Make Logos faster for spinning hard drives

I have a fairly new iMac (mid-2017 21.5”, 8GB RAM, 3Ghz Quad-Core i5).

Granted, the hard drive is a traditional 1TB HDD, not SSD. Nevertheless, Logos is just way to slow at times — even when not indexing. When L8 came out, the performance improved, but it’s gradually been getting bad again. Would it be possible to address this again, please?

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Myke Harbuck

Sorry to hear about your issues. However, this hasn't been my expedience, even on a Mac that is several years old. And oddly enough, I've seen more *positive* feedback about performance with this release than with any that I can remember in the past. I'm part of several FB groups for Logos users, and I've heard a ton of praise about improved performance and not one complaint about poor performance.

Maybe there's some tweaking you can do?? I don't know how much you use Logos, but if its a lot, perhaps you might consider a clean install of your OS and Logos if you can't resolve any other way? I know that's a LOT of work, but as much as I use Logos, if I were having performance issues that couldn't be resolved any other way, this is what I would do. I would also reinstall Logos FIRST, and measure performance before adding other installs. This will help determine if Logos is really your primary issue.

Also remember that browsers hog a ton of system resources, so try to completely terminate those and any other programs that might be open in the background.

Calix Furus

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1335771#Comment_1335771

@myke-h Thank you for such a quick reply, I have tried those things :(

I am in full time pastoral ministry as well as study at a seminary, so I use Logos a lot, for many hours almost every day.

To be fair, sometimes my Mac seems slow anyway, but Logos in particular seems to be bogging down considerably. At other times, it runs pretty smoothly! Odd.

But it’s encouraging to read that you have an older Mac and Logos runs well. I might try a clean install again once Big Sur comes out.

Myke Harbuck

@familia-furus-39 ahhh yes, you just reminded me....I noticed a HUGE performance improvement when i upgraded to Big Sir last week. Dont know how I forgot to mention that. Microsoft Word, browsers, and Logos are all performing much, much better with the new OS.

Calix Furus

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1335779#Comment_1335779

@myke-h Wow, that is tremendous news! And that's with the Beta! Well, let's hope it does the same for my Mac. Was that a clean install?

Myke Harbuck

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1335779#Comment_1335779

@familia-furus-39 No. just an update. :-)

Calix Furus

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1335779#Comment_1335779

@myke-h That's very exciting. Thanks for your help, Michael, maybe I was too quick to write this suggestion for performance improvement after all! I should have to delete it if Big Sur helps that Big ;)

David Taylor, Jr.

I will say SSD really does make a massive difference.

unknown

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1335771#Comment_1335771

@familia-furus-39 Sounds to me as though you have a hard drive beginning to fail. Also make sure you've got about 10% of your drive free, less than that will slow you down too.

Calix Furus

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1335789#Comment_1335789

@davidtaylorjr I’m sure it does, I notice it on my 2015 MacBook. External SSD support would be nice if that’s the case, but Logos only works with internal drives.

Calix Furus

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1335771#Comment_1335771

@jcr-chilis-84 Is there any way to find this out without taking it to an Apple Store? Apple has already replaced it once, it’s not even a year old, it would be strange if it was failing already.

Phil Gons (Logos)

@familia-furus-39, we strongly recommend installing Logos on an SSD (ideally an NVMe or even 3D XPoint). The performance improvements are well worth the investment.

If you could identify the specific areas where performance is the worst and create separate suggestions for each, that would help us prioritize the right issues.

I'm sorry your performance experience is subpar.

Calix Furus

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1335793#Comment_1335793

@phil-gons Thank you, Phil, for your reply. The problem is that with a Mac upgrading the internal HDD to an SSD is not straightforward at all. I have seriously considered buying an external SSD and running Logos from there, but that is apparently not possible.

Is there any reason why Logos does not support external SSDs?

Another workaround I was thinking is to install my entire system on an external SSD and install Logos on that system -- so Logos would run from the same SSD as macOS. Would that work? If so, could you recommend an external SSD, like you kindly did with the internal?

Many thanks once again.

Phil Gons (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1335793#Comment_1335793

@familia-furus-39, historically, external drives, even SSDs, weren't much faster or sufficiently reliable to officially support an external installation. Some users have done it, though, and had success. Now that Thunderbolt 3 drives are available, this might be a much higher-success path than it was in the past.

You might get some help with this user-created wiki page: https://wiki.logos.com/Install_in_different_folder_or_drive. You could also ask about it in our forums, where lots of knowledgeable users could share tips and ideas from their own experience.

I don't have direct experience with Thunderbolt 3 drives, but https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GBGG68L looks to be like a great pick. Samsung makes industry-leading SSDs. I've owned several and have been quite happy with the performance.

Calix Furus

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1335793#Comment_1335793

@phil-gons Thank you, Phil.