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Life after High Sierra support ends

OldCorpse said:
I too have an i7 27" late 2009 iMac, and my plan is to upgrade the hardware and then the OS and run that until the 2nd or 3rd generation 27" AS iMac:

Using 2009 iMac today
Click to expand...
👍 Impressive plan so good luck to you and hope it all works as planned! I may eventually consider swapping to an ssd, maybe adding some memory but for the foreseeable future it will be as is.
 
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soulflower wrote:
"Mine has gotten very slow. Any suggestions on speeding it up that I may have missed?"

VERY IMPORTANT questions:
What year is your iMac?
What kind of drive is inside?

The answers you provide determine the advice we give.
 
Fishrrman said:
soulflower wrote:
"Mine has gotten very slow. Any suggestions on speeding it up that I may have missed?"

VERY IMPORTANT questions:
What year is your iMac?
What kind of drive is inside?

The answers you provide determine the advice we give.
Click to expand...

iMac 21.5-inch Late 2012
2.9 GHz i5, 8 Gb memory

only able to upgrade to High Sierra
 
Soulflower said:
iMac 21.5-inch Late 2012
2.9 GHz i5, 8 Gb memory
Click to expand...
If you still have your originalhard disk inside, replace it or get someone to replace it for you with a SATA SSD, best of the same size.
This will turn your machine into a racer which will feel as fast asa brand new one.
Same gos for your MBP, btw. Saves you a lot of money you would spend on a new machine.
 
USB3foriMac said:
If you still have your originalhard disk inside, replace it or get someone to replace it for you with a SATA SSD, best of the same size.
This will turn your machine into a racer which will feel as fast asa brand new one.
Same gos for your MBP, btw. Saves you a lot of money you would spend on a new machine.
Click to expand...
Wouldn't waste the time, money or effort getting someone else to do it. Just buy an external SSD, Carbon Copy Clone it from existing drive & boot from the SSD, Instant speed increase with zero effort.
 
McScooby said:
Wouldn't waste the time, money or effort getting someone else to do it. Just buy an external SSD, Carbon Copy Clone it from existing drive & boot from the SSD, Instant speed increase with zero effort.
Click to expand...
Good idea. One thing to be kept in mind is macOS doesn't issue the TRIM command to external SSDs connected via USB. For that, Thunderbolt is necessary.
 
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I really don’t like having an external system drive... So many things could happen. In Thunderbolt this is better thought but not infallible.
 
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USB3foriMac said:
Not sure what you mean by "anywhere"??? Ever tried using Google? Google search E7600

So it's a Core 2 Duo, 2 core (2 thread).
I have an old Lenovo thinkpad with that, running both Windows 10 and Linux Mint 20, both systems run perfectly fine with 3GB RAM (Max for this machine) and a 256GB SSD. Once again, the SSD makes a difference, in case you don't have one.

The fist of my 2011 iMacs is now also running Linux Mint 20, since the release end last month. 8GB RAM, i7. Running Catalina in VirtualBox, haha. No need to upgrade graphics ;-) Some issues still under VirtualBox 6.1.10, but 6.1.12 alreaddy released, haven't updated yet. Since I only need MacOS for my picture collection, this might be the way to go for me.


View attachment 937260View attachment 937257View attachment 937258
Click to expand...
14mb gpu memory...............really 🤣
Can you actually run apps with that setup?
 
Soulflower wrote:
"iMac 21.5-inch Late 2012
2.9 GHz i5, 8 Gb memory"

Does it just have a 1tb platter-based hard drive inside?
If so, you can make it A LOT FASTER by plugging in a USB3 SSD, "cloning" the internal drive onto it, and then setting the EXTERNAL SSD to be "the new boot drive".

The Mac doesn't care much about WHERE it's booting from -- it just wants to find a good copy of the OS.

You could get something like a Samsung t5, or do this:

Buy a 2.5" SATA SSD, like this:

Amazon.com: 2.5" SSD 1tb

Amazon.com: 2.5" SSD 1tb
www.amazon.com
(numerous ones shown, get 1tb in size)

And then drop it into an enclosure like this:
tinyurl.com

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

SABRENT 2.5 Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool Free External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized for SSD, Support UASP SATA III] Black (EC-UASP)
tinyurl.com
(the cover just snaps on).

Then plug it in and use disk utility to format (erase) it to "Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format).

Then download CarbonCopyCloner, which is free to use for 30 days:
www.bombich.com

Download CCC - Bombich Software

www.bombich.com www.bombich.com

CCC will "clone" the contents of the internal drive to the SSD.

Then, go to startup disk and set the SSD to be the boot drive.

Then reboot.

It should "look just like the internal drive" -- but will boot and run FASTER.

If you do this, I promise you will like the change.
 
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Fishrrman said:
Soulflower wrote:
"iMac 21.5-inch Late 2012
2.9 GHz i5, 8 Gb memory"

Does it just have a 1tb platter-based hard drive inside?
If so, you can make it A LOT FASTER by plugging in a USB3 SSD, "cloning" the internal drive onto it, and then setting the EXTERNAL SSD to be "the new boot drive".

The Mac doesn't care much about WHERE it's booting from -- it just wants to find a good copy of the OS.

You could get something like a Samsung t5, or do this:

Buy a 2.5" SATA SSD, like this:

Amazon.com: 2.5" SSD 1tb

Amazon.com: 2.5" SSD 1tb
www.amazon.com
(numerous ones shown, get 1tb in size)

And then drop it into an enclosure like this:
tinyurl.com

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

SABRENT 2.5 Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool Free External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized for SSD, Support UASP SATA III] Black (EC-UASP)
tinyurl.com
(the cover just snaps on).

Then plug it in and use disk utility to format (erase) it to "Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format).

Then download CarbonCopyCloner, which is free to use for 30 days:
www.bombich.com

Download CCC - Bombich Software

www.bombich.com www.bombich.com

CCC will "clone" the contents of the internal drive to the SSD.

Then, go to startup disk and set the SSD to be the boot drive.

Then reboot.

It should "look just like the internal drive" -- but will boot and run FASTER.

If you do this, I promise you will like the change.
Click to expand...

And after that always backup your boot drive with Time Machine ... !
 
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Fishrrman said:
Soulflower wrote:
"iMac 21.5-inch Late 2012
2.9 GHz i5, 8 Gb memory"

Does it just have a 1tb platter-based hard drive inside?
If so, you can make it A LOT FASTER by plugging in a USB3 SSD, "cloning" the internal drive onto it, and then setting the EXTERNAL SSD to be "the new boot drive".

The Mac doesn't care much about WHERE it's booting from -- it just wants to find a good copy of the OS.

You could get something like a Samsung t5, or do this:

Buy a 2.5" SATA SSD, like this:

Amazon.com: 2.5" SSD 1tb

Amazon.com: 2.5" SSD 1tb
www.amazon.com
(numerous ones shown, get 1tb in size)

And then drop it into an enclosure like this:
tinyurl.com

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

SABRENT 2.5 Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool Free External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized for SSD, Support UASP SATA III] Black (EC-UASP)
tinyurl.com
(the cover just snaps on).

Then plug it in and use disk utility to format (erase) it to "Mac OS extended with journaling enabled, GUID partition format).

Then download CarbonCopyCloner, which is free to use for 30 days:
www.bombich.com

Download CCC - Bombich Software

www.bombich.com www.bombich.com

CCC will "clone" the contents of the internal drive to the SSD.

Then, go to startup disk and set the SSD to be the boot drive.

Then reboot.

It should "look just like the internal drive" -- but will boot and run FASTER.

If you do this, I promise you will like the change.
Click to expand...
This is a little bit greek to me. I wish I could hire you to come to my house and do this.
 
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Soulflower said:
This is so greek to me. I wish I could hire you to come to my house and do this.
Click to expand...
But, reading it, it sounds pretty simple. I might try it. It won't hurt! Thank you so much for the help! Which drive would be your pick?

And should I worry about this - "macOS doesn't issue the TRIM command to external SSDs connected via USB" ?
 
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  • Does the software you use no longer support High Sierra, and can you not stick with a slightly older version of said software?
  • Are you doing any work on your Mac which is highly confidential or likely to be an explicit target for hackers?
  • Are you unhappy with High Sierra?

IMO, if you answered "no" to all of the above, you should stick with what works. High Sierra is a particularly good release of macOS—definitely faster and more stable in my experience than Catalina or even Mojave.

You need to be particularly vigilant about keeping your web browser up-to-date, since the OS will no longer be (as strong) a line of defense. You may also want to ensure you have a good data backup system—you want a backup location that's kept "cold", which is to say, not perpetually left connected to your computer, whether over USB or the network. But if you do that, and generally practice good security hygiene in other ways, it's not as though your computer will suddenly become infected once Apple drops support.

I'm running OS X 10.9 btw. 🙂
 
Wowfunhappy said:
  • Does the software you use no longer support High Sierra, and can you not stick with a slightly older version of said software?
  • Are you doing any work on your Mac which is highly confidential or likely to be an explicit target for hackers?
  • Are you unhappy with High Sierra?

IMO, if you answered "no" to all of the above, you should stick with what works. High Sierra is a particularly good release of macOS—definitely faster and more stable in my experience than Catalina or even Mojave.

You need to be particularly vigilant about keeping your web browser up-to-date, since the OS will no longer be (as strong) a line of defense. You may also want to ensure you have a good data backup system—you want a backup location that's kept "cold", which is to say, not perpetually left connected to your computer, whether over USB or the network. But if you do that, and generally practice good security hygiene in other ways, it's not as though your computer will suddenly become infected once Apple drops support.

I'm running OS X 10.9 btw. 🙂
Click to expand...
I'm OK with High Sierra. That is really not my issue as much as it is that my iMac is so slow. Thank you.
 
Amethyst1 said:
Good idea. One thing to be kept in mind is macOS doesn't issue the TRIM command to external SSDs connected via USB. For that, Thunderbolt is necessary.
Click to expand...

...huh, where did you read this? It sounded kind of odd, so I did some Googling. Enabling TRIM on any non-Apple SSD of course requires the sudo trimforce enable command to be run (or kext edits), but it's a little hard to tell whether that works for USB specifically.
This answer Ask Different says that most USB SSD enclosures don't support TRIM (hardware limitation), but implies that TRIM will work if you can find a supported drive/enclosure. But it's not clear to me that the answerer actually tested this.

And then this post over on eclecticlight (who I trust to know what they're talking about) says that System Information and Disk Utility won't tell you whether or not TRIM is enabled for USB drives, but also implies that it will work if you run that Terminal command and buy the appropriate hardware. But, well, If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it, does it make sound? Which is to say, I'm not sure how the author would actually know whether TRIM works or not, since without Disk Utility you'd have to do a lot of labor-intensive benchmarking to figure it out—so they're probably just making an assumption...

Soulflower said:
I'm OK with High Sierra. That is really not my issue as much as it is that my iMac is so slow. Thank you.
Click to expand...
Did it used to be faster?

You might consider doing a clean install of the OS. There's a lot of guides for this online, but basically, you'd backup any important files to external storage (!), make a USB installer of High Sierra, boot the installer, format the internal drive in Disk Utility, and then run the install. This puts your computer in a like-new state (except with High Sierra rather than an even earlier OS, if applicable).

You can sometimes then restore from a Time Machine backup, but for best results I generally recommend starting fresh, and then putting back just the apps/files you actually need.

Edit:
Soulflower said:
I'm assuming this is a platter drive.
Click to expand...

Yes, it is! I haven't followed this whole conversation, but an SSD would definitely speed things up.

I would go with an internal SSD if you can—separate from the discussions about TRIM, USB can slow things down for various reasons. Thunderbolt would be better, but you pay a lot for that.

If you do a clean install of the OS anyway, you won't have to worry about cloning...
 
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Just to make sure I get everything before I do it, I'd need to copy all:

documents
downloads
iPhoto
photos in pictures folder
iTunes library
Movies

Sorry this is so basic but I don't want to miss anything. Is that all? Thank you!
 
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