I ran EtreCheck and am hoping that someone can help provide guidance on how to clean up / improve my computer's performance...debating if I should wipe the iMac clean or if there are other steps I should take before doing that.
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
iMac 27″, macOS 14.6
Also, uninstall the Trend Micro AV app you have installed. Locate the uninstall instructions that the developers provide and then follow to the letter. Next restart in Safe Mode and then restart normally and then execute the instructions from my first post beginning with Step #2!
Moving forward NEVER EVER install any of the following types of third party apps:
To keep your Mac secure and quick simply keep it up-to-date and restart it about 1x per week. It's kind of a small miracle your computer runs at all.
First, there is no reason to ever install or run any 3rd party "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus, VPN or security apps on your Mac. This documents describe what you need to know and do in order to protect your Mac: Effective defenses against malware and other threats - Apple Community and Recognize and avoid phishing messages, phony support calls, and other scams - Apple Support.
There are no known viruses, i.e. self propagating, for Macs. There are, however, adware and malware which require the user to install although unwittingly most of the time thru sneaky links, etc.
Anti Virus developers try to group all types as viruses into their ad campaigns of fear. They do a poor job of the detecting and isolating the adware and malware. Since there are no viruses these apps use up a lot of system resources searching for what is non-existent and adversely affect system and app performance.
There is one app, Malwarebytes, which was developed by a long time contributor to these forums and a highly respected member of the computer security community, that is designed solely to seek out adware and known malware and remove it. The free version is more than adequate for most users.
Unless you're using a true VPN tunnel, such as between you and your employer's, school's or bank's servers, they provide false security from a privacy standpoint. Read these two articles: Public VPN's are anything but private and Security Risks: The Dangers of Using Free VPNs (eccu.edu).
That being said I recommend you uninstall Cleaner One and Micro Tech according to the developers' instructions.
In addition, as rkaufmann87 has already posted out your should reboot your Mac often. I'm of the old school and shut it down every night. Being all solid state it doesn't take that long to boot up, from under 5 seconds for Silicon Macs to under 1 minute for all SSD Intel Macs.
You seem be to on the low side of free space:
Size: 1.03 TB
Free: 17.43 GB
Available: 64.06 GB
You would be hard pressed to run a system installer which requires a minimum of 45 GB of free space. That can also be a reason for the poor write speed your system is experiencing:
Write speed: 175 MB/s
Read speed: 787 MB/s
The free space may be situated in many different areas and the system has to search for space to save new documents.
To free up space you can follow this: T the files that you have control over are located in the Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Music and Movies folders. You can use either of these two free apps, GrandPerspective or OmniDiscSweeper, to find the largest files on your drive so you can determine if they can be deleted or moved to an external HD for use and/or storage.
It's recommended one keep a minimum of 100 GB of free space to facilitate optimal system and application performance.
Also, as rkaufmann87 has already pointed out, you should start using Time Machine for hourly backups. It should have an external drive that's 2-2 ½ times the size of the drive being backed up. Remember there are only two types of drives: those that have crashed and those that will. Be prepared.
These drive scores are far below expected performance of a Fusion drive as configured for a recent iMac 27:
Performance:
System Load: 2.33 (1 min ago) 2.10 (5 min ago) 1.99 (15 min ago)
Nominal I/O usage: 41.44 MB/s
File system: 24.87 seconds
Write speed: 175 MB/s
Read speed: 787 MB/s
Your Write speeds should be 600-900MB/sec based on EtreCheck reports for that and similar iMac models. Your Reads should be 1400-2000 MB/sec. Yours are nowhere close.
However, the low File system score of only 25 seconds does not indicate a drive health issue. "Sick" drives show File System scores over about 60 seconds, so....
Before doing anything else, read this Apple article:
How to fix a split Fusion Drive - Apple Support
and do the test shown at the beginning. Super easy to test.
Your Fusion drive system has two parts: a small, fast solid-state drive and a larger fast mech hard drive. They are linked by softwre to act and one. However, the two components can lose ther software link and you get scores like yours. Workgn properlly Fusion give significanlty fater date transfer than a pure mechanical system.
Within the last two weeks we handled a similar case where a user with the same model iMac had depressed speeds, but the EtreCheck drive description section did not hint that the drive was "split." The user did the test, found it was split, and used the article to restore the link. Speed returned, and the only cost to the owner was time.
So test before spending money.
PS: I saw a so-called "cleaning" app. 🤮
You have not restarted the computer in almost 5 months!!!!!
Just to add to what @rkaufmann87 has already outlined
The computer is about to run out of Free Space
Some major housekeeps is required on top of what has been detailed earlier
Low disk space - This computer is running critically low on free hard drive space.
disk0 - APPLE SSD SM0032L 28.00 GB (Solid State - TRIM: Yes)
disk1 - APPLE HDD ST1000DM003 1.00 TB (Mechanical - 7200 RPM)
Fusion Drives by there very nature ( Combo small SSD drive fused to a Mechanical 1 TB Hard Drive, are slow
Size: 1.03 TB
Free: 17.43 GB
Available: 64.06 GB
Use Storage Management:
You could also try to use an external TB boot drive and see if speed improves vs your internal Fusion drive. I have this on mine.
Reinstall the macOS if the previous suggestions did not work.
How can I improve my slow iMac 2019 performance?
