Speeding up 2013 iMac

Question

Level 1

4 points

Speeding up 2013 iMac

Are there any upgrades for 27 inch late 2013 iMac to help speed it up. I understand it's old, but it stills runs well, just slow. I do not wish to purchase a new machine at this time. I have attached an etrecheck for your information.

Etrecheck

iMac 27″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Oct 21, 2024 7:48 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

dialabrain

Level 10

124,451 points

Oct 21, 2024 8:19 AM in response to mrbill412

Certainly having CleanMyMac installed doesn't help. You should remove it. If you have Malwarebytes set to automatically scan you should disable it and only scan manually. Or uninstall it altogether. An 11 year old mechanical hard drive could be showing signs of age.

Reply

Answer 2

Oct 21, 2024 8:25 AM in response to mrbill412

You might consider using an external SSD as the startup drive on that old iMac.

It would certainly perform better than the internal HDD.

There is some great guidance for that in this user tip:

Use an external SSD as your startup disk … - Apple Community

This is Apple's guidance on the same subject:

Install macOS on an external storage device and use it as a startup disk - Apple Support

Reply

Answer 3

John Galt

Level 10

145,916 points

Oct 21, 2024 10:57 AM in response to mrbill412

"CleanMyMac" claims another victim.

Things like Drive "Genius" don't help either. If you want your Mac to run well, the only thing you have to do it let it. Rule 1 of Macs is don't install junk.

Erase the Mac. Using non-Apple "cleaning" scam products can result in insidious corruption that cannot be undone merely by removing it. Once the damage is done, it's done.

Erase the Mac and rebuild it from the ground up. It will save time — yours.

Reply