Just formatted my iMac

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

Holy shit, it's like I have a new computer :zombie:

It's a late 2009 27" i5 model. For the past months it's been REALLY sluggish. Bootup took like 3 minutes, the HD was constantly making noise, beach balls, overall slowness. ProTools would behave erratically and Photoshop was laggy as all hell. Even opening a folder in Finder could take half a minute at times.

I had tried literally every trick and maintenance routine I could find, troubleshooting the problem for hours and hours and eventually losing hope. I was certain the HD was going bad and I was already browsing the Apple store looking for a new computer.

Then I thought I'd give a total format and a clean install a shot, since I had nothing to lose. God damn. My dear, old iMac now boots to desktop in less than 40 seconds and is fast as hell!

To those who insist a clean install isn't necessary on a Mac: You're wrong. Believe me when I say I tried EVERYTHING: Repairing permissions, Repair Disk, constantly doing a SMART check, Onyx, Spotlight tweaks, desktop tweaks... Whenever I thought I had found a solution, the problem came back in an hour.

Yeah, it's a pain installing all the software and plugins again, but fuck that, I'm loving it!

 

[JeffTD]

Had this experience after a physical HDD crash a few months back, so nice to be on a clean machine! It takes more like 2 years for things to start getting bad but that beats the 6-month cycle on a Windows machine.

 

[SocialNumb]

Hmm, I reformatted one my iMacs for a "fresh start" just a couple months ago. Not because there was anything wrong. I noticed no improvement at all. I was expecting to but it just ran like it always did. Just fine. This is an old 2.8 Intel Core 2 Duo running 10.5.8.

Anyways, good you got things sorted.

 

[Ola Englund]

so did you reinstall everything??! that's sounds tedious... all the plugins, activations fuck that

 

[JeffTD]

so did you reinstall everything??! that's sounds tedious... all the plugins, activations fuck that

What are activations? Don't you just use the [k] installer with the DyNAMICS bundle?

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

Hmm, I reformatted one my iMacs for a "fresh start" just a couple months ago. Not because there was anything wrong. I noticed no improvement at all. I was expecting to but it just ran like it always did. Just fine. This is an old 2.8 Intel Core 2 Duo running 10.5.8.

Anyways, good you got things sorted.

Well, it's hard to fix something that ain't broken!

so did you reinstall everything??! that's sounds tedious... all the plugins, activations fuck that

Yeah, little by little. I kinda fucked up here. I have thousands (probably over ten grand) of euros spent in software and plugins, and I didn't make a list before formatting... Now I have no idea of the stuff I have bought during the past years except for the software with physical install media I have in my closet

Gladly, the majority of my plugins use iLok licenses, so I have a nifty list of what to re-download there!

 

[Steven Otto]

My MacBook Pro had the same symptoms as you described. was sluggish as hell and interactions had a 10 second delay. Updating from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion fixed it and now it's snappy as hell again.
Luckily there was no need for a reformat, so next it gets sluggish again I'll refresh the OS.

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

My MacBook Pro had the same symptoms as you described. was sluggish as hell and interactions had a 10 second delay. Updating from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion fixed it and now it's snappy as hell again.
Luckily there was no need for a reformat, so next it gets sluggish again I'll refresh the OS.

I went from 10.6 to 10.7 and then 10.8, no effect :/

 

[updog]

it's a huge pain to install a new hard drive into an imac... but get an SSD into that shit. just do it immediately. go outside right now, and buy one.

i changed the original HDD in my macbook into an SSD and holy flying shitmonster it's like i bought a whole new model. all the little waits are gone and boot time is now at least 5x faster. and this is even though i have a SATA 1 port in my mac, which theoretically only allows around a 4th of the speed i could have if i had a computer with SATA III.

i don't recommend Kingston SSDNow for macs, though. the general concensus is that Samsung SSDs work great in macs, which i've found so far as well.

 

[updog]

also, if your permissions are correct and disk repair doesn't detect an error, you could've just used Time Machine to restore your files. it's not like in Windows where everything gets fucked up with the registry - there isn't one, so you could have restored from a TM backup and everything would have worked like before. it's one of those things about OSX that just work.

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

it's a huge pain to install a new hard drive into an imac... but get an SSD into that shit. just do it immediately. go outside right now, and buy one.

No. Why?

1) I'd spend money that I don't have and lose at least 75% of my storage capacity.
2) Switching an SSD into this model is not a matter of plug and play AFAIK, and I'm not talking about the huge pain in opening and closing the damn thing.
3) I'd have to get an external HD for storage purposes, which is something I don't want to do for convenience's sake.

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

also, if your permissions are correct and disk repair doesn't detect an error, you could've just used Time Machine to restore your files. it's not like in Windows where everything gets fucked up with the registry - there isn't one, so you could have restored from a TM backup and everything would have worked like before. it's one of those things about OSX that just work.

Well, SOMETHING was fucked up. Otherwise there wouldn't have been any issues. If I had done a complete system restore from my TM backup, chances are the problem would have migrated back with the restoration. Not to mention the joy of actually having a clean system without a fuck-ton of redundant system files left over from software I haven't used in ages.

 

[updog]

i'm surprised if you already aren't using an external for audio. also there should be room for two HDDs inside an imac.

to each his own i guess. to be fair, it really is a massive pain to replace a hard drive of an imac. you'd have to pretty much take the whole thing apart.

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

i'm surprised if you already aren't using an external for audio. also there should be room for two HDDs inside an imac.

to each his own i guess. to be fair, it really is a massive pain to replace a hard drive of an imac. you'd have to pretty much take the whole thing apart.

Nope, there isn't. You have to replace the optical drive and fit the new HD in with an adapter, and I need my Superdrive.

And to be honest, I rarely do any audio work on this machine anymore. When I did, I had zero trouble finishing quite a bunch of albums without using a second HD for audio

 

[JeffTD]

Yup, zero room inside these things for a second drive. I've opened mine up... it's a pain in the dick. I've been doing the single internal drive thing on my 2009 i7 27" since I got it; slightly tempted to replace the optical with an SSD as I can use my MBP as a disc drive via FW if needed, but I've got other shit I'd rather spend money on.

 

[kev]

Take an image of that badboy now you're all sorted Jarkko - 1 click reinstall then next time!

 

[arv_foh]

Why don't you guys just do fresh installs then restore all your apps and files from time machine? All the gain, none of the pain, I've been doing this once a year for several years now

 

[egan.]

Why don't you guys just do fresh installs then restore all your apps and files from time machine? All the gain, none of the pain, I've been doing this once a year for several years now

I've never tried. Is it truly that easy?

 

[JeffTD]

^^It is.


I'm just realizing Jarkko that I left something really important out - I had to do my system refresh because my harddrive physically crashed; that's what was causing the sluggishness of my machine. I don't want to scare you or anything but that is something to definitely be weary of if it happens again.

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

Why don't you guys just do fresh installs then restore all your apps and files from time machine? All the gain, none of the pain, I've been doing this once a year for several years now

Like I said, I didn't want to do a full system restore from TM since there was an unidentified problem that apparently didn't lurk in the hardware. Going the automatic "Restore system from a Time Machine backup" route might have brought the problem back.

Naturally, I did grab all my important personal files and such from the TM backup.

^^It is.


I'm just realizing Jarkko that I left something really important out - I had to do my system refresh because my harddrive physically crashed; that's what was causing the sluggishness of my machine. I don't want to scare you or anything but that is something to definitely be weary of if it happens again.

Yup, totally aware of the possibility, but I've got my Time Machine just in case!