After sleep, my iMac is very slow to respond for a 45seconds+

Question

When my iMac enters sleep, and then I wake it up -- either shortly after, or the next day, while it responds to the wake request quickly, it's basically unresponsive for 45 seconds+ after.

Specifically:

• Opening a new window for safari (which was still running on sleep) takes forever
• scrolling in mail will show blank space
• bringing up Alfred can take a while

Things to note:

• Late 2010 i7 iMac w/ 1TB disk & 8gb
• Mavericks w/ all updates applied
• HD is audibly being hit aggressively

Is this a known issue, and if not, can I run some tools to tell me who is accessing the hard disk.

At this point, I'm considering a new computer, but it seems odd that a i7 w/ 8gb is becoming pretty useless for light email & browsing. :)

Answer 1

Leave the Activity Monitor open and visible so that when you wake, you'll be able to see the memory/cpu hogs.

Answer 2

Mavericks updated the Spotlight indexer, and many others have noticed this behavior. The Mavericks update has taken its toll on older hardware, and the reason tends to be that many of the updated features are really optimized for more powerful and energy efficient hardware.

If you open activity monitor, you will likely see kernel_task and mds running high. This is due to these "improvements" in the spotlight indexer.

I have a 2011 MBP with a Core i7. My wife has a 2010 MBP with a Core 2 Duo.

I didn't want to spend the money on a SSD for both of them, so I compromised and put a Seagate Momentous Hybrid Drive. It behaves much like a SSD at a much lower cost. Very affordable upgrade that will breathe new life into your Mac.

I use my Mac for Java development and performance and quick wake from sleep are very important. The performance improvement was enough that the only compelling reason I can find to upgrade to a new one would be to gain the extra real estate of the Retina display.

My advice would be to check the Activity Monitor and look into upgrading the hard drive. If you don't want to spend $300+ on a full SSD you will certainly benefit from a Hybrid Drive like the Seagate Momentus. 1TB can be picked up for around $100.

Answer 3

How bout turning off spotlight? I guess that would make searches take longer but Mavericks is like pulling teeth the way it puts drives to sleep and you have to wait for it to be happy before it shows any directory structure etc. The concept of replacing perfectly good hardware that worked perfectly before the update seems a bit unreasonable. There must be a way to speed up work flow givene these "improvements" ;)

Answer 4

Try verifying the volume using Disk Utility. If that shows no errors, try creating a new user to see if the new user has the same issue.

If it does, check RAM and HDD (there are a lot of Tools, i personally like Micromat TechTool).

If that shows no errors, try reinstalling OS X and try a external volume. If the error on external volumes does not persist, some software is at fault.