New Mac is very slow

[piscotikus]

Hello. I recently upgraded from a 2014 Mac to a 2019 Mac. The 2014 Mac was getting slow and taking a while to open apps.

Most important to us was our photos which are all stored on the Mac. We haven’t gone the route of iCloud Photo Library yet.

When setting up the new Mac I used a time machine backup to make sure we had our important files and photos.

But the new Mac seems to be slower than the old one. Simply logging on and trying to open chrome and navigate to a website can take 60-120 seconds. Opening an application such as iTunes takes nearly a full minute. It’s extremely frustrating.

Any thoughts?

 

[Fishrrman]

Yes, I have thoughts (although at my age, there aren't many of them!)...

You haven't told us WHICH 2019 iMac you've bought.
You haven't told us WHAT KIND OF DRIVE is inside it.

Tell us those things.

If it's a 21", and if it has only a platter-based hard drive inside, then YES, it's going to be "slow", because the drive is "too slow for the OS".

Your options in that case:
1. Return it if you can, and get one with an SSD inside
or
2. Add an EXTERNAL USB3 SSD -- cheap, easy, and it will run MUCH faster if you do so.

 

[piscotikus]

Yes, I have thoughts (although at my age, there aren't many of them!)...

You haven't told us WHICH 2019 iMac you've bought.
You haven't told us WHAT KIND OF DRIVE is inside it.

Tell us those things.

If it's a 21", and if it has only a platter-based hard drive inside, then YES, it's going to be "slow", because the drive is "too slow for the OS".

Your options in that case:
1. Return it if you can, and get one with an SSD inside
or
2. Add an EXTERNAL USB3 SSD -- cheap, easy, and it will run MUCH faster if you do so.

Thanks. I did get the 21inch retina 4K with a 3.6 GHz Intel Core i3 and a standard Macintosh HD. (I’m guessing platter)

At this point I don’t think I'd return it if it’s not too hard to set it up with an external sdd. How do I do that?

 

[r6mile]

Thanks. I did get the 21inch retina 4K with a 3.6 GHz Intel Core i3 and a standard Macintosh HD. (I’m guessing platter)

At this point I don’t think I'd return it if it’s not too hard to set it up with an external sdd. How do I do that?

macOS really is not optimised to work on HDDs any more, it is a disgrace they keep selling iMacs with it.
@Fishrrman makes a very good suggestion.

1. Get a Thunderbolt SSD like the Samsung T5 (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-MU...eywords=thunderbolt+SSD&qid=1595341047&sr=8-3).
2. Connect it to the iMac. Open Disk Utility, and format the external drive as APFS.
3. Download Carbon Copy Cloner, and with it clone your existing hard drive onto the external drive.
4. Turn on the Mac, and press Alt/Option after the chime. Select the external drive.
5. You're good to go!
6. Check that everything works as intended booting from the external drive. Once you are happy, go to Startup Disk (under System Preferences) and select the external drive; this will ensure this is the default boot drive.
7. After this, you can format the internal drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), and use it as a destination for Time Machine backups, extra media storage, or whatever else you wish.

 

[Fishrrman]

r6mile's guide above is good.
But the t5 is a USB3 drive, not "thunderbolt3".
That's ok, it's still a good choice.

 

[r6mile]

r6mile's guide above is good.
But the t5 is a USB3 drive, not "thunderbolt3".
That's ok, it's still a good choice.

Sorry yes it's not a thunderbolt3 drive. But the Samsung X5 (which is Thunderbolt 3) is nearly triple the price of the T5, for a 1TB drive. Still less than half the price of what Apple charges to upgrade to an internal 1TB SSD though, so it depends on how much the OP cares about the fastest drive speed? I think something like the T5 would be a sensible choice.

 

[James_C]

Hello. I recently upgraded from a 2014 Mac to a 2019 Mac. The 2014 Mac was getting slow and taking a while to open apps.

Most important to us was our photos which are all stored on the Mac. We haven’t gone the route of iCloud Photo Library yet.

When setting up the new Mac I used a time machine backup to make sure we had our important files and photos.

But the new Mac seems to be slower than the old one. Simply logging on and trying to open chrome and navigate to a website can take 60-120 seconds. Opening an application such as iTunes takes nearly a full minute. It’s extremely frustrating.

Any thoughts?

When you first get and set up a new Mac, the search utility, Spotlight needs to index the drive this can make the Mac appear slow as it in constantly accessing the disk and processor. It can take a few hours to index the drive so I would wait a day and see if it still slow. Even with a spinning drive it should not take 1-2 minutes to open a web browser.

However I agree with the others the an SSD would make it feel like a completely different machine.

 

[piscotikus]

r6mile's guide above is good.
But the t5 is a USB3 drive, not "thunderbolt3".
That's ok, it's still a good choice.

but either way it will be an improvement?

 

[r6mile]

but either way it will be an improvement?

An enormous improvement, honestly night and day - your read/write speeds on the T5 will be about 7-8 times faster than your internal HDD. As I said, it is totally outrageous that Apple still sell desktops with spinning hard drives.

If you are still within the 14-day return window, getting one with a 256GB SSD instead of the 1TB platter will be an extra $200. That will be faster than the external route (and you won't have to deal with an external drive), but you'll have less storage (256GB versus the 1TB external SSD + 1TB internal HDD). Something else to consider. But the T5 will be a tremendous improvement anyway.

 

[pldelisle]

I personally wouldn't go for a *USB3* external SSD for running an OS ........ Maybe more Thunderbolt, but again it's still external, and you rely on an enclosure, external bus, accidental disconnections, etc.... Nope, I wouldn't do this personally.

The best is to buy a Samsung 860 Pro/EVO or Crucial MX500 SSD SATA6gbps to put it into the iMac. Apple store can do the upgrade if you bring the SSD. Then, keep the Fusion Drive, put it in a USB3 enclosure and set it up as a Time Machine destination HDD for backups.

 

[piscotikus]

r6mile's guide above is good.
But the t5 is a USB3 drive, not "thunderbolt3".
That's ok, it's still a good choice.

An enormous improvement, honestly night and day - your read/write speeds on the T5 will be about 7-8 times faster than your internal HDD. As I said, it is totally outrageous that Apple still sell desktops with spinning hard drives.

Thank you all. I ended up with a 1 TB USB3 SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD ~$160 on amazon (I remember paying $250 for a 516 MB ATA card...). It took about 12 hours to carbon copy the 500GB on the HDD. After booting, I just laughed. It was that much better. Safari and Chrome open instantaneously, web pages load much faster, Photos (which used to take several minutes to get to a ready state) booted in <10 seconds. I really cannot believe it.

It's more than outrageous that they still sell iMacs with an old hard drive if the OS is light years ahead. This, along with Apple not replacing a 16 month old broken iPhone (the FaceID unit failed) because it's 'out of warranty' have really sour on them at the moment.

 

[Roxy.music]

Yes, I have thoughts (although at my age, there aren't many of them!)...

You haven't told us WHICH 2019 iMac you've bought.
You haven't told us WHAT KIND OF DRIVE is inside it.

Tell us those things.

If it's a 21", and if it has only a platter-based hard drive inside, then YES, it's going to be "slow", because the drive is "too slow for the OS".

Your options in that case:

Thanks. I did get the 21inch retina 4K with a 3.6 GHz Intel Core i3 and a standard Macintosh HD. (I’m guessing platter)

At this point I don’t think I'd return it if it’s not too hard to set it up with an external sdd. How do I do that?

1. Return it if you can, and get one with an SSD inside
or
2. Add an EXTERNAL USB3 SSD -- cheap, easy, and it will run MUCH faster if you do so.

Yes, I have thoughts (although at my age, there aren't many of them!)...

You haven't told us WHICH 2019 iMac you've bought.
You haven't told us WHAT KIND OF DRIVE is inside it.

Tell us those things.

If it's a 21", and if it has only a platter-based hard drive inside, then YES, it's going to be "slow", because the drive is "too slow for the OS".

Your options in that case:
1. Return it if you can, and get one with an SSD inside
or
2. Add an EXTERNAL USB3 SSD -- cheap, easy, and it will run MUCH faster if you do so.

If i was him i would take it back and like you say get one with a SSD the Apple SSD s are super fast .Plus the fact it will be hard to sell it in future years with an HDD drive.??

 

[Roxy.music]

macOS really is not optimised to work on HDDs any more, it is a disgrace they keep selling iMacs with it.
@Fishrrman makes a very good suggestion.

1. Get a Thunderbolt SSD like the Samsung T5 (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-MU...eywords=thunderbolt+SSD&qid=1595341047&sr=8-3).
2. Connect it to the iMac. Open Disk Utility, and format the external drive as APFS.
3. Download Carbon Copy Cloner, and with it clone your existing hard drive onto the external drive.
4. Turn on the Mac, and press Alt/Option after the chime. Select the external drive.
5. You're good to go!
6. Check that everything works as intended booting from the external drive. Once you are happy, go to Startup Disk (under System Preferences) and select the external drive; this will ensure this is the default boot drive.
7. After this, you can format the internal drive as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), and use it as a destination for Time Machine backups, extra media storage, or whatever else you wish.

Everyone will second that ,i will go as far to say even Fusion drives in 2019.?

 

[Roxy.music]

Sorry yes it's not a thunderbolt3 drive. But the Samsung X5 (which is Thunderbolt 3) is nearly triple the price of the T5, for a 1TB drive. Still less than half the price of what Apple charges to upgrade to an internal 1TB SSD though, so it depends on how much the OP cares about the fastest drive speed? I think something like the T5 would be a sensible choice.

That is a good drive i would recommend it.