I REALLY need help with my 2011 iMac 27"

[hurst01]

First of all, I will say that I am computer illiterate. I have a mid 2011 iMac 27" that I got from my Son about 8 years ago. About 2 years ago I upgraded the OS to high Sierra 10.13.6. Ever since then it has become painfully slow, so much that it drives me out of my mind. I am on my computer a lot and half the time I am either restarting Safari or restarting the iMac. The spinning ball is driving me nuts and I have tried everything I can think of. It used to wake up almost instantly but now takes well over 10 seconds to show any signs of life.

Anything I have learned on the computer I have had to learn on my own. I am amazed that I do as well as I do but I am still dumb as a box of rocks on it. I am a Disabled Veteran from a long time before most on this forum were ever born.

I have tried everything I can think of. First, I installed PC Matic for Macs, then I installed Cleanmymac. In my searches I read that not enough memory can cause this so I installed 32GB and it didn't help. I have 747GB storage left on my HD. I opened Activity Monitor to see if anything was pulling me down. It comes and goes. Yesterday I opened it to see the energy level on Safari was 107.7. I don't know if this is percentage or what. I refreshed the page and it dropped to around 2.3.

I read a bit back that a complete install of the OS may be necessary but I really don't know how to do this. I read that the system should be backed up. I have a 2 TB external HD, but then again I am not sure how to use it. Since my Son gave me this iMac he has moved across the nation three times and I doubt seriously that he still has any of the original OS or programs for it. All of this started immediately after I downloaded the High Sierra OS. I have read about resetting the PRAM and the VRAM but I might as well ask my dog to do it.

Don't get me wrong, I used to be able to be a bit more technical, but that was three heart attacks, three open heart surgeries and two strokes ago and things don't click so well anymore. I was a Radar/Radio Repairman/Communications Chief while in the Army in the mid-60s but this comes much harder now.

I am 75 years old and with all the health problems I have it is not a reasonable alternative that I buy a new computer. I couldn't afford it anyway on military disability. I am even getting messages when trying to open web sites that I have to update my browser. I can't update Safari because it comes with the OS. I can still do some things like change batteries, track pads, hard drives, memory and such, but I am wondering if there is anything I can do to update the computer so I gan get rid of High Sierra? Someone suggested that I might change out the HDD to SSD, would that help?

Thanks for any information anyone can give.

 

[glenthompson]

The slow spinning hard drive is your bottleneck. I have some Macs of that vintage with SSDs that perform quite well. Your model can have one installed internally but not cost effective due to the labor involved. Best bet is to get an external SSD with USB-C and use a Thunderbolt 3 to 2 adapter. Install MacOS on the SSD and migrate your apps and documents over to the SSD.

 

[Phil77354]

Well, for someone who is 'computer illiterate' you are pretty familiar with the iMac and Mac OS. I think you can get through this with some guidance!

I'm going to see if we can attract some attention to your thread. There are folks on the forum here who are more able than I to give you the best steps to get this 2011 iMac into better working order.

Forum moderators: @chown33 , @Weaselboy , @arn - if one of you could help out, I'm thinking that this thread would be better placed in the iMac forum where others who use these vintage iMacs are spending more time and will be more likely to notice the discussion and join in and help out.

Also asking if one of the others I've noticed here on these forums could offer their suggestions: @Apple_Robert , @Fishrrman come to mind.

To your specific points here are some thoughts:

- I wouldn't expect much from PC Matic for Macs or Cleanmymac, but maybe I'm too pessimistic
- backup is easy if you have an external drive attached - open Time Machine in your system preferences and select the disk you want to back up to. You should get a back up completed before doing any further system installs or re-installs
- you don't need any discs or anything to install the OS or re-establish an OS, you'll be able to download the appropriate OS version, I'll leave that to others to explain since I'm not an expert in doing that
- Safari will update to the most recent version available / compatible with your OS version, so I think first step is to get that established in the best way
- @glenthompson suggestion on booting from external hard drive is probably a good one. One of the links below may help with that
- no harm in resetting VRAM etc - see links below for instructions - but I don't think they will make a huge difference (again maybe I'm too pessimistic)
- note that the Apple support page has many helpful guides - use the search function to see what you can come up with, as I just did for the links below

Hope this is of some help, and that one or more of the others mentioned earlier will also step in and assist.

Reset the SMC of your Mac - Apple Support

The SMC is responsible for managing power on your Mac. Resetting it can resolve certain uncommon issues related to power or thermal management.

support.apple.com

Reset NVRAM on your Mac - Apple Support

If one or more settings stored in NVRAM don't work as expected on an Intel-based Mac, resetting NVRAM might help.

support.apple.com

How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support

You can use macOS Recovery, your computer's built-in recovery system, to reinstall the Mac operating system. Reinstalling macOS doesn't remove your personal data.

support.apple.com

Use Apple Diagnostics to test your Mac - Apple Support

Apple Diagnostics, formerly known as Apple Hardware Test, can check your Mac for hardware issues.

support.apple.com

Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support

You can use a USB flash drive or other secondary volume as a startup disk from which to install the Mac operating system. These steps are primarily for system administrators and other experienced users who are familiar with entering commands in Terminal.

support.apple.com

 

[Apple_Robert]

Thank you for service and sacrifice for our Republic.

Given the age of the Mac and how long you have been using it, a couple of things come to mind...

A) Your HDD may be coming to the end of it's life, it is the original drive. If you have important files on your Mac, I strongly encourage you to back those files up to an external drive. Even if the current internal drive is physically fine, you don't want to risk losing data you can't easily get back. *

B) You have a lot of unnecessary programs loaded and or running in the background that are putting more load on the Mac than really necessary.


Priority One

* I suggest using at least 2 backup programs to backup your Mac. You can use it free for 30 days, which is more than enough time to back up your important files.

https://bombich.com Carbon Copy Cloner (You can use it free for 30 days, which is more than enough time to back up your important files).

SuperDuper! is another good backup app

SuperDuper!

You could also use TimeMachine which comes with MacOS to backup your Mac, although it could take several days given the older HDD.

@glenthompson shared very good advice about using an external drive for the operating system and other apps and files that are routinely needed. I am guessing your Internal HDD is 1TB. If that is correct, you haven't used very much of the current HDD and buying an external SSD would go along way in making your use of the Mac enjoyable again.You can get an external SSD at a very good price which would work much better than the old HDD currently in the Mac.
Even if the current internal HDD is fine, I wouldn't reload it with a fresh install of MacOS. You will end up getting frustrated again, in my opinion.

Once you have your important files backed up to 2 different drives for safety reasons, I would start looking on Amazon for an SSD that is within your budget. The following link is an SSD I highly recommend from personal use over the years.

SAMSUNG SSD T7 Portable External Solid State Drive 1TB, Up to USB 3.2 Gen 2, Reliable Storage for Gaming, Students, Professionals, MU-PC1T0T/AM, Gray

The Samsung Portable SSD T7 is the next standard in external storage. With transfer rates up to 9.5x faster than traditional external hard drives and read/ write speeds up to 1050 MB/s1, you can move massive files around with unparalleled ease and fluidity. Its sleek, shock-resistant design is un...

www.amazon.com

Once you have the new SSD with MacOS installed, I do not recommend loading CleanMyMac, PC Matic or other similar apps again. They do more harm than good and really aren't needed on a Mac. We can provide you with simple steps moving forward to help you keep your Mac in lean, mean condition.

I apologize for not going into specifics about installing MacOS on an external drive but, I have other things I need to attend to at the moment. I will follow the thread and respond again when I am free. I hope I was able to be of some help.

Thank you @Phil77354 for the heads up. Much appreciated.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Someone suggested that I might change out the HDD to SSD, would that help?

Thanks for any information anyone can give.

Your HDD is not slow, if fact it's pretty fast with 32GB RAM you have installed. You have used it for 8 years and the issue only occurred recently.
I guess the issue is a failing HDD, of heavily fragmented (data scattered on the disk surface) HDD.

The best solution is replace the HDD with an SSD.
But before doing that, you can try the external SSD solution first.
How:
Buy an external SSD (USB enclosure + 2.5" SSD) like something in the link below:

SABRENT 2.5 Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool Free Clear External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized for SSD, Supports UASP SATA III] (EC-OCUB)

SABRENT 2.5 Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool Free Clear External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized for SSD, Supports UASP SATA III] (EC-OCUB)

www.amazon.com

SAMSUNG 870 EVO SATA SSD 500GB 2.5” Internal Solid State Drive, Upgrade PC or Laptop Memory and Storage for IT Pros, Creators, Everyday Users, MZ-77E500B/AM, Black

>The latest 870 EVO has indisputable performance, reliability and compatibility built upon Samsung's pioneering technology. Enjoy professional-level SSD performance which maximizes the SATA interface limit to 560/530 MB/s sequential speeds*, accelerates write speeds and maintains long-term high p...

www.amazon.com

And plug it to the USB port at the back of your iMac.

Then install High Sierra on it, or clone your internal HDD to it like others have suggested.
You can still use Safari as your main web browser, but you can also install another web browser to compare (Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Brave, Firefox, etc).

After running High Sierra on the USB SSD enclosure for a while and confirm it run smoothly, you can consider the HDD replacement, or just run it externally.

 

[hurst01]

I really appreciate the responses. I purchased a new external HD about two years ago to download moves from a failing Dish receiver but it failed before I could do anything with it. The external HD is a name brand and is at least 1TB, possibly 2. I haven't seen it for about three months. My wife is a neat-freak and if she sees anything laying around for more than a couple of days she does something with it. Problem is, she doesn't know what it is and when I ask her about it she doesn't know where it is because she doesn't know what it is. Usually I have to buy it again and worry about finding it later.
I thought Time Machine was an external device, is it not? Seems I remember buying something called Time Machine for my Son about 10 yers ago.
This iMac was lightening fast until I upgraded to OS High Sierra about two years ago. Now it takes forever for it to wake up, and then I usually have to restart it, sometimes a couple of times before the spinning ball will stop. I thought maybe installing the 32GB of RAM would help but it hasn't. Right now, the activity monitor is showing between around 2.1 to 20 on the energy impact for Safari with average 2.49 and the computer seems to be operating normal except it is hard to wake up. Strange that the problems started immediately when I installed the High Sierra.
It is around 0200 in the morning and I need sleep badly. I will ret to look for the external drive and see what happens.
I love Macs, I can just tell it what I want and it does it. I don't even know how to turn a PC on.

 

[California]

It's your hdd. It's 11 years old. All hard disk drives should be replaced at least every three years. Suck it up and pay to open it up and have an SSD put in it as well as possibly a 4TB second drive while you have it open. As you should know by now, 2011 iMacs have two internal slots for drives. If it were my iMac with the DVD drive slot, I would upgrade it to a blu ray at the same time you are upgrading the drives.

 

[Zendokan]

Hello hurst01,

I'm still using an iMac 27", Mid 2010 with a 2,8 GHz i5 and only 12 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 and the 1 TB HD. Still completely original, except I added 2x4GB Kingston RAM to the 2x2GB Apple RAM in 2010.
It's running macOS High Sierra 10.13.6

Except taking forever to start up (3 a 4 minutes), it still runs quiet good.
macOS High Sierra slows down older iMacs when starting up (3 a 4 minutes) and when opening applications (30 seconds), but once started up or opened it works at normal speeds

I'm not always running the most up-to-date software programs:
- iWorks 2019 (Numbers 6.1, Keynote 9.1, Pages 8.1)
- MS Office for Mac 2011
- Pixelmator 3.8.6 (2019)
- XCode 10.1 (2018)
Gimp 2.10.12 (2018)
But the rest of my software (VSCode and a lot opensource tools) has been updated in 2021 and 2022.

Now I don't have any disk clean up programs or an antivirus program or any other 3rd party aid tools running in the background. Never needed them on a Mac and I only shutdown my Imac on saturday and restart it on Monday, rest of the week it stays on.

I would say that you clean all the additional aid programs that are running in the background up, especially if they are from 3rd party suppliers and maybe do a check on your hdd if that also a problem.

 

[Ruggy]

You say you installed 32gb of RAM? Did you by any chance change this at the same time as the problem started?
If so, the problem could be the RAM because if my memory serves the 2011 iMac should only be able to take 16gb.
If you've got the wrong RAM and it's not compatible for whatever reason, then it will be glacial because you effectively have none at all no matter how much is installed.
You'd be better with 16gb matched than 32Gb if the machine can't take it or two of them are not compatible.
The problem may be solved by taking 2 sticks out or similar depending on what config you have.
I suggest you check exactly how much your machine is able to take and report back what you bought, what sticks, what clock speed etc.
There are people here who would give you chapter and verse on RAM (not me)
Of course, if it worked for ages on that RAM then it shouldn't be that.
Still, click on the Apple symbol top left go to 'About this Mac' then hit the button 'System Report' and scroll down until you see 'Memory' and see what it says there. It's very likely it won't say 32.

Otherwise, I agree with the others it's likely to be the hard drive.

 

[Zendokan]

You say you installed 32gb of RAM? Did you by any chance change this at the same time as the problem started?
If so, the problem could be the RAM because if my memory serves the 2011 iMac should only be able to take 16gb.

Depends from the processor in the 27" model:

Late 2009 to mid 2010 with the i3 processor had a limited till 16 GB.
Late 2009 till late 2011 with an i5 or i7 processor support 32 GB, but Apple said in that period that the max was 16 Gb.From Mid 2012 till Mid 2015 all the i-processors support 32 GB and Apple confirms this amount.

 

[Fishrrman]

What follows is my opinion only.

At 11 years old, it's probably time to think about a replacement.

I'd suggest an Apple-refurbished 2018 Mac Mini, and a 3rd-party display of your choice (even a used one). The Minis are very sturdy "little boxes".

Mention it to the son, perhaps he'll "help out" a bit.

Anything you buy should have either 16gb of RAM, or be easily upgradeable to that (such as a 27" iMac, 24" iMacs are not).

 

[hurst01]

I just installed the 32 GB of RAM about 4 days ago. it is DDR3 1333Mhz PC3 10600 Non-ECC SO-DIMM. I firstly ordered DIMM by mistake and the supplier exchanged it for me. I upgraded the RAM because of it being so slow and not wanting to wake up. I can't replace the computer because of the expense.

This iMac has a 3.4 Ghz Intel Core i7 Processor with 1 TB SATA Disk. I still have 747 GB available on the Disk. It has AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2048 MB Graphics. My Son is an Architect and ordered this one pretty well loaded. It had two 27" monitors. When he gave me this computer he kept one of the monitors.

I have another iMac sitting here beside me, a 2007 20" with ElCapitan. It is very responsive when the ball isn't spinning. This one was lightening fast before I installed the High Sierra. I thought about going back to the old OS but I don't know if it is still on this computer or how to go back to it.

It has oodles of programs that he used while he used this one. I thought about deleting some of them but it worked flawlessly with them until the High Sierra. It seems to do great and all of a sudden I get the spinning ball and have to restart it. That is another thing, it takes ten times longer to start/restart than it did before the High Sierra. Now, I am getting a message saying "Safari can't open the page", or "You need to update your bowser because it is no longer supported"

I guess I will look for a 1 TB SSD. I am confused as to why I see the Energy level on the Activity Monitor go to 107.7. Is that in percentages? The last time I saw that I was able to reload the page and it dropped to around 4 without closing anything out.

Question.. If you have a bug somewhere and back everything up on an external HD, doesn't it save the bug also? If so, when you put everything on a new HD or SSD, don't you reload the bug? Also, what kind of SSD should I look for?

 

[Ruggy]

Depends from the processor in the 27" model:

Late 2009 to mid 2010 with the i3 processor had a limited till 16 GB.
Late 2009 till late 2011 with an i5 or i7 processor support 32 GB, but Apple said in that period that the max was 16 Gb.From Mid 2012 till Mid 2015 all the i-processors support 32 GB and Apple confirms this amount.

Ok. Wasn't sure. So that's ok then.

 

[Phil77354]

Re activity monitor. You mention that you're getting a high energy level reading for Safari - what websites do you have open when that is happening, and how many tabs do you typically have open when you are using Safari? You will find that some webpages use considerably more computer resources than others.

I am not sure what exactly the energy level reading of 107.7 means. Apple's own support information does not explain that (see link below). However if you are using Activity Monitor and find it helpful in diagnosing computer issues, then the guide below has lots of information:

Activity Monitor User Guide for Mac

Learn how to use Activity Monitor on your Mac to view information about how apps are using the processor, disks, memory, network, and more.

support.apple.com

 

[California]

I just installed the 32 GB of RAM about 4 days ago. it is DDR3 1333Mhz PC3 10600 Non-ECC SO-DIMM. I firstly ordered DIMM by mistake and the supplier exchanged it for me. I upgraded the RAM because of it being so slow and not wanting to wake up. I can't replace the computer because of the expense.

This iMac has a 3.4 Ghz Intel Core i7 Processor with 1 TB SATA Disk. I still have 747 GB available on the Disk. It has AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2048 MB Graphics. My Son is an Architect and ordered this one pretty well loaded. It had two 27" monitors. When he gave me this computer he kept one of the monitors.

I have another iMac sitting here beside me, a 2007 20" with ElCapitan. It is very responsive when the ball isn't spinning. This one was lightening fast before I installed the High Sierra. I thought about going back to the old OS but I don't know if it is still on this computer or how to go back to it.

It has oodles of programs that he used while he used this one. I thought about deleting some of them but it worked flawlessly with them until the High Sierra. It seems to do great and all of a sudden I get the spinning ball and have to restart it. That is another thing, it takes ten times longer to start/restart than it did before the High Sierra. Now, I am getting a message saying "Safari can't open the page", or "You need to update your bowser because it is no longer supported"

I guess I will look for a 1 TB SSD. I am confused as to why I see the Energy level on the Activity Monitor go to 107.7. Is that in percentages? The last time I saw that I was able to reload the page and it dropped to around 4 without closing anything out.

Question.. If you have a bug somewhere and back everything up on an external HD, doesn't it save the bug also? If so, when you put everything on a new HD or SSD, don't you reload the bug? Also, what kind of SSD should I look for?

Dude, you have a mechanical hard drive. This means it literally has internal moving parts that wear out after a decade. It will also stop correctly rendering data at some point. It is well past its prime. It should have been replaced when your son gave the machine to you.

Make sure you have a back up on Time Machine or some other back up of your data. Take it to a third party shop and get a Samsung or Crucial SSD (get at least a 1 TB SSD, a 2TB SSD will be faster) SSD drives have no moving parts. They run cooler and faster. To save money, you have a DVD drive and an extra space for another hard drive, so consider putting another new drive inside the computer while the tech has your iMac open to save $. Consider upgrading the DVD drive to a blu ray.

Any SSD will considerably make your machine faster and run cooler and better. The 2011's are nice iMacs and it appears you have the top of the line for that year and have maxed out the ram. Your hard disk drive must be replaced. My former work partner is also still using his 2011 27" with similar issues -- you must have the hard disk drive (HDD) replaced with an SSD. SSD means "Solid State Drive". Just do it.

 

[pshufd]

Your HDD is not slow, if fact it's pretty fast with 32GB RAM you have installed. You have used it for 8 years and the issue only occurred recently.
I guess the issue is a failing HDD, of heavily fragmented (data scattered on the disk surface) HDD.

The best solution is replace the HDD with an SSD.
But before doing that, you can try the external SSD solution first.
How:
Buy an external SSD (USB enclosure + 2.5" SSD) like something in the link below:

SABRENT 2.5 Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool Free Clear External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized for SSD, Supports UASP SATA III] (EC-OCUB)

SABRENT 2.5 Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool Free Clear External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized for SSD, Supports UASP SATA III] (EC-OCUB)

www.amazon.com

SAMSUNG 870 EVO SATA SSD 500GB 2.5” Internal Solid State Drive, Upgrade PC or Laptop Memory and Storage for IT Pros, Creators, Everyday Users, MZ-77E500B/AM, Black

>The latest 870 EVO has indisputable performance, reliability and compatibility built upon Samsung's pioneering technology. Enjoy professional-level SSD performance which maximizes the SATA interface limit to 560/530 MB/s sequential speeds*, accelerates write speeds and maintains long-term high p...

www.amazon.com

And plug it to the USB port at the back of your iMac.

Then install High Sierra on it, or clone your internal HDD to it like others have suggested.
You can still use Safari as your main web browser, but you can also install another web browser to compare (Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Brave, Firefox, etc).

After running High Sierra on the USB SSD enclosure for a while and confirm it run smoothly, you can consider the HDD replacement, or just run it externally.

The problem with this approach is that the 2011 iMac 27 has USB 2.0 ports. It also has Firewire 800 and a Thunderbolt port.

The internal drive speed is likely SATA2 or 3.0 Gbps. USB 2.0 is 480 Mbps. Firewire 800 is 800 Mbps and Thunderbolt is 10 Gbps. So there are some performance limitations to using an external SSD off a USB port. Thunderbolt would be the best but Thunderbolt storage devices or adapters tend to be expensive. An external SSD off USB 2.0 could help somewhat but I think that some operations could be slower on the SSD and a lot of traffic on the USB hub controller could impact other attached devices. The biggest win would be an internal SSD but it would probably cost a few hundred dollars to have a shop do it.

I have a 2010 iMac 27 with a 1 TB HDD and 32 GB of RAM and it runs High Sierra and it is quite usable. The large amount of RAM means that a lot of files are cached so that performance feels quite good. The place where it is slow is on large file copies to or from the hard drive so I avoid doing that on this machine. I use Firefox on it and I can have six to ten browser tabs open on it without problems. I've tried this system with an external USB SSD and the performance over the HDD wasn't enough so I just moved back to the internal HDD.

To the OP: which version of macOS were you running before upgrading to High Sierra? I somewhat doubt that the problem is High Sierra as it's a pretty lightweight version of macOS and it's even designed to run in 4 GB of RAM. As far as getting old versions of macOS, they can be downloaded from Apple's servers and you'd typically build a bootable flash drive installer to install whichever operating system you want.

 

[pshufd]

I just installed the 32 GB of RAM about 4 days ago. it is DDR3 1333Mhz PC3 10600 Non-ECC SO-DIMM. I firstly ordered DIMM by mistake and the supplier exchanged it for me. I upgraded the RAM because of it being so slow and not wanting to wake up. I can't replace the computer because of the expense.

This iMac has a 3.4 Ghz Intel Core i7 Processor with 1 TB SATA Disk. I still have 747 GB available on the Disk. It has AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2048 MB Graphics. My Son is an Architect and ordered this one pretty well loaded. It had two 27" monitors. When he gave me this computer he kept one of the monitors.

I have another iMac sitting here beside me, a 2007 20" with ElCapitan. It is very responsive when the ball isn't spinning. This one was lightening fast before I installed the High Sierra. I thought about going back to the old OS but I don't know if it is still on this computer or how to go back to it.

It has oodles of programs that he used while he used this one. I thought about deleting some of them but it worked flawlessly with them until the High Sierra. It seems to do great and all of a sudden I get the spinning ball and have to restart it. That is another thing, it takes ten times longer to start/restart than it did before the High Sierra. Now, I am getting a message saying "Safari can't open the page", or "You need to update your bowser because it is no longer supported"

I guess I will look for a 1 TB SSD. I am confused as to why I see the Energy level on the Activity Monitor go to 107.7. Is that in percentages? The last time I saw that I was able to reload the page and it dropped to around 4 without closing anything out.

Question.. If you have a bug somewhere and back everything up on an external HD, doesn't it save the bug also? If so, when you put everything on a new HD or SSD, don't you reload the bug? Also, what kind of SSD should I look for?

Did you verify that the system sees all 32 GB of RAM? Activity Monitor in the Memory section will tell you how much RAM is seen by macOS.

Also, the 32 GB of RAM is composed of 4 8 GB SODIMMs, right?

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

The problem with this approach is that the 2011 iMac 27 has USB 2.0 ports. It also has Firewire 800 and a Thunderbolt port.

I agree with you that swapping the internal HDD for SSD is the best solution for iMac 2011.

However, the problem here is that the OP is a 75 year-old user.
Using the external USB enclosure will enable a DIY solution, and later on, he could just remove the SSD from the USB enclosure to put inside the iMac, either by himself or with another's help. What is wasted here is just the USB enclosure only.

An USB enclosure connected via USB 2.0 port with and SSD is still faster than a spinning disk, thank to the SSD high random read/write speed.

I did use the USB enclosure SSD for a while (iMac 2010) and did feel it ran faster than the spinning HDD.

 

[pshufd]

I agree with you that swapping the internal HDD for SSD is the best solution for iMac 2011.

However, the problem here is that the OP is a 75 year-old user.
Using the external USB enclosure will enable a DIY solution, and later on, he could just remove the SSD from the USB enclosure to put inside the iMac, either by himself or with another's help. What is wasted here is just the USB enclosure only.

An USB enclosure connected via USB 2.0 port with and SSD is still faster than a spinning disk, thank to the SSD high random read/write speed.

I did use the USB enclosure SSD for a while (iMac 2010) and did feel it ran faster than the spinning HDD.

I've already been through this with 2009 and 2010 iMacs and there was an improvement but I'd say that it was slight. I also tried Firewire 800 and that was a better experience than USB 2. The thing is that the iMac, even with a hard drive, should perform better than has been reported and there may be some underlying issues that need to be solved.

 

[Radiomarko]

Hi! I'm an old man too 8) I have a 2011 27", it's not my daily anymore but it's still in daily use if I need a big screen.

Safari is maxed out at 13.1.2 on High Sierra, no more security updates ( not good) either, so it's now very sluggish and as you say gets the "you're too old Safari" message on some sites.

Simply install Firefox or Opera ( alternative browsers) Firefox flies for me on the imac and I have 16Gb and a spinning drive, so you should be ok.

It's a no cost solution so try it first, it may work for you 8)

Good luck!

 

[glenthompson]

The problem with this approach is that the 2011 iMac 27 has USB 2.0 ports. It also has Firewire 800 and a Thunderbolt port.

The internal drive speed is likely SATA2 or 3.0 Gbps. USB 2.0 is 480 Mbps. Firewire 800 is 800 Mbps and Thunderbolt is 10 Gbps.

The 2011 iMac has 6gbps SATA on the hard drive but only 3 on the optical. People that did the double drive upgrade had to take that into account.

 

[pshufd]

The 2011 iMac has 6gbps SATA on the hard drive but only 3 on the optical. People that did the double drive upgrade had to take that into account.

Thanks for the information. I'll keep that in mind in my 2009-2014 iMac 27 database in my head.

 

[bassjunky]

I also have a 2011 27" i5, 12GB RAM. I went the Thunderbolt way and bought a 256GB SSD Transcend Jetdrive for the OS and apps, and dedicated the internal 1TB spinner for docs and media.

The 2011 iMacs only have USB 2 and Thunderbolt 1. I didn't want to have to rely on a TB-USB3 adaptor for the boot drive, they don't all behave the same. And an SSD in a UASP enclosure is still too slow over USB 2.

Just a few things to consider.

 

[Jack Neill]

I also have a 2011 27" i5, 12GB RAM. I went the Thunderbolt way and bought a 256GB SSD Transcend Jetdrive for the OS and apps, and dedicated the internal 1TB spinner for docs and media.

The 2011 iMacs only have USB 2 and Thunderbolt 1. I didn't want to have to rely on a TB-USB3 adaptor for the boot drive, they don't all behave the same. And an SSD in a UASP enclosure is still too slow over USB 2.

Just a few things to consider.

Ive done the same on my 2011, I am currently using a Lacie TB that I put a 512 SanDisk SSD in. Its running 11.6.5 perfectly. Very usable machine in 2022.

 

[California]

The 2011 iMac has 6gbps SATA on the hard drive but only 3 on the optical. People that did the double drive upgrade had to take that into account.

I believe there are two internal hard drive or ssd SATA connectors on the 27" 2011 iMac. The DVD drive is a third SATA port.