Slow running iMac from day one

[naebimoyo]

We bought a 1TB iMac in 2019. It's not a solid state hard drive, which I understand is supposed to be an issue.
It has been slow from day 1. Very disappointing performance. I've spoken to Apple support multiple times over the last 2 years, we've tried everything. The hardware has been reviewed and tested.
I've been told we need to upgrade it to a sold state hard drive, but I'm not impressed by that.
In my view, the computer has not performed as it should have from day one.

By slow, I mean it can take over a minute (I've timed it) to open System Preferences and for the spinning pizza of death to stop spinning!

Has anyone else experienced this issue?

 

[Mr.Blacky]

A new machine, apparently with no issues (reviewed and tested), needs over a minute to open "System Preferences"? Never heard anything like that.
Even my 2009 iMac isn't nearly as slow.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"It's not a solid state hard drive, which I understand is supposed to be an issue.
It has been slow from day 1. Very disappointing performance."

You defined the issue above.

There is no way to "fix" this. A slow drive will ALWAYS BE "a slow drive".

You can "work around it", however.

The 2019 has thunderbolt3/USB3.1 gen2 ports.

There are three pathways you can walk, each by using an external SSD:
1. USB3 SATA-based SSD. This will give you read speeds in the 420MBps range.

2. USB3.1 gen2. Get an "nvme" blade SSD and put it into a USB3.1 gen2 enclosure. This will give you read speeds in the 830MBps range.

3. Thunderbolt3 SSD (such as the Samsung X5). This will give you read speeds that are over 2,000MBps.

There are possible disadvantages to the tbolt3 drives -- they can run HOT, and if they get too hot, the drive speed will automatically be "throttled back".

A USB3.1 gen2 drive can also suffer from the heat/speed issues, but this seems to be less of an issue with them unless they are put into "heavy write" conditions. They do get warmer than an ordinary SATA-based SSD.

If you get a 1tb drive, you can just "clone over" the contents of the platter-based drive using either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper. BOTH are FREE to use for 30 days, so this will cost you nothing.

I predict that if you choose one of the above options, you will be VERY satisfied with the end result.

 

[Mr.Blacky]

OP wrote:
"It's not a solid state hard drive, which I understand is supposed to be an issue.
It has been slow from day 1. Very disappointing performance."

You provided the answer to the issue, and then the issue.

There is no way to "fix" this. A slow drive will ALWAYS BE "a slow drive".

You can "work around it", however.

The 2019 has thunderbolt3/USB3.1 gen2 ports.

There are three pathways you can walk, each by using an external SSD:
1. USB3 SATA-based SSD. This will give you read speeds in the 420MBps range.

2. USB3.1 gen2. Get an "nvme" blade SSD and put it into a USB3.1 gen2 enclosure. This will give you read speeds in the 830MBps range.

3. Thunderbolt3 SSD (such as the Samsung X5). This will give you read speeds that are over 2,000MBps.

There are possible disadvantages to the tbolt3 drives -- they can run HOT, and if they get too hot, the drive speed will automatically be "throttled back".

A USB3.1 gen2 drive can also suffer from the heat/speed issues, but this seems to be less of an issue with them unless they are put into "heavy write" conditions. They do get warmer than an ordinary SATA-based SSD.

If you get a 1tb drive, you can just "clone over" the contents of the platter-based drive using either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper. BOTH are FREE to use for 30 days, so this will cost you nothing.

I predict that if you choose one of the above options, you will be VERY satisfied with the end result.

I am no pro in any way, but I very much doubt an SSD will fix an "over one minute launch" for a small standard app ("System Preferences" in this case).

 

[Boyd01]

Apparently it's not that unusual, see this thread. Perhaps Big Sur is slower than older versions of MacOS with fusion drives?

I have a 1TB Fusion drive. The iMac doesn't run super fast in general - it averages around 50 seconds to get past the apple logo to enter my password, and then it averages 1 minute 20 seconds to load my desktop.

Office apps incredibly slow to start on Mac - Big Sur 11.2.3 - Please help!

Apologies if I'm in the wrong thread, I'm not sure where to post. My Office apps for Mac (especially Word and Outlook) take a very long time to open – sometimes it can take more than 10 minutes to open Outlook! This is only the case after having shut down the Mac. If I quit the Office app and...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[pmiles]

To be quite honest, the OS that shipped with the system is likely to be the best OS that will ever run on it being that it was written with said system in mind. As soon as you "upgrade" to a new OS, all bets are off as they are constantly tweaking the OS for the latest hardware, not your hardware... thus an upgrade may actually become a downgrade. It's why benchmark tests are suspect given that you can never actually test apples to apples given that new hardware comes with a new OS in most cases.

That being said, the performance of your Mac is suspect. If you take your machine, completely erase the drive and install the OS that shipped with the system, does it still perform slowly? And when I say slowly, as in slower than it should given that hardware/OS of the time.

It's amazing how something as a migration of software from one system to another can clog the system up. Backups that contain the very insidious slowdowns that you are attempting to free yourself of.

Have you done a complete clean install of your system (essentially returning it to factory specs), refrained from updating the OS, refrained from adding anything additional to the system, including peripheral devices or third party ram and then tested it for slowdowns? Making sure to disable such thing such as spot light that tend to run forever indexing the entire drive thereby altering the results.

If it is a slug in that state, then you have a lemon. If it is perky, then I suspect it is something being added after the fact that is adding molasses to the mix. 9 times out of 10 it's the latter that slows down the system the most.

Pretty sure the latest OS is not beneficial to any system it wasn't written for. And that would mean any system that didn't ship as a new model during its release. Just because Apple still sells older models doesn't mean they are meant to run the latest OS. In fact, Apple most assuredly slows down older hardware to make the newer stuff seem all that much faster by comparison. Again, you can't test apples to apples when the OS is a moving target.

 

[dcmaccam]

We bought a 1TB iMac in 2019. It's not a solid state hard drive, which I understand is supposed to be an issue.
It has been slow from day 1. Very disappointing performance. I've spoken to Apple support multiple times over the last 2 years, we've tried everything. The hardware has been reviewed and tested.
I've been told we need to upgrade it to a sold state hard drive, but I'm not impressed by that.
In my view, the computer has not performed as it should have from day one.

By slow, I mean it can take over a minute (I've timed it) to open System Preferences and for the spinning pizza of death to stop spinning!

Has anyone else experienced this issue?

How much memory do have installed? I have the exact same machine and I replaced the original 2x4Gb with 4x8Gb and found its performance Ok with Catalina. That said I installed a Samsung X5 Thunderbolt SSD as boot drive and a Lacie 1Tb external SSD as a data drive. I use my system for photography (Lightroom classic) and a little video editing.

 

[mlblacy]

We bought a 1TB iMac in 2019. It's not a solid state hard drive, which I understand is supposed to be an issue.
It has been slow from day 1. Very disappointing performance. I've spoken to Apple support multiple times over the last 2 years, we've tried everything. The hardware has been reviewed and tested.
I've been told we need to upgrade it to a sold state hard drive, but I'm not impressed by that.
In my view, the computer has not performed as it should have from day one.

By slow, I mean it can take over a minute (I've timed it) to open System Preferences and for the spinning pizza of death to stop spinning!

Has anyone else experienced this issue?

Exactly the same experience! We had issues getting it running from the first day onward. We erased the drive multiple times, tried setting up as new with no file/app migration, tried setting up new user accounts... and even took it back into Apple where they replaced the logic board and card drive. That was a year ago, and the issues still remain. Worse, the machine was literally months old and even Apple wouldn't give more than $125 for it as a trade in (now, it is only available for recycling).

EVERY single we do on the computer results in the rainbow wheel or nothing for 20-30 seconds. It replaced a 9 year old machine that was 100's of times faster. Apple support says to bring it in again, as apparently they won't swap it or give a partial credit until it has been in for 3 times on the same issue. I have had well over 25+ Apple computers over the years, and this thing was a dog since day one, and my worst customer service experience.

 

[mlblacy]

To be quite honest, the OS that shipped with the system is likely to be the best OS that will ever run on it being that it was written with said system in mind. As soon as you "upgrade" to a new OS, all bets are off as they are constantly tweaking the OS for the latest hardware, not your hardware... thus an upgrade may actually become a downgrade. It's why benchmark tests are suspect given that you can never actually test apples to apples given that new hardware comes with a new OS in most cases.

That being said, the performance of your Mac is suspect. If you take your machine, completely erase the drive and install the OS that shipped with the system, does it still perform slowly? And when I say slowly, as in slower than it should given that hardware/OS of the time.

It's amazing how something as a migration of software from one system to another can clog the system up. Backups that contain the very insidious slowdowns that you are attempting to free yourself of.

Have you done a complete clean install of your system (essentially returning it to factory specs), refrained from updating the OS, refrained from adding anything additional to the system, including peripheral devices or third party ram and then tested it for slowdowns? Making sure to disable such thing such as spot light that tend to run forever indexing the entire drive thereby altering the results.

If it is a slug in that state, then you have a lemon. If it is perky, then I suspect it is something being added after the fact that is adding molasses to the mix. 9 times out of 10 it's the latter that slows down the system the most.

Pretty sure the latest OS is not beneficial to any system it wasn't written for. And that would mean any system that didn't ship as a new model during its release. Just because Apple still sells older models doesn't mean they are meant to run the latest OS. In fact, Apple most assuredly slows down older hardware to make the newer stuff seem all that much faster by comparison. Again, you can't test apples to apples when the OS is a moving target.

We did multiple clean installs, multiple erase disks, killed off all peripherals, and it had factory ram. When it went into Apple for service 9 months ago, they replaced the logic board and hard drive. They suggested I take it back in again, which I did today. I ran a Malware Bytes scan, and Disk First aid before I went, and then did a restart. Restart literally took 53 minutes.

When I was at the Apple store, pulling up System Profiler/about this mac, took so long we almost forget we selected it. That is one of the worst parts of the crazy lag, you get convinced you did not initiate anything. I had run a trade in analysis on the Apple site and it was "recycle". They offered a trade in of around $434, plus discounted AppleCare, education discount, and free wireless AirPods. Was I thrilled? No, but it was better than zero, and better than wasting any more time on a dog. For all of the comments about the previous machine not being an SSD, the iMac replaced a 10 year old 27" iMac than ran circles around this one. There is no excuse for a newer computer running at "Syquest" drive speeds.

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

Go with what the fisho prescribed. Apple ought to have been ashamed of selling 21.5" models with a 5400 laptop slow as molasses hard drive just to compete price wise with el cheapo PC's.