late 2013 iMac with fusion drive

[morrib]

i recently installed High Sierra on my machine (3TB) and have found that it takes 6 to 7 minutes to boot up now. I have also noticed that my system has taken 855 GB on the hard drive. I have been patiently waiting for the upgrade to accommodate the fusion drive and thought that information contained on the update web site allowed me to put High Sierra my machine. At this point I am wondering were I should go with this, should I try to re-install Sierra, leave the new one on the machine and wait for the upgrade that will settle the fusion issue? Any thoughts?

 

[Fishrrman]

Sounds like you have runaway "processes" for the system to consume that much space.

Frankly, I'd "go back" to Low Sierra (assuming that was working well for you).

High Sierra is a "bag of hurt" for too many folks.

Also, if you're using Time Machine, I'd suggest you consider either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper instead. And then get rid of any "local backups" stored on the internal drive itself.

 

[morrib]

Thanks for your reply. I have been trying to go back to Sierra, but the computer will not accept or start the "command r" function when booting up. It takes 7 minutes to boot now as opposed to 20 seconds. Any thoughts.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"I have been trying to go back to Sierra, but the computer will not accept or start the "command r" function when booting up."

Important question:
Are you using a wireless keyboard?

If so, try a WIRED USB keyboard instead.
It can even be a "PC keyboard".
Just to "get going".

 

[morrib]

OP wrote:
"I have been trying to go back to Sierra, but the computer will not accept or start the "command r" function when booting up."

Important question:
Are you using a wireless keyboard?

If so, try a WIRED USB keyboard instead.
It can even be a "PC keyboard".
Just to "get going".

[doublepost=1527438788][/doublepost]I have been using a wired  keyboard. I am taking into the  Genius bar in Grand Rapids today. The  website said I could upgrade and it messed up my iMac, so they can fix it now.

 

[BLUEDOG314]

I would first try to run SMART utility on your machine to make sure the HDD part of the fusion drive is healthy. Further, I feel that an explanation deserves a sticky at this point, but there is nothing wrong with HS. The large "system" consumption is just for whatever reason Apple redefined what is classified as system. I have a touchbar 15" MBP with 1TB SSD, I did a complete erase and clean install of 10.13.4. I installed NO programs, just did a drag and drop of desktop, documents, downloads, and music, and let Photos resync about 30GB of pics. Came back an hour later when everything was indexed and it showed 280GB of "system". I could care less. The space used equals what I let sync and moved via drag and drop, plus the space for the OS. I have very close to 250GB of .mkv video files. I can only assume that since MacOS doesn't natively recognize them, it wants to put them as "system". This is not to say that my findings will be the same for everyone, or everyone has a non issue on their hands, but HS is by no means categorically broken because it is doing something that the user does not understand yet.