XprotectService's massive data reading slowing my computer down - Help please

Boot into Restore mode,CMD+r keys...

Look at top of screen for Utilities menu...

In Disk Utility>View, select Show all Devices, highlight the top left entry.

Run Disk First Aid on all items in the left panel, from top down.

Are you running any VPN, Anti-Virus, or Cleaning apps?

We need to see what all is running, a report from this will not display any personal info...

Using EtreCheck - Apple Community

EtreCheck is a FREE simple little diagnostic tool to display the important details of your system configuration and allow you to copy that information to the Clipboard. It is meant to be used with Apple Support Communities to help people help you with your Mac. It will not display any personal info. Give it Full Disk Access.

https://www.etrecheck.com/

Give etrecheck Full Disk Access before running.

Thanks for Old Toad’s etrecheck instructions…

Slow iMac 2017 - Apple Community

You can use Drive DX to possibly get a better view of Drive health…

https://binaryfruit.com/drivedx

RYz wrote:

I haven’t done that Restore -> First Aid thing yet, partly because I expect it will show all my partitions. I have 4 partitions with a different version of Mac OS on each one, Catalina being the most recent. Should I really be scanning all of them with Catalina’s version of First Aid?

Yes, it is safe to run First Aid on all the other partitions/Containers for the other installed macOS operating systems. The only time it is not safe is when the OS which created the file system is newer than the OS you wish to use repair the file system.

You will want to run First Aid on the hidden Container(s) which will automatically scan all other APFS volumes within that Container. You definitely want to do this for the Catalina Container since you are having issues Catalina itself. However, Catalina can see & access the volumes/Containers for the other installed macOS operating systems so scanning them should also be done.

Even if First Aid says everything is "Ok", click "Show Details" and scroll back through the report to see if any unfixed errors exist. If there are errors, then run First Aid again until the errors are gone. If the errors remain after several scans, then those errors probably cannot be repaired.

Drive DX says pretty much everything’s 100%. There are 2 warnings plus the Reallocated Sector Count says failing, though? I’m not sure what to make of that combination.

Post the complete DriveDx text report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper on the forum editing toolbar. "Warning" & "Failing" conditions listed by DriveDx differ on how they should be interpreted depending on whether the drive is a hard drive or an SSD. If they exist for a hard drive, then it means the hard drive is worn out & failing respectively and should be replaced. But for an SSD, they don't necessarily have the same meaning since SSDs behave differently than a hard drive....an SSD's health report needs to manually interpreted.

More than likely the warnings DriveDx is showing is why the system is not performing well if it uses a hard drive (perhaps even if it is an SSD).

• Reallocated Sector Count says failing

Just about the worst error you could have, druve is failing, get everything backed up asap.:)

PS. Sorry to hear of the illness my friend.:(