Dreadfully slow 2015 iMac: Help requested

[MandiMac]

Thanks! I feel rather silly that it may have just been the amount RAM. Back when I purchased it, 8 GB was a pretty good amount so I hadn’t really thought about that being the problem. that this takes care of it!

If it does, my next issue to tackle is Time Machine being stuck at the “preparing” screen, as it hasn’t properly ran since the end of February...

Let‘s assume Time Machine will run properly as well this time If the current backup is corrupt, it always worked for me if I just set up a new backup and let it do its work over the course of 20 hours. Good luck to you

 

[Fishrrman]

BillChase, I explained what was wrong in reply 11 of this thread.
You need to boot and run from an SSD.

Also, STOP USING Time Machine and look into either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.
Either one will serve you much better than TM.

 

[billchase2]

BillChase, I explained what was wrong in reply 11 of this thread.
You need to boot and run from an SSD.

Also, STOP USING Time Machine and look into either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.
Either one will serve you much better than TM.

Thanks for the information: yes, I saw your response. I started with adding more RAM to see how it would improve performance and it improved greatly! I will go as is for now, but will certainly consider the boot-from-SSD option if I find performance has not improved enough to meet my needs.

Can you explain why you recommend against Time Machine? Until now, I haven't had any issues and it's nice just having it baked into the OS.

 

[Fishrrman]

"Can you explain why you recommend against Time Machine?"

Because having been a member of this forum for 10 years now, I've seen many, many, many posts from users who -- in a "moment of extreme need" -- try to access their TM "backup" and.... CAN'T.

I've seen very, very FEW posts from folks who have created bootable cloned backups (using either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper) and can't access those. CCC and SD backups "just work", because you can mount them right "in the finder" as you would any other drive.

I also dislike the way TM creates continually-growing backups, just re-creating the same data over and over and over and over and over again. Not for me.

I prefer a backup that "looks like my drive looked" at the last moment I backed up.
That works well enough for me.

 

[nambuccaheadsau]

And for mine SD makes a backup identical to the internal drive of my iMac with everything easy to find. A weekly Smart Copy makes changes in about five minutes.