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Slow imac recommendations


andytoad
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Two quick tips. Archive as much mail as you can. And then offload as many files as you can to iCloud (use the ‘remove download’ option on folders). 

You should them use CleanmymacX which isn’t free but the good ones aren’t. It’s a good system. Turn off the real time malware protection and the taskbar plugin monitor. 

My home iMac is a 2012 and keeping it clean it works pretty well for the basic things I use it for. I don’t know why anyone would expect a 2011 model to be obsolete. 

One thing that’ll make a massive difference is to upgrade the disk to SSD then it’ll be a lot quicker. 

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52 minutes ago, DoubleOhStephan said:

I've asked the Mrs who's a Mac guru and, after clarifying it's a 2011 machine several times ("2011??... 2011???.... Are you sure its 2011???? What the hell still runs on it?????") has drawn a blank I'm afraid. She did say she would have used Norton utilities, but doesn't know if its still available for Mac. 

I know, its a right ol' banger, but bits good enough for me..

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47 minutes ago, ped said:

Two quick tips. Archive as much mail as you can. And then offload as many files as you can to iCloud (use the ‘remove download’ option on folders). 

You should them use CleanmymacX which isn’t free but the good ones aren’t. It’s a good system. Turn off the real time malware protection and the taskbar plugin monitor. 

My home iMac is a 2012 and keeping it clean it works pretty well for the basic things I use it for. I don’t know why anyone would expect a 2011 model to be obsolete. 

One thing that’ll make a massive difference is to upgrade the disk to SSD then it’ll be a lot quicker. 

I will take a look at the clean my macX, SSD - Solid State drive?

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25 minutes ago, hooky_lowdown said:

Check how much free hard drive space you have, if it's nearly full, this will slow your iMac down. Also sometimes the hard drive itself could be on its way out, this will also slow down your iMac.

 

Only half full, so ok I reckon..

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My Mac is also a 2011 model and it’s decrepitly slow. I get massively frustrated with it and am regularly tempted to kick it down the stairs, which won’t speed it up but will vent my ire with it. 
 

I’ll be watching this thread closely because I’ve tried everything to improve things and nothing has worked for me so far. 

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My MacBook Pro is a Late 2011, and the single best thing I did to it is put a Solid State drive in it. Extra RAM is also worth doing, but if you’ve only got the cash for one thing then do the drive, it’s like night and day!

Not sure how easy this is on an iMac though, as they can be tricky to get into and even trickier to put back together!

Routine cleaning is recommended, sometimes even a full, clean install of your OS from time to time.
also, which OS are you running?

Edited by paul_5
OS question
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Another vote for CleanmyMac. I’ve been using it for a few months now. Being able to maximise RAM as you go along (YouTube videos really eats up my RAM space) is a great feature. The scheduled full clean is reasonably quick to complete and I’m convinced makes a difference.

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1 minute ago, paul_5 said:

My MacBook Pro is a Late 2011, and the single best thing I did to it is put a Solid State drive in it. Extra RAM is also worth doing, but if you’ve only got the cash for one thing then do the drive, it’s like night and day!
 

Not sure how easy this is on an iMac though, as they can be tricky to get into and even trickier to put back together!

This. SSD and extra ram will certainly speed up you imac. I have an iMac similar year to yours, I've done many upgrades on mine over the years, which now more resembles a hackintosh more than the original iMac.

Changing the hard drive in iMac's are fairly easy, I've done it before. You'll need the right tools, which can be picked up very cheap, and there's lots of tutorials online to guide you step by step through the process. If you're not practical, or good with your hands, then take it to a computer specialist.

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@BrunoBass its OSX  El Capitan

Well, @ped @ezbass I've taken the dive and and bought a years worth of CleanmyMAC, £22, worth a try! It does seem to be behaving better, not making dodgy constant HDD noises! It cleared 40.5GB of Junk, 35 threats and 3 performance issues.

Ive just bought 8GB of Apple RAM too (its only capable of accepting 16GB).

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Just now, andytoad said:

The bookyard are doing a new 2.5" 1TB Electra 3G SSD  for £135 which seems reasonable, I presume its not just a case of remove, install and restore from a backup @hooky_lowdown ?

They take the screen off to access the drive. Not too difficult to do yourself but best if they do it! 

Now buy some iCloud storage and offload those files. 

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28 minutes ago, ped said:

They take the screen off to access the drive. Not too difficult to do yourself but best if they do it! 

Now buy some iCloud storage and offload those files. 

Ive just logged onto the Apple icloud for the first time ever its full, theres loads of shite on there that I don't even want, so I need to look at my settings for a number of Iphone Apps etc..

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Brilliant suggestions already. I had a 2011 iMac  (pretty sure it was 2011).

I upgraded the 1TB standard hard drive to a 900Gb SSD. A super fast and quality offering (Samsung). I also updated the memory - and despite Apple’s suggestion it would max at 16Gb, a web search confirmed it would take much more and thus 32Gb is the minimum I would go for when it comes to studio work. The machine worked beautifully!

interestingly as Ped has said, the upgrade was fairly easy and I was able to leave the existing drive in the iMac as well as installing the SSD. I know how to do that anyway, but there are some really good “walk through” guides online that are reliable.

You ask about swapping drives: I used CarbonCopy - and amazing application that allows you to make an exact copy of a disc on to another. Then it’s just a case of setting the new SSD as the drive to boot from in the system settings menu. I’ve forgotten the name of the menu!

If you can, eventually, I would back up all your data and format the drive, install everything from fresh with a “new” vanilla OS. Sometimes a machine slowing down is caused by a profile issue, corruption or similar. (Has happened to me).

That said, CleanMyMacX is actually rather good and I expect it can do a lot to help.

Finally, one last thing to try as well -  Create yourself a new user account on the iMac to log in to and see if the machine seems to run quicker. This is related to the above as it was a profile issue that screwed up the running of my iMac.. but the upgrades ended up being the best thing I did for it.

Ok, so I eventually sold the machine to go “mobile” with my MacBook Pro.. some years later, I have another iMac on my desk 😂😂😂😂 love it, it’s so ridiculously fun.

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5 minutes ago, Dood said:

Brilliant suggestions already. I had a 2011 iMac  (pretty sure it was 2011).

I upgraded the 1TB standard hard drive to a 900Gb SSD. A super fast and quality offering (Samsung). I also updated the memory - and despite Apple’s suggestion it would max at 16Gb, a web search confirmed it would take much more and thus 32Gb is the minimum I would go for when it comes to studio work. The machine worked beautifully!

interestingly as Ped has said, the upgrade was fairly easy and I was able to leave the existing drive in the iMac as well as installing the SSD. I know how to do that anyway, but there are some really good “walk through” guides online that are reliable.

You ask about swapping drives: I used CarbonCopy - and amazing application that allows you to make an exact copy of a disc on to another. Then it’s just a case of setting the new SSD as the drive to boot from in the system settings menu. I’ve forgotten the name of the menu!

If you can, eventually, I would back up all your data and format the drive, install everything from fresh with a “new” vanilla OS. Sometimes a machine slowing down is caused by a profile issue, corruption or similar. (Has happened to me).

That said, CleanMyMacX is actually rather good and I expect it can do a lot to help.

Finally, one last thing to try as well -  Create yourself a new user account on the iMac to log in to and see if the machine seems to run quicker. This is related to the above as it was a profile issue that screwed up the running of my iMac.. but the upgrades ended up being the best thing I did for it.

Ok, so I eventually sold the machine to go “mobile” with my MacBook Pro.. some years later, I have another iMac on my desk 😂😂😂😂 love it, it’s so ridiculously fun.

@Dood I did wonder if I could upgrade to 32GB as a few websites suggested I was able to for my Mac, however, I thought Id play it safe and stick with the Apple recommendation. I only tend to use it for tinterweb and Office anyway. Interesting that there is enough space to keep the original HDD in too, did you use it as a slave to the SDD or is that pointless (ie it would still be in the system slowing it down)?

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19 minutes ago, andytoad said:

@Dood I did wonder if I could upgrade to 32GB as a few websites suggested I was able to for my Mac, however, I thought Id play it safe and stick with the Apple recommendation. I only tend to use it for tinterweb and Office anyway. Interesting that there is enough space to keep the original HDD in too, did you use it as a slave to the SDD or is that pointless (ie it would still be in the system slowing it down)?

Just like me! I was totally planning to play it safe, but ..well, I seem to suffer from IT G.A.S too lol. Glad I went for it in the end. Agree that it would be overkill for basic tasks.

I’ll have to see if I can find the “walkthrough” that showed me that it was possible to keep both drives in. My 27” iMac had a DVD drive - there’s space under the drive to slip the SSD in and the cables I bought were able to feed through the casing to the mother board. 
Yes, once I did the clone, I formatted the original drive and used it as an “archive” drive to move data I didn’t need all the time, or when speed was less of an issue. Then, I bought a 2Tb external USB hard drive that I set up as a TimeMachine backup for both of the internal drives.

Speaking of which, as my iMac is “business critical”,  like above, I have a TimeMachine backup covering all of the connected drives. Again, I also use CarbonCopy as a belt and braces “zero downtime” backup. It is scheduled to do a clone of the system SSD every night automatically. Should the internal SSD fail, I can instantly switch to the cloned drive and carry on working like nothing happened. (Meanwhile I can get a new SSD, install and do a clone in the opposite direction.) I appreciate this has nothing to do with the above OP, but others may find it useful, especially for those running a studio etc. 

Edited by Dood
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Just now, BrunoBass said:

So the general consensus it that CleanMyMac (sounds like something Columbo might say...) is worth the money and offers a noticeable improvement in speed? 

It can do, but it can’t fix every problem. The features are very useful though.

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I've just had the Graphics card issue  with mine from 2010, pixelated screen and won't boot up. Looked into the fix and for the same money am buying another one. Luckily got a recent backup.

Tried all the hacks like wrapping it in a blanket and pressing weird combinations of buttons.....

Slumming it on an old laptop at the moment, very slow.

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