Very Slow iMac - Help!

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Hello,

My iMac has recently gotten so slow that it's nearly unusable due to the long wait times. (I get the Spinning Beach Ball.) and slow start ups. This first started about 2 weeks ago after a system crash.

To try to fix this, I've done the following:

1. Run Disk Utility, Repair Disk Permissions & Verify Disk (no errors reported .).

2. Booted into Safe Mode. To invoke maintenance utilities that I read are run.

3. Performed a reinstall of OS X (10.6) which completed successfully, the second time. The first time, it couldn't complete. Before running the install, the second time, I ran Disk Utility - Repair Disk from the install disk.

Unfortunately, none of these actions have made any difference in the wait times.

I'm waiting on a delivery of ram that may, but at this point, I don't know if that will help. The thing is I'm not doing anything more memory or
processor intensive now than I've done in the past year during which the performance has been excellent.

Any thoughts about what I might do to determine what's causing the behavior and what I can do to fix it will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks.

iMac Intel Core 2 Duo 233 MHz - 24" model - 1.5 GB memory
 

chscag

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2017 27" iMac, 10.5" iPad Pro, iPhone 8, iPhone 11, iPhone 12 Mini, Numerous iPods, Monterey
It could still be your hard drive even though it checks out OK with Disk Utility. The best test of the hard drive is the S.M.A.R.T. utility: LINK

You could also try running the Apple Hardware Test which should be on your original install media. LINK

If either one of the tests above indicate that the hard drive is failing, go to iFixit: The free repair manual and look up the procedure for changing out the hard drive yourself. It's not an easy task to do on an iMac.
 
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Yes, that's it. The drive has bad sectors. I had come across S.M.A.R.T. acronym but didn't focus on it because it had passed the Disk Utility test and was working...kind of. Didn't know a drive could be failing slowly.

Thanks for providing these links!
 

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