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Sad or jealous? My 2011 iMac is acting badly.

T Coma

T Coma

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 3, 2015
659
1,249
Flyover Country, USA
I've had my new 16" M1 Pro for about a month now; I got it as a replacement for *my* main computer, but I planned to keep the 2011 27" iMac as a family computer. The big screen is great for kids school work and media consumption, etc. I've been transferring data bit by bit, in an as-needed method, so I will go to the iMac only when I have to. But recently is has been running more slowly, and today it is 5400 rpm HD levels of slowness (it runs on a SSD boot drive via Thunderbolt). Beach balls galore. I've run the usual battery of tests and there are no official indications of problems. I rebooted although it rarely gets a reboot since it runs constantly.

I haven't had this issue in 11 years; it's strangely coincidental that it's acting like this now. Can computers be jealous? ;-)
 
T Coma said:
I've had my new 16" M1 Pro for about a month now; I got it as a replacement for *my* main computer, but I planned to keep the 2011 27" iMac as a family computer. The big screen is great for kids school work and media consumption, etc. I've been transferring data bit by bit, in an as-needed method, so I will go to the iMac only when I have to. But recently is has been running more slowly, and today it is 5400 rpm HD levels of slowness (it runs on a SSD boot drive via Thunderbolt). Beach balls galore. I've run the usual battery of tests and there are no official indications of problems. I rebooted although it rarely gets a reboot since it runs constantly.

I haven't had this issue in 11 years; it's strangely coincidental that it's acting like this now. Can computers be jealous? ;-)
Click to expand...

Computers aren't jealous. Their parts just get aged and fail.
Replace the failed parts and your iMac will function again.
In your case, just removing the failed HDD from the computer maybe enough, as you have already got the external boot drive.
 
Side note, but you must have the patience of a saint to boot from an external drive on a 2011 iMac. It's one iMac-generation too old to have USB3. From my personal experience of using exactly that computer for 11 years, booting from an external drive, be it a HDD or SSD, was absolutely glacial due to the limitations of USB2. That's how I ended up cracking mine open to put an SSD inside.
 
MajorFubar said:
Side note, but you must have the patience of a saint to boot from an external drive on a 2011 iMac. It's one iMac-generation too old to have USB3.
Click to expand...
OP clearly stated: "it runs on a SSD boot drive via Thunderbolt".

Indeed running it from USB is a big pain.
I recently aquired a 21,5" model 2011 and the seller removed the HDD. (In the series of different types of panic typical for our age, it seems now people also think anybody would be interested in their "very important" private data.) To test if the iMac works at all I made an internet recovery to a USB stick. Took around 20 hours. Booting takes around 10 minutes, and the entire computer lags up to being unusable.
 
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Eugen Mezei said:
How do I see kernel_task trottling?
I see the parameters of it in activity monitor, but dont know how to interpret them.
Click to expand...

If kernel_task is using a large percentage of your Mac CPU - Apple Support

One of the functions of the kernel task process is to help manage the temperature of your CPU.
support.apple.com support.apple.com

High CPU usage by kernel_task is often a symptom of thermal issues or faulty temperature sensors, and is used as a dummy process to deny CPU to real processes. The result is a very slow unresponsive computer for no apparent reason. Not the only reason, though.
 
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How much RAM does it have? I'm using a 2010 iMac with i7 and 32 GB of RAM and an internal HDD and it's quite usable. The additional RAM makes a huge difference over the base amount as all of the programs and a lot of data is cached so I don't get beachballs on HDD writes. I have tried the external USB2 SSD approach. Performance is about the same as with the HDD.

There is a 2013 for sale for $250 nearby and I am tempted to offer $200 for it. A USB 3 external boot drive and about 33% better CPU performance would be cool. The downside is losing TDM. I'm too cheap to buy a TB SSD enclosure.
 
New twist: Spotlight doesn't work anymore. I've never seen that before. It opens but type something, and... nothing happens. Also getting delays on basic text copy/paste.

Anyway, the 1TB Samsung 860 I'm using as a boot drive in the TB1 enclosure isn't that old - 2-3 years I think - and First Aid says it's ok,
Screen Shot 2022-07-25 at 9.40.49 AM.png


although it is just over 80% full. There hasn't been a big addition of new data lately, in fact there hasn't been much activity lately as I've been using the new 16" M1. I was curious about the kernel task / heat comments above so I rechecked the usual tests as I mentioned above and see nothing out of the ordinary there either.

Screen Shot 2022-07-25 at 8.24.12 AM.png


Screen Shot 2022-07-25 at 8.20.24 AM.png


Those temps might be a little warm, but certainly not as warm as they've been. I may pick up a new 1TB SSD and run migration assistant or CCC restore to hopefully clean out the cruft. If I can ever get around to getting all my essential data to the MBP, I suppose it won't matter what's on the imac, since it will be the kids' computer anyway.
 
11 years is "a pretty good run".

If you need something for "the kids and family", perhaps an iMac 24" (get 16gb of RAM and the 4-port version)...
 
Eugen Mezei said:
OP clearly stated: "it runs on a SSD boot drive via Thunderbolt".

Indeed running it from USB is a big pain.
I recently aquired a 21,5" model 2011 and the seller removed the HDD. (In the series of different types of panic typical for our age, it seems now people also think anybody would be interested in their "very important" private data.) To test if the iMac works at all I made an internet recovery to a USB stick. Took around 20 hours. Booting takes around 10 minutes, and the entire computer lags up to being unusable.
Click to expand...

When I look at used systems, I bring a bootable external USB SSD with High Sierra, an Apple keyboard and an Apple mouse. You never know what you're going to run into with used systems - including those with a wiped HDD or no HDD at all.
 
pshufd said:
Any chance that it's reindexing?
Click to expand...
I suppose it could have been, although I would be surprised with so little recent activity.

I have been going down the "disk too full?" trail though and discovered via Daisy Disk that a whopping 403.3 GB of space is allocated to "Pictures." Although it is not a small collection (35k photos, 1900 videos), these are almost entirely phone-recorded media and therefore not that big, like say pro RAW files. I regularly pare the dupes and duds. That seems like a lot of space, maybe? Anyway, that is by far the biggest use of the boot SSD. The stock HD (still works!) is almost full with loads of video projects.

The iMac has been virtually unused since the new purchase, with the exception of my bit by bit transferring. Kids don't use it.
 
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