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iMac Running Slow After SSD Upgrade

A

audiotek

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 27, 2015
26
0
I just upgraded my old iMac late-2009 and it's running beyond slow.

SSD is a Samsung 850 Evo 500GB

Specs;

MacOS Sierra 10.12.6
iMac 21.5 Late 2009
Processor 3..3Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory 8GB
Graphics ATI Radeon HD 4670 256

I've notices it's mostly on Chrome and when I play videos on YouTube the lag is jusy incredible. Usually I have to restart the iMac but after a few hours it starts all over again


What could be the issue?
 
Check Utilities - Activity Monitor and see if some application/process is using too much CPU, or memory.
You may have too many tabs open, or be connected to sites that are using too much memory and/CPU
Does the lag happen on other browsers?
 
Not sure what Spotlight reindex is!
[doublepost=1504584471][/doublepost]Right now it's working fine I just rebooted it. In 1 hour it will be unusable . So bad that I can't even close Chrome and do a reboot I have to hold down the button for it to shutdown. As I'm writing this the characters don't appear one by one, it lags then all the characters finally appear. Could it be in needs more RAMs?
 
Put a Crucial or Sandisk into it.

May solve the problems documented in reply 5 above.
 
How full is the drive? Is TRIM enabled? That drive, like many SSDs, will slow to a crawl with continued usage if it's near full, at least if TRIM is not enabled.

And by "slow to a crawl", I mean like an order of magnitude slower than a spinning hard drive.
 
I have a late 2009 iMac on which I replaced the optical drive with a 1tb Samsung 850 evo. It works fantastic. So, that's at least one person who hasn't had any issues.
 
The drive is brand new maybe a few gigs on it . I just enabled TRIM
 
EugW said:
How full is the drive? Is TRIM enabled? That drive, like many SSDs, will slow to a crawl with continued usage if it's near full, at least if TRIM is not enabled.

And by "slow to a crawl", I mean like an order of magnitude slower than a spinning hard drive.
Click to expand...

Trim would have no effect on video playback. Also, OP just installed the drive... highly unlikely TRIM is the issue here.
 
green86 said:
Trim would have no effect on video playback. Also, OP just installed the drive... highly unlikely TRIM is the issue here.
Click to expand...

The OP said his Samsung SSD was running slow. He also said he had just enabled TRIM. My advice was based on these facts, not his video playback issues.

Enabling TRIM and then trimming unused blocks has been shown to revive Samsung SSDs in the past in these forums.

In particular note that the OP of that thread was still seeing slow write speeds after enabling TRIM but before trimming the free space.

It may not help or be related at all but it's still a good process to go through.
 
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SaSaSushi said:
The OP said his Samsung SSD was running slow. He also said he had just enabled TRIM. My advice was based on these facts, not his video playback issues.

Enabling TRIM and then trimming unused blocks has been shown to revive Samsung SSDs in the past in these forums.

In particular note that the OP of that thread was still seeing slow write speeds after enabling TRIM but before trimming the free space.

It may not help or be related at all but it's still a good process to go through.
Click to expand...

I mean, that's not all the OP said, but sure. Use your anecdotal forum knowledge as facts. Not great a troubleshooting process though.

"In particular note"... THIS OP said nothing about write speeds. If THIS OP said anything about write speeds, I would have suggested TRIM as well. Which is just about the only thing TRIM effects. (You might want to read up on what TRIM does, rather then spewing buzzwords and fixes like a pseudo-tech)

I didn't say whether or not TRIM is good. Just that it is probably not that... especially in regards to video playback. Talk about a thin skin!!!!
 
green86 said:
I didn't say whether or not TRIM is good. Just that it is probably not that... especially in regards to video playback. Talk about a thin skin!!!!
Click to expand...

I think you need to take a deep breath and try to relax a little because you seem to be reading all sorts of nonexistent negativity towards you/your comments in my reply above.

Enabling TRIM is always a good idea with any SSD, Samsung or otherwise. It reduces write amplification and there is a common misperception that garbage collection is some sort of replacement for it.

I was simply offering the OP a suggestion based on the experiences of others in the past. Yes, slow video playback is not a symptom of an untrimmed drive but it is a good idea to trim free space on an SSD that was previously in use without TRIM enabled anyway and can increase overall performance. :)

(You might want to read up on what TRIM does, rather then spewing buzzwords and fixes like a pseudo-tech)
Click to expand...

For your future reference, this is a personal attack just so you can recognize one.

I don't consider myself a tech, pseudo or otherwise but I am quite familiar with the functionality of TRIM.
 
Last edited:
Fravin said:
This coding should work for all SSDs in the Mac? Doesn't need to specify which volume to run it?
Click to expand...

As typed that command runs File System Check (fsck) on the boot drive.

If you want to run it on a different drive from Single User Mode you would need to specify that drive in the command.

For example,

Code: 
fsck -fy /dev/disk1s1

Run

Code: 
diskutil list

to determine the proper drive identifier of the drive you want to run it on.
 
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Since you specifically said YouTube, Chrome and Core Duo my guess is the CPU is struggling with decoding the VP9 stream. Right click the video, click stats for nerds and you'll see.

Screen Shot 2017-09-09 at 9.53.20 AM.png


YouTube uses the codec VP9 in Chrome. VP9 is basically a means of video compression. Its complex and requires a lot of CPU (relatively speaking) to decode.

Try the same video in Safari. If its noticeably better that is likely your problem (your CPU isn't powerful/modern enough). Safari does not support the VP9 codec so YouTube videos are h264.

Screen Shot 2017-09-09 at 9.55.06 AM.png


This is an extension for Chrome is made specifically to force youtube to play h264. <--click

Once installed and relaunched checked Stats for nerds again to verify its not using VP9 and see if your experience improves.
 
Fravin said:
Actually it didn't worked.

The error message is the usage: fsck -[fyd...] [-[number]

o_O
Click to expand...

Syntax was incorrect, in this case I know your volume or path was incorrect. You didn't use SaSaSushi's example did you? Is TRIM enabled?

If you are just trying to run fsck on a single internal SSD that already has TRIM enabled just use "fsck -fy" in single user mode.

If not you'll need to use the correct volume/path. If you are a bit confused, in terminal type "diskutil list" (no quotes and it doesn't need single user mode) and post a screenshot (use "shift + command + 4" to screenshot to avoid capturing your name) and exactly what you are trying to run fsck on.

Although you'll probably just get an error do NOT use fsck on a mounted drive. This is why its important to boot into single user mode for the primary drive.
 
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