Abysmal speed, tried all I can think of, help !

[Deschodt]

I bought my kid whatever 21" Imac was around 2 y ago. SAys 2019 Imac, 8G, 1Tb, it was alright for a year.
I checked it out the other day to set up some screentime permissions, and I was shocked at how abysmally bad it is right now...
Booting up takes 3 minutes - opening activity monitor takes 30 seconds - Opening a SysPrefs app, say "Screen time" takes about 2 minutes, and then doesn't even show the contents of the panel for another 2 minutes.. That kind of bad. Spinny ball city..Hell I just checked "about this mac" before someone asks, 2019 4K retina Imac, 8Gig mem - that took 30 seconds to open !

I haven't been a Mac-guru for a a long while now, but I've done the usual... Checked for runaway processes with high CPU % - none, high memory usage - not really... Uninstalled unneeded adobe crap... Turned out a lot of spotlight indexing.. Made sure no apps are starting up at boot time. Rebuilt permissions, verified the drive with the disk utility.. Downloaded AVG (took 30 minutes to install!!!) and ran a full virus scan, nothing.
In desperation, I booted it in recovery mode last night and reinstalled the OS (bigsur) clean, that took 90 minutes to even get to the point of installing it, and I slept during the rest ;-)

Anyway, it's still abysmal.. Only thing I have not done is boot from another drive, I'm not really setup for that and the disk util reported nothing bad. .. It's not a "let's clean the cache" situation, it's like the emergency brake is on, it's as fast as a Mac SE. My other kid has 2-3y older imac that still runs normally (albeit on Mavericks or something)...

Any idea what can cause the spinning ball on every action, menu drop, anything, that badly ? Could bigsur be bad for this 2019 device ? 8G of RAM is not a palace but it should be OK ,it sure was when we got the mac. Ironically the kid plays minecraft on it and once launched, that runs normally.. It's more like OS desktop level functions that are pathetic, say 20x slower than normal... I'm at a loss...

 

[JimmiebAZ]

Can’t help, but it sounds like my late 2013. I’ve done the same things with the exception of Big Sur as it’s not compatible with my machine. Will be watching to see responses.

 

[Clix Pix]

It's the molasses-slow way out of date spinner/platter hard-drive....

 

[BrianBaughn]

It's the molasses-slow way out of date spinner/platter hard-drive....

That and possibly a load of crap that may have been installed on it.

 

[Fishrrman]

The problem is the platter-based hard drive inside, which was slow from the get-go.
You CANNOT FIX THIS "as it is". It will be slow no matter what you do or try.

The "fix" is easy:
Connect an EXTERNAL USB3 SSD to the USBc port, and boot and run from the external drive.
It will almost certainly boot and run MUCH faster, and I predict the kid (and you) will be VERY pleased with the outcome.

Since you have USBc ports that support USB3.1 gen2, here's what I'd suggest:
- Get an "nvme" blade SSD, either 1tb or 512gb
- Get a USB3.1 gen2 enclosure (many different ones available)
- Put them together, some just snap together
- Format the drive to APFS (you didn't tell us which version of the OS you're using)

At this point, you could use either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to "clone" the contents of the internal drive to the SSD.
BOTH of these apps are FREE to download and use for 30 days (this costs you nothing to try).

Final thing is to set the startup disk preference pane so that the external SSD is recognized as "the new boot drive".

Now you have a fast drive from which to boot, and the internal is still usable, too.

 

[Deschodt]

It's the molasses-slow way out of date spinner/platter hard-drive....

Winner winner chicken dinner.. What annoys me is that nothing indicated the issue... no sounds, no R/W errors and Disk utility passed it as "fine". WTH ? Eventually I got my clue when trying to clone it in disk utility and only then did I see a cryptic error message about the disk (open seal or something?). The main issue was using the primary was so slow it made everything worse, so it was easier to start over clean.

I plugged in an SSD and put in a new image (instead of cloning), it offered to copy the user stuff over which used the old drive and was slow but successful - it's a rocket now... Internal HD sits disabled.
Fairly irritating that the drive can go bad that way without any obvious warnings, that disk util is clueless, and everything is so slow you can't even open system Preferences <3 min or troubleshoot without losing your calm. Thanks !!

 

[Clix Pix]

Unfortunately, too many buyers of the 21.5" iMac were eager to have this neat looking, slender desktop machine which was all-in-one so no extras needed, a machine which wouldn't take up a lot of space when placed wherever was most suited in the home environment, and the price was right for those who were looking at something to get for the kid(s) or as a second machine to have around at home...... It was right there in the Apple retail store, on their shelves in the back room ready for the customer to say, "I'll take it," and in short time a nicely boxed new machine was handed over to be transported to its new home......

IMHO Apple should have stopped a lot sooner than they did when it came to providing that dog-slow platter/spinner drive in the 21.5" iMac.....they didn't, though, and kept it on store shelves and people kept buying them..... In some instances customers were unaware of the possibility of upgrading and ordering a CTO/BTO (custom-built-to-order/Built-to-order) machine online. They were standing physically in the Apple store, they saw a machine right in front of them which looked like it would be perfect for their current situation and they bought it..... Apple sold lots of 21.5 iMacs that way. The problem is that while those platter/spinner drives may have been quite fine and capable of keeping apace as demands changed and increased several years ago, now in 2021 that ship has already sailed and actually had done so a while ago.

Glad to hear that you have now since figured out a way to circumvent the whole situation with the HDD provided with the machine and that now things are moving along a whole lot more speedily!

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

It was just a bad HDD. Had it been still good, OP's iMac would have been working fine and this thread wouldn't have been created.
Nothing to complains about Apple selling iMac with HDD.
When a HDD fails, just replace it with an SSD if you know how to do it, or simply connect a small external SSD to run.