Slow iMac: did I try everything?

[sandrokan]

Hi
my iMac (see below) with osx 10.9.5 is very slow. In particular, it is very very slow at booting, and while starting any process. The spinning ball shows up for up to 20 seconds for every new app that I launch. When the process is already started, then the system is quite stable, but I have long latency when switching form app to app.

I have tried many suggested solutions:
1) spotlight is stopped (sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist). At the beginning that seemed to be a solution, now it seems it is not improving the performance significantly... but I have left it stopped anyway.
2) disk permission have been fixed (many times)
3) disk integrity checked
4) osx reinstalled (and upgraded, downgraded, etc, with disk complete formatting)
5) I have never had a blue screen
6) when running slow, if I look to activity monitor, no process seems to be above 40%.
7) I tried other workarounds that I don't remember, but this started 2 years ago and it is getting worse and worse. For example, now sometimes I got the beach ball when I try to scroll down a web page in safari.

I really don't know what to do next. The machine is owned by a research institute and the administration already decided to buy me a new one instead to spend money on a repair shop, but I hate the idea of disposing a machine that, apart of this bug, is still ok.

Thank you
Alex


---
Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac12,2
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 3.4 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 8 MB
Memory: 8 GB
Boot ROM Version: IM121.0047.B23
SMC Version (system): 1.72f5

 

[keysofanxiety]

You can run SMART Utility. Anything other than Passed would indicate the hard-drive is failing: https://cloudfront.volitans-software.com/smartutility323.zip

 

[sandrokan]

You can run SMART Utility. Anything other than Passed would indicate the hard-drive is failing: https://cloudfront.volitans-software.com/smartutility323.zip

Hi
wow. Actually it is failing. Why all other s/w (Apple disk utility and another commercial s/w) did not recognize it?
And I wonder how is it possible it is failing since 2015 (it is 2 year that I have this issue)?

Thank you!

 

[keysofanxiety]

Hi
wow. Actually it is failing. Why all other s/w (Apple disk utility and another commercial s/w) did not recognize it?
And I wonder how is it possible it is failing since 2015 (it is 2 year that I have this issue)?

Thank you!

Disk Utility doesn't tend to pick up on SMART errors unless it's really bad.

With regards to why it's failing, hard-drives are a pretty poor technology. They're slow and have lots of moving pieces inside. Wear and tear on the spinners/platters can eventually cause it to fail from time alone, or a large number of writes, or drops/knocks -- sky's the limit for reasons why a drive could have failed.

However just to offer some reassurance that there's nothing you've done to cause the issue. Best get the drive replaced. If you replace it with an SSD rather than another hard-drive, you'll see significantly improved performance in every aspect. Additionally the reliability rates for SSDs are considerably better than hard-drives. In most instances, an SSD will outlive the rest of the computer.

 

[Ebenezum]

Hi
wow. Actually it is failing. Why all other s/w (Apple disk utility and another commercial s/w) did not recognize it?
And I wonder how is it possible it is failing since 2015 (it is 2 year that I have this issue)?

Thank you!

That hard drive is about 5 years old assuming its the original drive. Its likely been worn out by age. Not that iMacs thermal design helps the longevity (cooler components tend to last longer).

While I agree with keysofanxiety on replacing the hard drive with SSD I wouldn't call hard drives poor products, they are fine for storing large amount of data for reasonable cost. SSD does perform much better as a boot drive due to its speed. Keep in mind that they have limited amount of data that can be written on them before they fall. Unless you are writing the disk full every day of the year that is probably not a concern.