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What can I do to speed up my iMac?

BASRPH

BASRPH

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 27, 2010
88
1
Central Illinois
I have a 7 yr old IMac. Its specs are OSX Version 10.9.5, Processor 2.4GHZ, Core 2 Duo, Memory 4GB 667 MHRZ DDR 2 SDRAM.

I use it mostly for emails, music, pictures on IPhoto, and Facebook, and a little bit of word processing on Word or Pages. No Gaming of any type.

The last few months it has gotten slower & slower. Today I had to click on the email Icon on the dock 3 or 4 times before email would even load. Other times if click on the X in the upper left to close an application it seems like it takes forever to close that program.

What program can I get to clean up any crap that may be causing this slowdown? I am assuming that junk files are causing this. Any suggestion?
 
BASRPH said:
I have a 7 yr old IMac. Its specs are OSX Version 10.9.5, Processor 2.4GHZ, Core 2 Duo, Memory 4GB 667 MHRZ DDR 2 SDRAM.

I use it mostly for emails, music, pictures on IPhoto, and Facebook, and a little bit of word processing on Word or Pages. No Gaming of any type.

The last few months it has gotten slower & slower. Today I had to click on the email Icon on the dock 3 or 4 times before email would even load. Other times if click on the X in the upper left to close an application it seems like it takes forever to close that program.

What program can I get to clean up any crap that may be causing this slowdown? I am assuming that junk files are causing this. Any suggestion?
Click to expand...
As others recommended, replacing your HDD with a SSD would make a dramatic improvement. Also, you may benefit from more RAM, depending on your typical workload.

If you're having performance issues, this may help:
 
I have the same iMac & it's running pretty sweetly for its age, so I don't know why yours shouldn't.
Make sure the hdd isn't full or about to die and check/ repair the permissions.
I use Onyx for cleaning everything else up.

I considered fitting an SSD, but I'll probably just put the money towards a new iMac when this one finally gives up the fight.
It's run pretty solidly for over seven years, with only one hard drive replacement (recently), which is what I think you might need to do.
 
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My guess is that disk errors -- due to a hard drive about to fail -- are causing your slowdown. Replacing your hard drive is a great idea. I doubt that an iMac that old would benefit much from an SSD drive, because the bus is too slow to support the bandwidth that an SSD can provide, so you might as well buy a terabyte hard drive (I saw an offer for $49 this week) or something larger (for less than $100). On your old iMac you'll get pretty much the same performance, but a lot more space.
 
If it is imminent hard drive failure, then you might like to know I replaced the drive myself, with a WD 1TB Caviar Blue for less than £50 including tools (Amazon). Bit nervous doing that, but easy in the end.
 
Thanks for the responses. I am not very computer literate so what is the HHD or SSD ? Is that a hardware item inside the computer or some configuration f the software. Someone mentioned possible hard drive failure, I have an external hard drive I use for backups, would it run from that Western Digital hard drive ???
 
BASRPH said:
Thanks for the responses. I am not very computer literate so what is the HHD or SSD ? Is that a hardware item inside the computer or some configuration f the software. Someone mentioned possible hard drive failure, I have an external hard drive I use for backups, would it run from that Western Digital hard drive ???
Click to expand...
HDD = Hard Disk Drive. Traditional drive with a spinning disk.
SSD = Solid State Drive. Drive with no moving parts, thus much faster to read and write.
 
Ok BASRPH, this is what you need to do first:

-Open Disk Utility (Applications/ Utilities/ Disk Utility//) and click on your internal hard drive (likely to be the top drive on the left), then click Verify (bottom right).

You'll either get a green message stating everything is fine, or a message stating you need to repair the drive (in which case you'll need to click Repair Drive), or a red message stating your drive is irreparable.

If the drive is good, check the available capacity: click the Apple icon (top left)/ About This Mac/ More Info/ Storage//

Post back with your findings, then you'll be able to be advised better.
 
BASRPH said:
Today I had to click on the email Icon on the dock 3 or 4 times before email would even load. Other times if click on the X in the upper left to close an application it seems like it takes forever to close that program.
Click to expand...

BASRPH said:
Thanks for the responses. I am not very computer literate so what is the HHD or SSD ? Is that a hardware item inside the computer or some configuration f the software. Someone mentioned possible hard drive failure, I have an external hard drive I use for backups, would it run from that Western Digital hard drive ???
Click to expand...

Try the disk check PixelpusherBV mentioned, but what you are describing is a classic symptom of a failing hard drive.

How is your data backed up to the WD drive? If it is backed up with a clone utility like Carbon Copy Cloner you can boot and run from that drive, but it will be painfully slow. If it is a Time Machine backup, that can be used to restore your data to a new drive, but you can't boot and run the iMac directly from it.
 
SSD. I have an older Core2Duo Mac Mini, and it was incredibly slow after a few years. I installed a new SSD and maxed the RAM, and today my aging Mini is still plenty fast even connected to dual 23" monitors.

Otherworldcomputing has deals on SSDs and RAM. A few hundred dollars will rejuvenate the computer.
 
GigahertzCPU said:
SSD. I have an older Core2Duo Mac Mini, and it was incredibly slow after a few years. I installed a new SSD and maxed the RAM, and today my aging Mini is still plenty fast even connected to dual 23" monitors.

Otherworldcomputing has deals on SSDs and RAM. A few hundred dollars will rejuvenate the computer.
Click to expand...

He/ she doesn't appear to be complaining about general slowness, but a recent slow-down which suggests imminent hard-drive failure, so I guess he/ she's happy with its usual speed.

I'm torn with the idea of installing an SSD; Yosemite has breathted new life into my old iMac so I'm thinking about it again. Is it really worth it on such an old machine?
 
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BASRPH said:
I have a 7 yr old IMac. Its specs are OSX Version 10.9.5, Processor 2.4GHZ, Core 2 Duo, Memory 4GB 667 MHRZ DDR 2 SDRAM.


What program can I get to clean up any crap that may be causing this slowdown? I am assuming that junk files are causing this. Any suggestion?
Click to expand...

I use CleanMyMac2 by MacPaw. 30% discount currently; free to try.
 
metanoiapi said:
I use CleanMyMac2 by MacPaw.
Click to expand...
I would not recommend using CleanMyMac or any of its variants, based on the number of complaints that have been posted in this forum and elsewhere. As an example: CleanMyMac cleaned too much. Here's a recent example. While you may not have experienced problems yet, enough people have that it's wise to avoid it, especially since there are free alternatives that have better reputations, such as Onyx.
​
You don't need "cleaner" or "maintenance" apps to keep your Mac running well, and some of these apps can do more harm than good. Most only remove files/folders or unused languages or architectures, which does nothing more than free up some drive space, with the risk of deleting something important in the process. These apps will not make your Mac run faster or more efficiently, since having stuff stored on a drive does not impact performance, unless you're running out of drive space. In fact, deleting some caches can hurt performance, rather than help it, since more system resources are used and performance suffers while each cache is being rebuilt. Many of these tasks should only be done selectively to troubleshoot specific problems, not en masse as routine maintenance.
​
Mac OS X does a good job of taking care of itself, without the need for 3rd party software. Among other things, it has its own maintenance scripts that run silently in the background on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, without user intervention.
 
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