iMac Retina 5k 2019 Performance (EtreCheck Report Included)
I've been trying to figure out why my machine gets brought to a crawl for about 6 weeks and not making much progress. It doesn't happen all the time, or with specific apps, or only when I've got intense apps (Lightroom) running.
Should I reinstall macOS, have it serviced, or try something else? Details below...
By crawling, I mean:
- Bootup to login screen is fast but login to loaded desktop takes at least 5 minutes
- Frequent pinwheels and not-responding apps, but which apps are random and not reproducible (eg, Messages doesn't hang every time it's launched, just sometimes)
- Pinwheels occasionally present immediately after reboot, other times I can work for hours without issue
- Happened 3 times while writing this post -- even though this has been my active window and no new apps, tabs, etc. launched
Stuff:
- Specs: Intel 3.1 GHz 6-Core i5, Crucial 32 GB 2667 DDR4, Radeon Pro 575X 4 GB.
- Storage: 1.03 TB Fusion Drive, 137.76 GB available (of 849 GB)
- Memory pressure (32 GB) is green/low: 13.65 GB used (10.89 GB app, 2.76 GB wired), 10.39 GB cached, 0 bytes swap
- CPU pressure is low: 4.82% system, 1.93% user, 93.62% idle
- Disk: Reads in/sec 1,644, writes out/sec 35
- Neither memory or CPU pressure spikes during hangs
- Seems like disk writes are increased right before a pinwheel (it jumped to ~700 writes out/sec right before the last incident)
I upgraded the RAM ~2 years ago. It's been fine for 2 years.
Things I've tried:
- removing non-essential apps, from Dropbox to MalwareBytes
- booting into recovery and running disk repair (no issues found)
- running Apple Diagnostics (no errors/issues found)
- logging into a new user (pinwheel'd immediately on login)
- installed EtreCheck yesterday...
EtreCheck initially showed no major issues, but just started showing "hard drive too slow." That's been coming up consistently. Side note: Apple Support said they "did some googling" and saw that Etre Check was considered malware 😬
FWIW, I also ran Blackmagic Speed Test:
iMac 27″, macOS 12.5