Mac Help?

[dufresne2011]

Hello All,



I’m looking for some advice. We have an iMac 27 inch (late 2013) with processor 3.2. GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5, Memory 8GB 1600 MHz DDR3, Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GT 755M 1 GB. We were running OS X 10.10: Yosemite on it for years with no problems. In the last few tears it started to slow down, primarily on my partner’s account side. We figured this was because she stored a LOT of photos on her side (she’s an amateur photographer). Eventually it got so slow, we decided to wipe it completely and upload a new IOS on it. We downloaded Catalina. We also purchased new Adobe suite software (photoshop, illustrator and Acrobat) and we hoped for the best. After using it now for a week, it’s slower than it was even before the wipe and it’s driving us nuts.


My question is, is there anything I can do about this? Or is it time to buy a new Mac?


All advice would be greatly received as I know feck all when it comes to this stuff.


Thanks!

 

[r6mile]

It sounds like you have an traditional spinning Hard Drive in your machine. New OS versions run absolutely horrible on these - you should get a USB3 external SSD like the Samsung T5 to use as your boot drive with Catalina. Trust me, you'll see an enormous difference. Please don't throw away your still very capable Mac!

You can still use the existing hard drive inside for either media storage, or a backup or whatever.

 

[velocityg4]

Besides the SSD which is a great upgrade. I'd also upgrade the RAM given the use of Photoshop and Illustrator. Since you should have 2x4GB in there now. I'd just add another 2x8GB. Since RAM is so cheap. You can get RAM through macsales.com or crucial.com. Really, there's a bunch of places you can buy RAM. They just make it easy to find the right RAM.

 

[fhopper]

my 2013 27" i7 still runs very well with 32GB RAM.

 

[dufresne2011]

This is fantastic advice r6mile, velocityg4 and fhopper. Thanks so much. It's great to think I might not have to get rid of this iMac as I really love it.

I really appreciate it!

 

[Fishrrman]

As others have mentioned, you can buy an EXTERNAL USB3 SSD, plug it in, and boot/run that way.

You didn't tell us WHAT KIND AND SIZE the old internal drive is. The 2013 iMacs had a run of problematic 3tb Seagate HDDs, and Apple even had a free replacement program for these (but that's ended by now).

If the internal is slow, but otherwise runs ok, then you could do fine with a 500gb or 1tb USB3 external SSD.
You can either buy one that's "ready to go", OR, buy a "bare" 2.5" SSD and an encosure like this:

SABRENT 2.5 Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool Free External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized for SSD, Support UASP SATA III] Black (EC-UASP)

SABRENT 2.5 Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool Free External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized for SSD, Support UASP SATA III] Black (EC-UASP)

tinyurl.com

(they just snap together)

Then erase/initialize it with disk utility.
For Catalina use APFS with GUID partition format.

Then you can either install a clean copy of the OS
or...
You could use CarbonCopyCloner (free to download and use for 30 days) to "clone over" your existing OS install.
You would have to "leave a few things behind" (like the huge photo library), but CCC makes this easy to do.