Is my 2015 MacOS dying or what?

[techiesteve]

Surely the OP's best approach is to have someone or a business more technically able tidy up his hard drive's contents then have the 1TB HD replaced by a 2TB SSD. Wether to clone or clean install OS and migrate TBD by whoever is undertaking the work.

 

[DougieCooper95]

FWIW, I would think that there is something else amiss that is causing such a slow down, but I am not saying that clearing out and making more space available will not help.

I have a 2011 iMac with a 1 TB HDD partitioned with Mavericks OS 10.9.5 on a top 300GB boot partition and 50GB free, and this iMac is not slow in any way, considering its age.

For the OP, when was the last time you did a Safe Boot from a cold startup?
Do that and then do any repairs you can with Disk Utility and then just restart normally and see if there is not an improvement.

Do you shut down your Mac After you have been using it for the day, or do you leave it running or put it to sleep???


- Patrick
=======

I always shut it down, I never leave it to sleep. I thought so too that there was something amiss.

I want to throw out a big CAUTION sign here, and suggest that DougieCooper stop taking any major actions and let us offer some specific advice.

Going from a problem with the "buffering" and the general way he's describing his computer, I think it's safe to assume that our new friend is not very... technically experienced.

Installing Big Sur as a response to his problems is another huge no-no.

I would suggest that Dougie find someone with Mac experience to provide hands-on assistance... as he's now in rather unfamiliar territory with a completely new OS and a lot of holdover problems from his previous system.

And the suggestion to remove files to free up some space... good idea, with a caveat: I once had a client ask me to provide support when they were having some behavioural issues with their iMac. I began by asking if anything had changed recently. They responded with words that still put a chill through my soul: "I just cleaned up the System Folder...."

A lot of damage can be done if, for example, someone tries to "free up space" by searching the internet for information on how to get into their Photo library via the Finder and then start tossing large image files willy-nilly... resulting in a majorly corrupted Photo library.

My first question to Dougie would be: Did you back up your files before you installed a new operating system on your troubled iMac?

I'm not a tech expert, like at all, but I'm only deleting files I know I don't really need that shouldn't mess with the system at all (mov, jpeg, cr2 for raw camera files, etc). I never deleted them earlier because I thought I could use them for something artsy (my work is creative) but I needed to free up space and my external hard drives are all full (with creative stuff I KNOW I can't delete!).

Didn't back up my files because my other external hard drives are full and I can't afford a new hard drive for now.

That's good advice @NSMacGuru, about the files to clear out. Dougie needs to get some of HIS files off the system, safely. But as he is already at Catalina, the System files are not easy candidates for removal because they are on a read-only volume and he has to jump through some hoops to be able to manipulate it. At this point we don't know what he has on his drive, just that he doesn't have nearly the space he needs to run efficiently, and with Catalina converting the drive to APFS, the performance problem is compounded.

I don't know if he installed Big Sur or not. He said he downloaded it but then the install failed, so I think he's still on Catalina, and probably should stay there until he clears out his drive a bit. If he did manage to get Big Sur going, he's still got to clear off 100-150GB to allow working space. And that has to be HIS files as Big Sur is not only read-only but encrypted and he has zero access to it.

So sorry, my comment yesterday about Big Sur was rushed because I came back from work and I was super tired but yes, I'm still on Catalina.

It was weird because I cleared up about 40-50GB so I had enough on the system volume to install it (it wouldn't let me when I had 29GB). I went to install Big Sur, went to work, it didn't install because of a problem (my computer says it restarted because of a problem). But now, for some reason, my storage has gone back down to 25GB? So an extra 25GB got filled up?

It's frustrating because I deleted a lot of my own stuff so get to 50GB. I'm not sure what else I can delete to get it up to there, let alone 100GB. I have a feeling there are bigger files on this computer I don't know about? Because I can't seem to find any other items big enough (on storage too, apparently documents is the highest amount of storage I have).

 

[IWT]

Just saying, that Dougie got this advice in post #8 where it was clear that at least 100GB of free space had to be acquired. Suggestions were offered re moving big libraries such as Photos and Music. At that time he only had 24GB free and Big Sur comes in at 12GB alone!

Ian

 

[Rod]

Dougie, it's difficult to know where to start with your issues so let me make a few quick suggestions:
1. Problems like yours are almost never solved by upgrading your OS.
2. In a Finder window, in column view you can sort files by size, thereby showing the largest files in any folder. Or you can use Command + F keys to bring up the finder search window and search for files by size or type eg movies.
3. You are obviously short on storage, could you consolidate all your backup HD's so that you have one external HD a little larger or the same size as your internal HD?
4. If so you could create a bootable clone of your internal HD with free trial versions of either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner.
5. You could then erase an reformat your Macintosh HD and perform a "clean" instal of either Catalina or Big Sur. Lastly you can selectively restore the stuff you want from the clone. I do this at each major upgrade of macOS and I'm always surprised at how much stuff I get rid of. Old preference files, app support files, duplicate files, caches, etc. You will save a heap of storage.


Sent from my iPhone using Mac-Forums

 

[DougieCooper95]

Dougie, it's difficult to know where to start with your issues so let me make a few quick suggestions:
1. Problems like yours are almost never solved by upgrading your OS.
2. In a Finder window, in column view you can sort files by size, thereby showing the largest files in any folder. Or you can use Command + F keys to bring up the finder search window and search for files by size or type eg movies.
3. You are obviously short on storage, could you consolidate all your backup HD's so that you have one external HD a little larger or the same size as your internal HD?
4. If so you could create a bootable clone of your internal HD with free trial versions of either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner.
5. You could then erase an reformat your Macintosh HD and perform a "clean" instal of either Catalina or Big Sur. Lastly you can selectively restore the stuff you want from the clone. I do this at each major upgrade of macOS and I'm always surprised at how much stuff I get rid of. Old preference files, app support files, duplicate files, caches, etc. You will save a heap of storage.


Sent from my iPhone using Mac-Forums

1. Okay, I'll hold off on doing that.
2. I've done that before but all the files showcased (from 1GB to 10GB) are less than 30GB in total, so I think it's something else.
3 and 4, I could try doing so though I'd probably have to save up and buy any drive, my others are just completely fall.
Ditto with 5, but I don't think I can do this any time soon. But if that's my only other option, then I'll try it out for sure.

 

[MacInWin]

Get a tool called DaisyDisk to assess your files. It will inventory the drive and show you the heavy hitters.

You have presented an unsolvable problem--too full drive, all externals full as well, no funds for a new drive. Files can't be just suspended, so you either 1) Delete something that you don't need or 2) Get more storage. There really aren't any alternatives.

 

[NSMacGuru]

I hope I didn't come across as insensitive, Dougie. My comments are intended in your best interests

There's another possibility for freeing up space that you may not have considered - the /Applications/ folder. I know I've installed willy-nilly various apps over the years to try out and never bothered to clean up afterward.

One example -I've worked with Word since ... I think version 4.0 days....? and I have a hate / tolerate relationship with it most of the time. For a time, I was actively looking for a replacement, having sworn that Microsoft would never again darken my hard drive. So I had installed -to test- LibreOffice, OpenOffice, Mellel, FreeOffice, and various other word processing apps. Then I forgot to delete the darn things.... and those suites take up space!

Also, if you have apps that you've purchased from the Mac App Store (or from third parties, but for which you have registration credentials saved), you can always delete some of the items you rarely use and reinstall them again in the future. In some cases, that can free up a LOT of gigs.

You may also have files in your /Users/yourusername/Applications/ folder, which can happen depending on the installer and your answers to questions like (Install for all users or just yourself?). Worth a look.

I've always been a huge fan of the unique graphical representation of GrandPerspective, a free app that does what DaisyDisk does, pretty much. It shows your files by relative sized blocks in a grid. Pointing at any one of the blocks shows the path that file, so you can dig it out and toss it. You can also right-click (CTRL-click) on any block and "Reveal in Finder". Best of all, it's free and completely up to date - now working under Big Sur!

 

[DougieCooper95]

Thank you, NS, I will try out those suggestions (only just read this).

I've managed to get 50GB but I'm still having issues. Computer freezes and restarts a lot, it seems like freeing space isn't doing anything about these issues. Should I think about backing up everything and getting a new HDD? Could Catalina also be a problem here?

 

[Rod]

I really understand your frustration Dougie but if you want to be able to use your obviously valuable iMac at all you are going to have to get some storage.
Obviously cost is another issue and I can sympathise there but the cheapest solution is to fix the problem yourself (with our help).
If you could just obtain an external HD big enough to contain all the data on your iMac (1-2GB) then you could create a bootable clone and erase your iMac's internal drive and perform a clean instal of Catalina.
This would tell us two things; if your internal drive is still viable and if the problem is related to your iMac or "other".
If it turned out that your iMac internal drive is faulty or the device itself for some other reason then you would have a cloned copy to restore to a new device/drive.
If it performs as intended with just an operating system on board then you could restore your files one at a time by "drag an drop" from the clone till you have the essential apps/files you need and leave the rest on the clone till you can afford to upgrade your internal drive to something bigger.
I really cannot think of a cheaper, better way.

 

[DougieCooper95]

So I went to applications and deleted a lot. Got 80GB. Decided to download BigSur.

It started well but another problem arises.

It kept looping restarts before it got stuck on "less than a minute remaining." After about half an hour, it restarted. I thought it was going well again.

Then every time the loading bar went to 100%, restart. Did this about five times and the loading bar refuses to go past a quarter of the way through.

Forced shut down about three times. Same issue. Now I can't get into my computer at all.

Don't know what to do. This is incredibly frustrating. I did option, command and r, because apparently it gives you another option to download big sur. But I only have: "Restore from time machine, reinstall Mac OS, disk utility, options."

EDIT:

Okay, I started in safe mode and I've got bigsur and I have 100GB.

I thought the computer would be quicker but nope, just as slow. Firefox in particular.

Sometimes either the app will keep hopping when I try to open it. But when it's open, I'll try to close tabs and the tab will stay on the browser, I just can't click it. If I try to open another tab, it'll crash or the tab will keep buffering and never open.

If I right click on a link and do something like "Search google with..." or "Open link in new tab", again, I get the buffering icon and it takes 20 or so seconds to open, or it never opens at all.

A lot of this occurs later in the day or sometimes a few hours or an hour after opening Firefox. I've updated the app, deleted cookies, deleted cache, reinstalled. Nothing's worked and it's getting worse (it was slow but not nearly this bad a couple of months ago).

I'll go with downloading an app to clean my mac and will back up everything when I can (maybe reinstall Mac OS?) but maybe Firefox could be causing my mac problems in the first place?

 

[Rod]

Well, as stated in my post #24, "Problems like yours are almost never solved by upgrading your OS."
I might add that this is especially true with Big Sur which has been a problematic upgrade for many users but it seems you have managed to instal it albeit with similar problems.
Do you have the same browsing problems with Safari ?

 

[MacInWin]

Also, the system is now reindexing your entire drive, which takes time. During that reindexing the system will be slower than it is normally. Eventually the reindexing will complete and the system will get faster. As for browser issues, particularly being slow, that is a lot of the time a DNS problem. In System Preferences, Network, click on whatever interface you are using in the left column and the go Advanced and look at the DNS tab. Click on + and put in 8.8.8.8 and then drag it to the top of the list. (That is google's DNS server, which is one of the quickest and most accurate available.) Follow that with 192.168.1.1, which should be your router. Then click Apple and exit back to the browser and see if that helped. (To be honest, it doesn't help that you have done some pretty brutal shutdowns, so there may be some issues with the drive integrity as well. Once you get some time, do a First Aid on the drive, and try booting from an external to do First Aid on the internal drive.)

 

[Rod]

My solution remains the same as as post #29 but more complicated.

Until you can erase your HD completely and instal a "clean" copy of the macOS you will not know if your problem is hardware or software related.
A process of elimination to find the source of your problem may be difficult when your device is not functioning well. As Jake suggests give the system time to reindex and see what you have then.

The problem with erasing your device is that you need a bootable source to do that, something that can startup the device independent of the internal drive. Previously on your old operating system you could have done that by cloning your hard drive with say Carbon Copy Cloner (free) which would produce a bootable clone, sadly with Big Sur that is not so easy.
Currently you would need to either create a bootable installer for Big Sur on a USB thumb drive or create a clone of your HD and instal Big Sur on that. In both cases you would need to download the Big Sur Installer again from the App Store (unless you kept a copy of it).

Lastly you still need to preserve the data (your files and folders) somewhere to do this.

 

[Rod]

PS. My apologies for post #29, the below was a typo it should have read 1-2TB not 1-2GB

If you could just obtain an external HD big enough to contain all the data on your iMac (1-2GB) then you could create a bootable clone

 

[DougieCooper95]

I've had a week or just under with Big Sur and I haven't found too many issues so far apart from the first day when I was downloading it. It's still a bit slow even with 100GB free (opening apps takes a little while) but firefox is much better now. Don't want to jinx it so I'm going to buy another drive at the end of the month and do two backups but so far so good.

Is it wise to maybe give this mac another year or so before I get a newer one? It's not that old but I use a lot of apps because of my film work so it might be wearing down quicker than usual.

 

[IWT]

My personal view is that any slowing or similar is likely to be related to the 100GB of free space.

As a general rule, perhaps even more so with macOS 11 Big Sur, is that you should have around 15% of your Mac's Drive capacity free, which in your case, would be 150GB. I'm taking in account that your Mac has a Spinning Hard Drive.

It's maybe not a big deal, and I know you have moved heaven & earth to get that 100GB up from your original 11.5GB, but the more free space the better.

Not saying it's relevant, but I seem to recall that you have only 8GB of RAM. That's the minimum for reliable working with Big Sur.

Ian

 

[Rod]

I think the spinning HD as Ian suggests is probably at the heart of it and for sure more RAM would help but I have found Big Sur to be less demanding on CPU resources for the same tasks than Catalina. My 2015 MBPr has only 8GB DDR3 RAM but it's only using around 70% of my CPU for a video conversion whereas it used to use 95%+ on both cores. I do have 150GB free of 500.