iMac getting slow. What are the options?

[Pasha]

Live 9.5 here on Mavericks with stock iMac from 2013.
The 5400 RPM drive is getting slower and loading project with Max4Live can get as much as 2 minutes!
Ableton and Max4Live are installed in the internal system drive, while I have Library and Projects on different drives.
The bottleneck seems to be Max4Live startup from the 5400 RPM drive.

I was envisioning as a solution, getting an external USB 3.0 SSD drive and move the system and apps there with Superduper as a 'Sandbox' or as a full backup and then boot regularly from there, maintaining the other drives (both USB 3.0 7200 RPM drives) as they are.

Anyone with this working setup?

Best Regards
Pasha

[hacktheplanet]

The SSD upgrade will change your life. Here's a great kit with all the necessary tools: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20 ... IMACHDD12/
(I really like OWC. Service and products are fantastic.)

I use a single internal 256gb SSD for everything, then a NAS with 500gb and 3tb drives for Time Machine and storage. Since you have a desktop, a USB enclosure will work for you.
If you want to go cRaZy get a thunderbolt enclosure and fill it with a SSD. I use a similar setup at work for re imaging Macs and it's insanely fast.

[Pasha]

The SSD upgrade will change your life. Here's a great kit with all the necessary tools: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20 ... IMACHDD12/
(I really like OWC. Service and products are fantastic.)

I use a single internal 256gb SSD for everything, then a NAS with 500gb and 3tb drives for Time Machine and storage. Since you have a desktop, a USB enclosure will work for you.
If you want to go cRaZy get a thunderbolt enclosure and fill it with a SSD. I use a similar setup at work for re imaging Macs and it's insanely fast.

I went OWC but had no luck with Thunderbolt enclosure.. can you suggest one?
Moreover do you aim for a full backup to SSD or using the SandBox Share User option of Superduper, creating an SSD with OSX, Boot files and Apps on it? (no user data, mainly docs, photos, itunes usual stuff)

Best Regards
Pasha

[Quez]

SSD is like.. crazy fast.

But first, if you haven't already, I would try running the Disk Utility and check/repair permissions + verify your hard drive. You could also run Onyx and clear up temp files, systems, users files... (but you may lose preferences in app after cleaning user files). Make a back-up before running Onyx.

[Pasha]

SSD is like.. crazy fast.

But first, if you haven't already, I would try running the Disk Utility and check/repair permissions + verify your hard drive. You could also run Onyx and clear up temp files, systems, users files... (but you may lose preferences in app after cleaning user files). Make a back-up before running Onyx.

Done. The disk is slow. it's a damn 5400 RPM. I shouldn't have bought it in the first place... starting from a 7200 RPM drive 2.5" makes it better. I guess starting from an SSD will spit the hell out of it!

All the Best
Pasha

[Guillermo Barrancos]

An important note! Do not use SSD for backup or as any disk for lots of Write activities.
SSD's have a very short life span if you use it for continuous backups and lots of write activities. You can burn them out within 1-2 years.
Can become very expensive. Just a waste of money to use expensive SSD for stuff like backups.

For those kind of tasks it's better to use a good quality conventional 3,5" harddisk.

I only use an SSD for my OS disk on my PC and use fast conventional harddisks for the rest. But I am looking into a second SSD in the future to move my files onto, that are only used for reads, like VST plugin Libraries, etc.

When SSD's get in the same price range as conventional harddisks and offer better longetivity, I might switch to SSD completely one day.

I just thought I would point that out.

[Pasha]

An important note! Do not use SSD for backup or as any disk for lots of Write activities.
SSD's have a very short life span if you use it for continuous backups and lots of write activities. You can burn them out within 1-2 years.
Can become very expensive. Just a waste of money to use expensive SSD for stuff like backups.

For those kind of tasks it's better to use a good quality conventional 3,5" harddisk.

I only use an SSD for my OS disk on my PC and use fast conventional harddisks for the rest. But I am looking into a second SSD in the future to move my files onto, that are only used for reads, like VST plugin Libraries, etc.

When SSD's get in the same price range as conventional harddisks and offer better longetivity, I might switch to SSD completely one day.

I just thought I would point that out.

Thanks. Good point.
The Thunderbolt SSD drives are very expensive. They play a lot on the Thunderbolt Interface which according to intel costs 15$ and often they offer no cable.. an additional cost. Maybe USB 3.0 it's good enough...

Best
Pasha

[H20nly]

The SSD upgrade will change your life. Here's a great kit with all the necessary tools: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20 ... IMACHDD12/
(I really like OWC. Service and products are fantastic.)

very cool. i've been plotting an SSD upgrade...
*bookmark*


on the iMac getting slow business... i've noticed this on mine lately too. i keep having to wait for it to wake up... get the beach ball... then it gets hung and in full screen from a website that i found interesting about 3 years ago - jimcarrey.com. the site was amazing then, haven't viewed it since. i've tried all the usual verify permissions and repair disk options and such, also reset Safari and Firefox, and just when i think it's back to normal and start to forget about it, i randomly find it stuck drooling and barely capable of coming out of hibernation with a full screen backdrop of said website being the first thing that comes up after a minute or two of beach ball on black.

it doesn't happen often, but it's very annoying when it does. i'm interested in resetting everything back to factory defaults at this point... i'm just not sure how on OS X. i would hate to use a backup that places this issue onto a new SSD. sure, it may make it recover faster... but that's a band-aid, not a fix.

[Pasha]

The SSD upgrade will change your life. Here's a great kit with all the necessary tools: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20 ... IMACHDD12/
(I really like OWC. Service and products are fantastic.)

very cool. i've been plotting an SSD upgrade...
*bookmark*


on the iMac getting slow business... i've noticed this on mine lately too. i keep having to wait for it to wake up... get the beach ball... then it gets hung and in full screen from a website that i found interesting about 3 years ago - jimcarrey.com. the site was amazing then, haven't viewed it since. i've tried all the usual verify permissions and repair disk options and such, also reset Safari and Firefox, and just when i think it's back to normal and start to forget about it, i randomly find it stuck drooling and barely capable of coming out of hibernation with a full screen backdrop of said website being the first thing that comes up after a minute or two of beach ball on black.

it doesn't happen often, but it's very annoying when it does. i'm interested in resetting everything back to factory defaults at this point... i'm just not sure how on OS X. i would hate to use a backup that places this issue onto a new SSD. sure, it may make it recover faster... but that's a band-aid, not a fix.

I have noticed the beach ball on web sites too recently. I have investigated it and it seems that modern browsers rely on disk cache more than ram...
Your suggestion is good I think. My Internal disk drive due to combo updates has the system scattered around and not close to the fastest zone (beginning of disk). I saw this with iDefrag. So a complete reinstall from scratch would help. However I plan to reinstall the system plain to a new SSD and then clone back the Internal drive to SSD with superduper smart update. I hope that will work.

All the Best
Pasha

[Pasha]

The SSD upgrade will change your life. Here's a great kit with all the necessary tools: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20 ... IMACHDD12/
(I really like OWC. Service and products are fantastic.)

I use a single internal 256gb SSD for everything, then a NAS with 500gb and 3tb drives for Time Machine and storage. Since you have a desktop, a USB enclosure will work for you.
If you want to go cRaZy get a thunderbolt enclosure and fill it with a SSD. I use a similar setup at work for re imaging Macs and it's insanely fast.

hacktheplanet,

When you use an external SSD for boot and documents, what you make of the internal drive?

Best Regards
Pasha

[Pasha]

Let me resurrect this to avoid duplicates.

I have finally moved to external SSD sandbox with superduper.
Performances are now much much better than internal drive.
However I am now facing a new decision. Still on Mavericks, soon sierra will likely won't work with some of my older hardware which is ok with El Capitan.
So.. should I stick with a stable system on Mavericks or move to El Capitain and thus enjoy some more years albeit lagging behind sierra which I won't get anyway?

Best
Pasha

[H20nly]

i was really hesitant to go El Capitan from Mavericks... on 2013 iMac... but i finally took the plunge and lost no functionality that i can account for after several months.

i use an Apogee Duet 2, a gen 1 Axiom 25, RemotZero SL, and OG Push.

not sure if this helps... but i can understand your hesitance.

do a full backup of Mavericks before you upgrade so you can roll back. at least with the new SSD it will be fast in both directions

[fishmonkey]

go the El Capitan...

[alpertt]

I moved from MLion to El Capitan (mid 2012 MBP)
It is slower (maybe %10-15) but i want to use this machine couple more years..

[hacktheplanet]

hacktheplanet,

When you use an external SSD for boot and documents, what you make of the internal drive?

Best Regards
Pasha

Ah sorry probably wasn't clear. My setup at home is a little complex because IT is my day job.

The internal drive on my laptop (2010 mbp) is a 240gb SSD. I have a Mac Mini running Server that has two 500gb HDD inside, one for the system and one for Time Machine backups. There is a 3tb external HDD attached to the Mini with FireWire 800 that is shared on my network. It is only used for storage and manual backups, so it doesn't need to be fast. I also have an additional 3tb HDD that lives in a case on the shelf. It is offline backup. I take periodic clones of the online drive using a command line tool called rsync (which I believe is the same thing SuperDuper uses). I HIGHLY recommend using Time Machine and some random external drive shared on your network. Saved my ass a number of times, and your router at home can probably already use an external drive.

The SSDs sold by OWC have custom firmware that does some fancy stuff with wear-leveling or whatever it's called. Read/write limits on SSDs are a thing, but less so with modern ones. In practice, a HDD will die from mechanical damage waaaaaaay faster than a SSD will die from read/write failure. The fact that Apple still offers HDDs as the default storage in iMacs seems rather silly to me, especially since they are not easily upgraded.

Also, El Cap is a great OS. Yosemite was garbage.