2013 iMac very slow inspite of two fresh clean installs

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I have an iMac that my children and I use, and have used since 2013. We noticed it refusing to start up irregularly, with a black stop sign coming on intermittently and hence I decided to clean wipe it and install all the soft ware again.

Now , I've installed OS X Sierra, but I find that it beachballs all too frequently. Word takes 21 bounces to open, it;s not optimal.

There is 8 GB of RAM, it's a fusion drive and the CPU isn't all that old.

Normally a slow down in the system would be fixed by a clean, fresh install ( I even did not restore old time machine backups)

My suspicion is that my 4 year old iMac is not optimal for Sierra, I've run out of options, should I clean wipe again and install Mavericks or Yosemite, or is there anything else I've missed?

Thanks a lot! In advance!
 
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What exact iMac model do you have? If the hard drive "piece" of the Fusion Drive setup is one that spins at 5400 rpm, that can/will slow things down. Did you try Erasing and Formatting the "setup", and just installing Sierra? If you did, what kind of performance did you attain?
 
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What exact iMac model do you have? If the hard drive "piece" of the Fusion Drive setup is one that spins at 5400 rpm, that can/will slow things down. Did you try Erasing and Formatting the "setup", and just installing Sierra? If you did, what kind of performance did you attain?

Thanks for the prompt reply. Mine is a late 2013 iMac. I have erased and formatted the drive several times and the last fresh install was just a fortnight ago. It seemed to run better with El Capitan, however with Sierra, the beach balls are too frequent

I would like programs to open on at least 4-5 bounces of the dock icons, they just don't and the computer freezes far to often

Since the drives are virtually free and the install is fresh, I am thinking of wiping the drive and installing Yosemite/Mavericks or El Capitan, anything that would run smoothly

With 8GB RAM, the fusion drive and the Quad core i5 processor, I expect it to run smoothly for a few more years, but can't figure out why a fresh install is so slow

The OS and the apps are supposed to be on the 128 GB SSD part of the Fusion drive , with only media on the HDD. I can't explain why the OS and the apps are soo drearily slow..

Can you?
 
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That definitely is a "strange" situation. I don't use Fusion Drives, preferring to just have SSDs only inside each of my Macs. But in your case, one would expect that just doing a fresh, clean, "virgin" installation of the OS by itself (and nothing else), all of that would easily fit on the SSD "piece", and the machine, with just the OS on it, would run quickly.

As for what "goes on" the SSD, there is, of course, the OS itself. The remainder of the space would be for apps, but of course that is a finite amount of space. Hence, some apps might need to remain on the HDD "piece".

One other thing: if you have the 21.5" model, then the HDD spins at only 5400 prm:

https://support.apple.com/kb/sp687?locale=en_US

But if you have the 27" model, the HDD spins at a "faster" 7200 rpm:

https://support.apple.com/kb/sp688?locale=en_US

Just to give you an idea, when I purchased my late 2012 Mac Mini, it came with a slow, 5400 rpm 1 TB drive (if I had purchased it from Apple, I could have had it configured with a Fusion drive setup). I actually did not need that much space, and 5400 rpm is rather slow. So, I replaced that drive with a fast Samsung 840 Pro 256 gig SSD (the 1 TB drive went inside a nice, slim external case), and the performance difference was/is dramatic! Going forward, if I were to purchase a newer Mac desktop machine, I would only go with an SSD inside.
 
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That definitely is a "strange" situation. I don't use Fusion Drives, preferring to just have SSDs only inside each of my Macs. But in your case, one would expect that just doing a fresh, clean, "virgin" installation of the OS by itself (and nothing else), all of that would easily fit on the SSD "piece", and the machine, with just the OS on it, would run quickly.

As for what "goes on" the SSD, there is, of course, the OS itself. The remainder of the space would be for apps, but of course that is a finite amount of space. Hence, some apps might need to remain on the HDD "piece".

One other thing: if you have the 21.5" model, then the HDD spins at only 5400 prm:

https://support.apple.com/kb/sp687?locale=en_US

But if you have the 27" model, the HDD spins at a "faster" 7200 rpm:

https://support.apple.com/kb/sp688?locale=en_US

Just to give you an idea, when I purchased my late 2012 Mac Mini, it came with a slow, 5400 rpm 1 TB drive (if I had purchased it from Apple, I could have had it configured with a Fusion drive setup). I actually did not need that much space, and 5400 rpm is rather slow. So, I replaced that drive with a fast Samsung 840 Pro 256 gig SSD (the 1 TB drive went inside a nice, slim external case), and the performance difference was/is dramatic! Going forward, if I were to purchase a newer Mac desktop machine, I would only go with an SSD inside.
 
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I Have a late 2012/21.5" IMac and have no problem with it. I clean it weekly with 3 different programs.
 
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Disk Utility is, for the most part, good, although not as complete as a product like Tech Tool Pro. As for CleanMyMac, some folks on here have stated it is not good for your machine, as it could cause issues almost as mad as MacKeeper. I do not have any experience with it, but I am just saying what some others have indicated. Don't know about Dr. Cleaner.

One excellent, free, and solid program I rely on is Onyx, available from here:

https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html

I actually depend on it, and in fact I will not upgrade to a newer Mac OS until that product (along with 5 other critical ones I use) has been upgraded for compatibility with the new Mac OS. Note that Onyx has specific versions for each Mac OS, so if you decide to use it, make sure you get the appropriate version.

Onyx has been around quite a while, has a solid reputation, and has had numerous, positive reviews. I recommend it highly (along with the excellent commercial product TechTool Pro).

Finally, there is a good amount of disk cleanup one can do on their own. In fact, I do such cleanup on a daily basis. 99% of that involves having deleted EMials permanently removed. I use Outlook 2016 as my EMail client, and there is a simple keyboard combination I use to accomplish this.
 
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I have an iMac that my children and I use, and have used since 2013. We noticed it refusing to start up irregularly, with a black stop sign coming on intermittently and hence I decided to clean wipe it and install all the soft ware again.

Now , I've installed OS X Sierra, but I find that it beachballs all too frequently. Word takes 21 bounces to open, it;s not optimal.

There is 8 GB of RAM, it's a fusion drive and the CPU isn't all that old.

Normally a slow down in the system would be fixed by a clean, fresh install ( I even did not restore old time machine backups)

My suspicion is that my 4 year old iMac is not optimal for Sierra, I've run out of options, should I clean wipe again and install Mavericks or Yosemite, or is there anything else I've missed?

Thanks a lot! In advance!
Disk Utility is, for the most part, good, although not as complete as a product like Tech Tool Pro. As for CleanMyMac, some folks on here have stated it is not good for your machine, as it could cause issues almost as mad as MacKeeper. I do not have any experience with it, but I am just saying what some others have indicated. Don't know about Dr. Cleaner.

One excellent, free, and solid program I rely on is Onyx, available from here:

https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html

I actually depend on it, and in fact I will not upgrade to a newer Mac OS until that product (along with 5 other critical ones I use) has been upgraded for compatibility with the new Mac OS. Note that Onyx has specific versions for each Mac OS, so if you decide to use it, make sure you get the appropriate version.

Onyx has been around quite a while, has a solid reputation, and has had numerous, positive reviews. I recommend it highly (along with the excellent commercial product TechTool Pro).

Finally, there is a good amount of disk cleanup one can do on their own. In fact, I do such cleanup on a daily basis. 99% of that involves having deleted EMials permanently removed. I use Outlook 2016 as my EMail client, and there is a simple keyboard combination I use to accomplish this.
Disk Utility is, for the most part, good, although not as complete as a product like Tech Tool Pro. As for CleanMyMac, some folks on here have stated it is not good for your machine, as it could cause issues almost as mad as MacKeeper. I do not have any experience with it, but I am just saying what some others have indicated. Don't know about Dr. Cleaner.

One excellent, free, and solid program I rely on is Onyx, available from here:

https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html

I actually depend on it, and in fact I will not upgrade to a newer Mac OS until that product (along with 5 other critical ones I use) has been upgraded for compatibility with the new Mac OS. Note that Onyx has specific versions for each Mac OS, so if you decide to use it, make sure you get the appropriate version.

Onyx has been around quite a while, has a solid reputation, and has had numerous, positive reviews. I recommend it highly (along with the excellent commercial product TechTool Pro).

Finally, there is a good amount of disk cleanup one can do on their own. In fact, I do such cleanup on a daily basis. 99% of that involves having deleted EMials permanently removed. I use Outlook 2016 as my EMail client, and there is a simple keyboard combination I use to accomplish this.
Disk Utility is, for the most part, good, although not as complete as a product like Tech Tool Pro. As for CleanMyMac, some folks on here have stated it is not good for your machine, as it could cause issues almost as mad as MacKeeper. I do not have any experience with it, but I am just saying what some others have indicated. Don't know about Dr. Cleaner.

One excellent, free, and solid program I rely on is Onyx, available from here:

https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html

I actually depend on it, and in fact I will not upgrade to a newer Mac OS until that product (along with 5 other critical ones I use) has been upgraded for compatibility with the new Mac OS. Note that Onyx has specific versions for each Mac OS, so if you decide to use it, make sure you get the appropriate version.

Onyx has been around quite a while, has a solid reputation, and has had numerous, positive reviews. I recommend it highly (along with the excellent commercial product TechTool Pro).

Finally, there is a good amount of disk cleanup one can do on their own. In fact, I do such cleanup on a daily basis. 99% of that involves having deleted EMials permanently removed. I use Outlook 2016 as my EMail client, and there is a simple keyboard combination I use to accomplish this.
 
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I have used both Onyx and Tech Tool Pro, and although they work well, they are not as easy to use as Dr. Cleaner and Clean My Mac - both of which have never given me any trouble. Also, if you are using Mac email, clearing the Previous Recipients under windows is useful.
 
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I have used both Onyx and Tech Tool Pro, and although they work well, they are not as easy to use as Dr. Cleaner and Clean My Mac - both of which have never given me any trouble.

While ease of use can be helpful, that does not compare to how well established both Onyx and Tech Tool Pro are. They are solid, have numerous positive reviews, and have been around for quite some time.

As for CleanMyMac, maybe those folks who mentioned "issues" with it can chime in. And as I mentioned previously, I have no experience at all with Dr. Cleaner. I do see, though, that it is sold in the App Sore:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dr-cleaner-disk-memory-system-optimizer/id921458519?mt=12

One thing is that its Disk Optimization feature is useless for SSDs. Tech Tool Pro also has both Volume and File Optimization routines, but they are not recommended for SSDs. Additionally, none of these free products (including Onyx) offer the Surface Scan and Volume Rebuild features that Tech Tool Pro has. I find those extremely useful.
 
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Maybe the drive is the problem. If you can get hold of an SSD drive and replace the present one you can test that. I recently replace the HDD in a laptop with a 256gb SSD ant the difference is amazing. Not only the startup and shut down but working on the machine is so fast as well. No more beachballs! I keep the drive lean and mean and put data on an external drive to do so.
 
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Maybe the drive is the problem. If you can get hold of an SSD drive and replace the present one you can test that. I recently replace the HDD in a laptop with a 256gb SSD ant the difference is amazing. Not only the startup and shut down but working on the machine is so fast as well. No more beachballs! I keep the drive lean and mean and put data on an external drive to do so.

I did exactly the same thing with my late 2012 Mac Mini (my mid 2013 13" MacBook Air came with a 252 gig SSD), and yes, the performance difference was, and still is, dramatic. Going forward, if I were to purchase another new Mac, it would have to come with an SSD.
 

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