, we have several hundred older iMacs that have all been upgraded from HD to SSD. Even the oldest machines from 2013 have benefited greatly, running 10.15 well and still very usable.
---------
Anybody that chooses to downgrade, keep in mind that you have to:
1. Go all the way back to 10.13 to utilize HFS+ and get decent drive performance again, with a fairly easy install processe.
2. Jump through some hoops (read comments) to get the volume formated correctly to HFS+, and to keep it from being changed to APFS during the install.
3. Users report being able to clone 10.14 from an APFS volume to an HFS+ volume, as an alternative to installing. I also see reports that 10.14 will validate (and not allow) patches to be installed, so 10.14 must be fully updated and patched before cloning over to HFS+ volumes.
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Yeah, once mine is booted up it’s not too terrible- but initial Apple launches too take a bit longer, with the spinning ball appearing more than it used to.
My iMac is running like a demon on 8GB of RAM but utilizing an external 500GB SSD drive. I just ignore the 1TB internal ( storage only ).
It's a very cheap solution to make the iMac sing
It's a very cheap solution to make the iMac sing
Sounds like you have SS storage. Otherwise, you would see SBBOD* quite a bit on 10.15 or later.
I am typing this on a '14 MBP with 16GB and SS storage running 11...rarely see SBBOD. Most frequently for about 5-10 seconds waking from sleep.
*Spinning Beach Ball Of Death
Good point. I do use the adapters, but they are not with bus powered devices. I have one bus powered TB3 SSD which works with some thunderbolt 3 ports but fails on others. The manufacturer told me that the ports were not supplying enough power and that is why the device did not work. So there is a risk if you have a bus powered device and want to use it with multiple devices even without an adapter.