Slow iMac - EtreCheck details provided

My husband has a iMac (Retina 4K, 21.5-inch, 2019) that is currently running Sonoma (we haven't moved to Sequoia yet on purpose - see further!). He uses it exclusively for surfing the web and listening to music, and keeping a few documents (like 3-page documents, nothing heavy). There are no programs eating up lots of space. I can't find anything else on it that is making it run SO slowly, but everything is slow - to boot up, to open browsers, to surf, to open iTunes. It's insanely slow. I wasn't sure if I should just downgrade to an older OS version or upgrade to Sequoia at this point - Ventura was at least a bit faster.


EtreCheck says that performance is "poor" but I don't personally know what to do to fix it based on the information provided. Hoping some gurus here had some advice? I've provided a snapshot of the report as well as a link to the entire report. Any advice is appreciated!!


Full EtreCheck Pro Report


Performance:

System Load: 2.03 (1 min ago) 2.03 (5 min ago) 2.06 (15 min ago)

Nominal I/O usage: 0.31 MB/s

File system: 63.99 seconds

Write speed: 38 MB/s

Read speed: 38 MB/s


CPU Usage Snapshot:

Type Overall

System: 5 %

User: 17 %

Idle: 78 %


Drives:

disk0 - APPLE HDD HTS541010A9E632 1.00 TB (Mechanical - 5400 RPM)

Internal SATA 3 Gigabit Serial ATA

disk0s1 - EFI (MS-DOS FAT32) [EFI] 210 MB

disk0s2 [APFS Container] 1000.00 GB

disk1 [APFS Virtual drive] 1000.00 GB (Shared by 6 volumes)

disk1s1 - Macintosh HD - Data (APFS) [APFS Virtual drive] (64.56 GB used)

disk1s2 - Preboot (APFS) [APFS Preboot] (3.98 GB used)

disk1s3 - Recovery (APFS) [Recovery] (1.24 GB used)

disk1s4 (APFS) [APFS Container] (13.19 GB used)

disk1s4s1 - Macintosh HD (APFS) [APFS Snapshot] (13.19 GB used)

disk1s5 - Update (APFS) (67 MB used)

disk1s6 - VM (APFS) [APFS VM] (1.07 GB used)


[Edited by Moderator]

iMac (2017 – 2020)

Posted on Jun 28, 2025 9:19 AM

Reply
6 replies
Sort By: 

Jul 1, 2025 8:39 AM in response to gbartlett25

Please post the complete EtreCheck report here so we can examine it for clues:

How to use the Add Text Feature When Posting an EtreCheck Report - Apple Community



And please run DriveDx (free trial period) as suggested by @Mac Jim ID and post the complete DriveDx text report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper on the forum editing toolbar.



Reply

Jun 29, 2025 9:21 AM in response to gbartlett25

As noted , you have an old, very slow mechanical HD. This can be corrected by using a much faster external SSD as your operating disk. 8 GB of RAM is insufficient. If your computer will allow it, replace and install at least 16 GB of RAM. Last, make sure that you clean out any apps you no longer need or use. (Apple's installed apps cannot be removed.)

Reply

Jun 28, 2025 9:46 AM in response to gbartlett25

It’s the 8 GB hard disk drive iMac.


It started out slow.


It only got slower.


Background: Why is my hard disk drive iMac so slow? - Apple Community


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


Whether the hard disk drive is failing is unclear (DriveDx may show that), but the external-SSD workaround linked above should avoid that case, too. Those numbers are low, but that doesn’t look too far out of line for an old 5400 RPM hard disk drive that’s busy covering for that inadequate 8 GB memory, and with the load from current macOS and Google apps.


Confirm you have complete and current backups, too. This on the chance your storage is failing.

Reply

Jun 29, 2025 9:32 AM in response to gbartlett25

As already noted, that 5400 rpm hard drive is very slow and could be failing.

Having 8GB of RAM may not be ideal, but it sure is enough for the light use you describe.


An easy way to get more from this mac is to get an external SSD and use that as your boot drive instead of the internal.


In order to know if there are other issues involved, please post the full Etrecheck report.

Use the "additional text" button below your message, and paste the report into the text box.

Reply

Jun 29, 2025 2:55 PM in response to gbartlett25

Just to be a bit more specific than "you have a slow mechanical HDD" - you have a slow, mechanical HDD report read and write speeds of 38 MB/s. The speeds you should expect for a healthy drive are 8-10x faster than what you are seeing.


I mention this because the HDD is likely on the verge of failing, and you may or may not have concerns about losing data if/when it does.


Given this is a 2019 iMac, you could replace the 3.5" HDD (and I think you could even find a conversion harness letting you use a 2.5" SATA SSD instead) or switch to an external SSD to boot from. There are even tools to simply clone the current drive to a new one. But there is diminishing returns and ROI on that. You may also want to consider just updating to a modern iMac.

Reply

Slow iMac - EtreCheck details provided

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.