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Hi, I've a late 2012 iMac running Catalina. It's got 1TB SATA disk with 750gb storage available. No odd or gaming software loaded.
It's only used for googling, MS Office (light stuff) and that's about it. Recently it's got very laggy, can take 20-60secs to move from one program to another, googling can be v v slow. If it goes to sleep, often restarts with a grey screen and takes several minutes to 'boot up'.
I've gone to disk utility to try repair and see that I have 2 HDs:
1. 'Macintosh HD' of which 11gb is used, 233 is other volume and 755gb is free
2. 'Macintosh HD - data' of which 228gb is used, 16gb is other and 755 is free
Is having 2 HDs muddling the computer or is this normal?
Any advice what to do?
Cheers
Buy a new computer.
That's what my son says! But I've also a Macbook Air, 2011, same use etc and it's super fast and slick ...
Back up your data, reformat drive as one volume, then reinstall operating system.
You may have to create an install disk on a USB drive if you don't have the original OS CDs. Old operating systems are still available...
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/102662
The Macbook Air will feel a lot snappier as ones of that era had SSDs rather than old style hard disks.
As muffin-man says, basically flatten it and start again. I bet you only have 1 HDD with two volumes.
Back up everything and start again. You don't say how much RAM you have as programmes can be very RAM hungry.
Does it have a SSD or the older HDD? This will be in Apple / About / More info.
A change to SDD will make a big difference too.
A change to SDD will make a big difference too.
It's a 13 year old computer running a six year old OS that cannot be updated and will probably be orphaned by newer browsers too. Spending money upgrading is just a waste of money.
Thanks.
Is there any sense in backing up the 'data' HD, then deleting it and avoid a fresh install?
Looks like it's HDD not SSD.
Cheers
I had a iMac of that era, when the internal fusion drive went wonky I switched to using an external SSD and it was way faster, so that might be an option if a simple wipe/reinstall does not get you where you want to be.
I'd recommend minimum 16 Gb RAM, pre-"M" chip macs are pretty RAM hungry.
If you want to upgrade to a newer unsupported OS, you probably can using the Opencore Legacy Patcher, but would probably only say it's worth the hassle if browsers are becoming unsupported.
I had a iMac of that era, when the internal fusion drive went wonky I switched to using an external SSD and it was way faster, so that might be an option if a simple wipe/reinstall does not get you where you want to be.
I've experienced this on a couple of Fusion Drive Macs too. Becomes almost unusable without replacing the drive or using an external one.
Thanks all. Currently restoring my files, fingers crossed doing the above will make it usable. If not I'll explore a ssd.
Cheers
double post
It may be presenting itself as having two drives because Macs of that era had a 'Fusion Drive' a sort of hybrid of HDD and SSD - basically a conventional HDD with an additional small SSD inside - the larger HDD doing the bulk storage and the quicker SSD part covering frequent tasks. Its from an era when SSD weren't really big enough (affordably) for desktop machines so were a bit of a halfway house. Reformatting it will still have it present in Disk Utility as two drives because it is two drives, theyre just in one box
A wipe and reinstall may help all the same. The system software should be sorting the file system so that frequently accessed stuff like apps are on the SSD portion and large files are on the HDD- but its possible over time stuff has got jumbled up and some of the resources certain apps need might now be split between the two elements of the drive.
If you do a big reset/restore you might not see performance increase straight away as things like Spotlight will be beavering away indexing the drive for several days
If it’s the original drive it’s well beyond its expected life so you’re on borrowed time - make sure everything is backed up asap.
from what I remember disk utility doesn’t correctly show up all issues with fusion drives, but there are some lower level OS tools that will. Basically the spinning disc part is dying and it won’t last much longer.
Back up all your data
buy an external ssd, try running the os from that.
I had this problem. Tried reinstalling multiple times, it worked "ok" for a few days then back to normal. Eventually bought a SSD for £50 and it has been working completely fine for 6 months now. I read that latest updates of the most recent operating system available for machines of that age rely on SSD for some reason. Anyway it fixed mine. I used these instructions, didn't need to buy the kit they are selling. It was about a 30 minute job in the end.
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iMac+Intel+27-Inch+EMC+2639+Hard+Drive+Replacement/19643
Thanks all ... looks like an SSD is the way to go. Is any SSD usable?
Any recos for a external SSD (I reckon 500gb is OK as I have an external HD to back up photos which is about half of my 250gb storage)?
My iMac has thunderbolt ports (I think - they're the smaller ports next to the standard USB ports).
The thunderbolt 2 ports are deprecated and replaced by USB C. So your best bet is probably to try to find an adaptor cable that will convert the TB pots to USB C thunderbolt. All the ones I found ion a quick search went the other way (letting you use a legacy TB2 external drive on a new Mac with USB C) but I wonder if they're bidirectional - can you stick the usbC into your new drive and get a TB2-TB2 cable.
Might be worth going to an Apple Store and asking if no-one here can help;
I looked for a Thunderbolt solution and can't remember if it was a case of not finding anything I was sure would work, or it being cost prohibitive. But I found using an external SSD hanging off one of the USB 3.0 ports was still faster than the original Fusion drive anyway.
At the time I didn't fancy taking it apart to swap the internal drive, but if I needed to now I would probably have a bash, having now done a Macbook 12" battery swap which rates higher on the iFixit difficulty rankings.
Just to say, have just added an external SSD, transferred to that and it seems v sprightly and happy now - thank you!