iMac Running Very Slow - What To Do

SimplyBetter

martindow said:

Thanks SimplyBetter.  As you suspect that looks a bit daunting for me.  I have got a local repairer who may well be confident doing this for me.  If so do SSDs have standard dimensions to be a straight swap for the existing drive?

Straight swap. Personally, I would go for an external SSD, following the guides to get it up and running, rather than allow any 'local repairer' anywhere near it. 
There's good reason why there are techs who specialise in Apple gear. They will have the tools and experience...and likely won't be cheap there. Go external.

martindow

Thanks again, I'll go for an external drive.

bob2302

Unless you are going to have the OS on the external drive I doubt it will make much difference. If you do, it means you have to take the drive with the laptop everywhere it goes. 

martindow

bob2302 said:

Unless you are going to have the OS on the external drive I doubt it will make much difference. If you do, it means you have to take the drive with the laptop everywhere it goes. 

It's an imac, bob, so that will no be an issue.  The idea is to have the OS externally so that it will run entirely from the SSD, hopefully faster than the existing HDD.

bob2302

martindow said:

bob2302 said:

Unless you are going to have the OS on the external drive I doubt it will make much difference. If you do, it means you have to take the drive with the laptop everywhere it goes. 

It's an imac, bob, so that will no be an issue.  The idea is to have the OS externally so that it will run entirely from the SSD, hopefully faster than the existing HDD.

You can have the OS on an external drive for any OS, but unless the laptop is only used like a desktop, it seems very inconvenient.

SimplyBetter

bob2302 said:

martindow said:

bob2302 said:

Unless you are going to have the OS on the external drive I doubt it will make much difference. If you do, it means you have to take the drive with the laptop everywhere it goes. 

It's an imac, bob, so that will no be an issue.  The idea is to have the OS externally so that it will run entirely from the SSD, hopefully faster than the existing HDD.

You can have the OS on an external drive for any OS, but unless the laptop is only used like a desktop, it seems very inconvenient.

Please stop Trolling the OP.

martindow

Reporting back in case it helps anyone else finding this thread.

Crucial recommended the X10 Pro 1TB Portable SSD when I entered the Mac model, which is very similar to that suggested by SimplyBetter above.  I then followed the instructions from Apple to download the OS and transfer the data from the internal HD to the new one.

The process of transferring seemed to take all day with each step taking ages to complete, but it was straightforward (even for me).

The Mac is considerably improved.  It is particularly noticeable how fast apps start up and how quickly emails and files are opened.  The initial start up is faster than it was, but relatively slow compared to my PC - maybe this is a Mac thing?

Thanks for all of your comments and particularly to SimplyBetter for his detailed advice and comments.

booneruk

Glad things have improved.

I won't go into all the ins and outs of it, but an external SSD drive will generally be less performant than a drive connected internally.