Increase speed of application startup on fusion drive?

[Rev. Dr. Billy]

I have a late 2015 iMac running Mojave and a 1 TB Fusion drive. Initially, often used applications started up very quickly, but now as I've updated applications such as Microsoft Office and Quicken, these applications do not open nearly as fast. I was led to believe that commonly used applications and files were stored in the flash storage portion of the hybrid drive thus leading to their quick response. Is it possible that older versions of updated applications are preventing the newer versions from being stored in the faster flash storage? If so, is there a way to reconfigure the storage so that the updated applications are stored in the flash portion?

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello,

The Fusion Drive should automatically/dynamically manage what is stored in the SSD portion. If you recently upgraded to Mojave, you may have issues running older versions of Microsoft Office and Quicken. Which versions of them are you running?

C

 

[Rev. Dr. Billy]

I recently purchased the online version of Quicken, which was automatically updated a few weeks back to ver. 5.17.3. As for Office, I think it's the 2011 version, but I'm not quite sure. I never really checked until you asked and when I looked in the applications folder I seem to have several versions of the various pieces of Office (ie. a couple of Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.) with different icons. The version that opens from the dock seems to be the latest (supposedly updated this past July) as ver. 16.39.

 

[Rev. Dr. Billy]

I don't know if this is the thread to ask, but you seem quite knowledgeable. I've been led to believe that if I upgrade to the Catalina OS I may not be able to run some legacy applications because they are not 64 bit. (I've even heard that there is NO Adobe Reader for the new Mac OS.) Can I easily (I'm not very computer savvy) install the Catalina OS while maintaining the Mojave to use to run these older 32 bit applications? Sorry if this isn't the place for this question.

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello,

That version of Quicken is good to go, and was updated to 5.17.4 a few days ago. Office 2011 is quite old in computer terms, and will not run at all in Catalina if you upgrade later, so can safely use its uninstaller to remove it. 16.39 is the latest version of Microsoft Office, so you're good there.

I have also noticed the newer versions don't load as quickly, but that seems to be normal as long as it isn't like 20-30 seconds or so to launch them.

Catalina - that is correct, it will not run 32-bit applications at all. You cannot run Mojave and Catalina at the same time on a single drive, unless you partition it, and install Mojave on one and Catalina on the othre. For ease of use, I would just stay at Mojave until you are ready to move to Catalina with update/upgraded applications.

You really don't need Adobe Reader, as the Preview application has all the same basic functions, and comes with macOS. I no longer use any Microsoft or Adobe software on my personal Macs, only on those I use for work.

C

 

[Rev. Dr. Billy]

Thank you very much for your advice. If I could impose on you a little more, could you tell me which pieces of Microsoft I can safely get rid of and still open my docs?

Attached is a screen shot of the applications I've found that appear to relate to the Microsoft Office products.
Again, thank you for any assistance you're able to provide.

 

[Cory Cooper]

No worries.

As always, it is recommended that you have a current Time Machine or other backup of your data/drive.

That said, you can safely delete the Microsoft Excel.app.installBackup file with the prohibitive sign on the icon (circle with line through it).

The easiest way to remove the older Microsoft Office applications, is to simply move the Microsoft Office 2004 and Microsoft Office 2011 folders to the Trash. You can then try opening some of your Office documents. They should open with the newer versions you have installed. If they do, then you can safely empty the trash. There are ways to remove the other pieces of those Microsoft Office installs, but they are a bit more involved, and they don't take up that much space. If you want to remove it completely, you can follow the steps here:

Troubleshoot Office 2011 for Mac issues by completely uninstalling before you reinstall

Microsoft Office 2004 has an uninstaller, but it won't run in versions of OS X after Snow Leopard 10.6.x. Just deleting the Microsoft Office 2004 folder will suffice. You can probably delete the Microsoft Messenger application as well, if you don't still use it, since it is from 2013.

Hope that helps, and let us know if you have any additional questions.

C

 

[Rev. Dr. Billy]

Thank you. A very simple and easily understandable way to determine which parts of the Microsoft Office I needed to keep. Worked like a charm. I don't use anywhere near the capacity of my hard drive so I'm not concerned about uninstalling every little piece of obsolete apps.

It may be wishful thinking, but I believe Work/Excel/PowerPoint open more quickly now. Maybe they pushed the deleted versions out of the flash memory?

Having been saved on more than one occasion by Time Machine backups, I take to heart your recommendation to backup my hard drive. In fact I alternate backups between a Time Capsule and a second 1 Tb hard drive (and store valuable documents to a server in the Cloud).

Some of the 32 bit applications are work specific and unlikely to be upgraded. I think I hang on to them in the same way people keep 40 years of old Christmas cards, "because you never know...". I've gotten in the position a couple of times where apps like Quicken and TurboTax would no longer work on my mac and I was forced to upgrade the operating system. So now I try to stay as current as I can, thus my query regarding having both Mojave and Catalina installed.

I appreciate your perspective regarding putting both operating systems on my computer. From what I've read, it seems easy enough to create a new volume on my hard drive to install Catalina, not like the old days when one had to wipe the memory and set up partitions. But if you think I'd be taking too large a risk, I'll play it safe. After all I learned a long time ago that if you ask an expert for their opinion you should be ready to accept it.

 

[Cory Cooper]

No worries.

Glad it seems to have helped the speed. You have a very good backup process there...kudos. Understood and agree on keeping old dogs lying around - you never know.

Yes, there are ways to partition storage and run multiple versions of OS X/macOS. Lots of folks do that, and it is much safer and works better than in the past. I personally like to keep my Mac drives in a single partition, unless the OS does it automatically like Catalina. I really like that feature of Catalina - separating the OS and user data for security sandboxing. If I need another version of OS X/macOS to troubleshoot or run older software with, I will install it on an external drive or in a virtual machine in Parallels/VMware Fusion, and run it when needed.

Be well,

C

 

[Rev. Dr. Billy]

Okay then. Talk of virtual machines and sandboxing is moving me out of my comfort zone. You've been a big help, not only solving my original problem, but giving me good advice. I'm coming down on the side of, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Thanks for all your help.

 

[gagsoft]

Is there a way to use A shared filed on Time capsule for time machine file without erasing it. Managed to get it done with the Mac Book but I do not see options just to use the shared folder on the iMac. Would really appreciate it if someone could tell me how to do this.

 

[Rev. Dr. Billy]

I'm not qualified to answer your question, but if you can contact Cory Cooper, I'd bet that he'd have good advice.