Q: really slow disk access
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Dec 27, 2013 5:12 PMby BobHarris,For performance issues, you should look at Applicatons -> Utilities -> Activity Monitor.
Another good diagnostic tool is etrecheck <hhttp://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck> (copy and paste the etrecheck as a reply to this thread, so members of the forum can evaluate it).
Data transfer involves the speed to read the data from the internal disk and the speed to write the data to the external disk. It could be either drive that is being the bottle neck. And if one of those drives is being battered with other I/O requests, that could affect its performance.
For example, have you told Spotlight to NOT index the external drive while you are copying the data to it? If not, then Spotlight may be doing additional I/O to the external drive indexing the data as you are adding it during the copy operations. System Preferences -> Spotlight -> Privacy -> [+] and add your external drive to the list of items NOT to index. After you have completed the copy operation, you can use the [-] to remove the external drive, so that Spotlight can index the data.
That is just one possibility. If you have anti-virus software installed, it can be scanning both the internal and external disks looking for non-existant malware. Mac OS X comes with good anti-malware automatic tools built-in, so running 3rd party Anti-virus products is often more damaging than any benefit they claim to give you. Etrecheck will tell us if you are using an A/V product, even if you have forgotten that you installed it.
It is always possible that you have a failing internal drive, which causing the device drivers to do lots of retries that can slow down accessing data on your disk. This is not common, but neigher is it unheard of either.
Any thing of significant size loaded from an external disk will take longer than if it is stored on a well working internal disk.
If you are running more concurrent memory hog apps than your max'ed RAM can hold, you can be doing a lot of paging to/from disk when switching and/or launching apps. The pageout statistics can give a clue, and running the following command from Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal while actually using your system when it is behaving slowly can give more targeted information about whether you are overloading RAM
/usr/bin/sar -g 60 100
which will report the number of pages written to the pagefile each minute over a 100 minute period (modify the values to suit your tastes). Big spikes while switching apps or launching new apps, would indicate you are using more RAM than your max'ed out Mac can hold.
If it turns out that your computing needs exceed your max'ed out RAM, then you can get a speed boost by replacing the internal disk with a Solid State Disk, so that paging RAM to/from disk will happen much MUCH faster. However, before you start thinking about an SSD it is important to identify the real reason your system is slow.
Message was edited by: BobHarris
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Dec 27, 2013 7:05 PMby Larry Goshorn,I watch Activity Monitor a lot, CPU never really seems to be stressed, nor the Disk. While I don't know how to read the Memory monitor, "memory presure" is typically stable at about 25%.
The terminal showed 0.0 pages written to the pagefile - taken while only doing back-up and Activity Monitor, no real change now that I'm also in Safari.
EtreCheck results:
Hardware Information:
iMac (24-inch, Early 2008)
iMac - model: iMac8,1
1 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU: 2 cores
4 GB RAM
Video Information:
ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro - VRAM: 256 MB
Audio Plug-ins:
BluetoothAudioPlugIn: Version: 1.0 - SDK 10.9
AirPlay: Version: 1.9 - SDK 10.9
AppleAVBAudio: Version: 2.0.0 - SDK 10.9
iSightAudio: Version: 7.7.3 - SDK 10.9
Startup Items:
MySQLCOM: Path: /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM
System Software:
OS X 10.9 (13A603) - Uptime: 27 days 2:48:17
Disk Information:
Hitachi HDP725032GLA380 disk0 : (320.07 GB)
EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted>: 209.7 MB
Macintosh HD (disk0s2) /: 319.21 GB (124.84 GB free)
Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted>: 650 MB
USB Information:
Apple Inc. Built-in iSight
Western Digital Ext HDD 1021 2 TB
disk5s1 (disk5s1) <not mounted>: 32 KB
Teri-02 (disk5s3) /Volumes/Teri-02: 2 TB (1.12 TB free)
Canon MP480 series
Western Digital My Book 1148 2 TB
disk3s1 (disk3s1) <not mounted>: 32 KB
2Teri BckUp (disk3s3) /Volumes/2Teri BckUp: 2 TB (1.32 TB free)
Apple, Inc. Keyboard Hub
Apple, Inc Apple Keyboard
Apple Computer, Inc. IR Receiver
Apple Inc. BRCM2046 Hub
Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller
FireWire Information:
WD Passport III 800mbit - 800mbit max
EFI (disk1s1) <not mounted>: 209.7 MB
Passport HD (disk1s2) /Volumes/Passport HD: 499.76 GB (100.89 GB free)
Thunderbolt Information:
Kernel Extensions:
Problem System Launch Daemons:
[failed] com.apple.wdhelper.plist
Problem System Launch Agents:
Launch Daemons:
[loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist
[loaded] com.livescribe.PenCommService.plist
[loaded] com.macpaw.CleanMyMac2.Agent.plist
Launch Agents:
User Launch Agents:
[loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist
[loaded] com.macpaw.CleanMyMac2Helper.scheduledScan.plist
[loaded] com.macpaw.CleanMyMac2Helper.trashWatcher.plist
[loaded] com.valvesoftware.steamclean.plist
User Login Items:
Dropbox
3rd Party Preference Panes:
Flash Player
Internet Plug-ins::
Flip4Mac WMV Plugin: Version: 2.3.3.3
FlashPlayer-10.6: Version: 11.9.900.170 - SDK 10.6
QuickTime Plugin: Version: 7.7.3
Flash Player: Version: 11.9.900.170 - SDK 10.6
Default Browser: Version: 537 - SDK 10.9
wkDimdimControl: Version: 1.01
GarminGpsControl: Version: 4.0.3.0 Release - SDK 10.6
Silverlight: Version: 5.1.10411.0 - SDK 10.6
iPhotoPhotocast: Version: 7.0
User Internet Plug-ins::
CitrixOnlineWebDeploymentPlugin: Version: 1.0.94
Bad Fonts:
None
Old applications:
Bluetooth Diagnostics Utility: Version: 2.3.6 - SDK 10.0
/Developer/Applications/Utilities/Bluetooth/Bluetooth Diagnostics Utility.app
Bluetooth Explorer: Version: 2.3.6 - SDK 10.0
/Developer/Applications/Utilities/Bluetooth/Bluetooth Explorer.app
BodyMedia SYNC: Version: 1.0.1 - SDK 10.5
/Applications/BodyMedia SYNC.app
CrashReporterPrefs: Version: 10.6.3 - SDK 10.0
/Developer/Applications/Utilities/CrashReporterPrefs.app
Dashcode: Version: 3.0.2 - SDK 10.0
/Developer/Applications/Dashcode.app
IBCarbonSimulator: Version: 4.0 - SDK 10.0
/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/Library/Interface Builder/Plug-ins/CarbonPlugin.ibplugin/Contents/Resources/IBCarbonSimulator.app
IBCocoaSimulator: Version: 4.0 - SDK 10.0
/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/Library/Interface Builder/Plug-ins/CocoaPlugin.ibplugin/Contents/Resources/IBCocoaSimulator.app
Instruments: Version: 4.0 - SDK 10.0
/Developer/Applications/Instruments.app
Keynote: Version: 5.3 - SDK 10.5
/Applications/iWork '09/Keynote.app
Livescribe Desktop: Version: 2.8.3 - SDK 10.5
/Applications/LivescribeDesktop.app
Numbers: Version: 2.3 - SDK 10.5
/Applications/iWork '09/Numbers.app
OpenGL Driver Monitor: Version: 1.5 - SDK 10.0
/Developer/Applications/Graphics Tools/OpenGL Driver Monitor.app
OpenGL ES Performance Detective: Version: 1.0 - SDK 10.0
/Developer/Applications/Graphics Tools/OpenGL ES Performance Detective.app
OpenGL Profiler: Version: 4.4 - SDK 10.0
/Developer/Applications/Graphics Tools/OpenGL Profiler.app
OpenGL Shader Builder: Version: 2.1 - SDK 10.0
/Developer/Applications/Graphics Tools/OpenGL Shader Builder.app
PacketLogger: Version: 2.3.6 - SDK 10.0
/Developer/Applications/Utilities/Bluetooth/PacketLogger.app
Pages: Version: 4.3 - SDK 10.5
/Applications/iWork '09/Pages.app
Plants vs: Version: 1.0.40 - SDK 10.5
/Applications/Plants vs. Zombies.app
Quartz Composer: Version: 4.0 - SDK 10.0
/Developer/Applications/Quartz Composer.app
Quartz Composer Visualizer: Version: 1.2 - SDK 10.0
/Developer/Applications/Graphics Tools/Quartz Composer Visualizer.app
Quartz Debug: Version: 4.1 - SDK 10.0
/Developer/Applications/Performance Tools/Quartz Debug.app
SLLauncher: Version: 1.0 - SDK 10.5
/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Silverlight/OutOfBrowser/SLLauncher.app
Spin Control: Version: 0.9.1 - SDK 10.0
/Developer/Applications/Performance Tools/Spin Control.app
Syncrospector: Version: 5.2 - SDK 10.0
/Developer/Applications/Utilities/Syncrospector.app
USB Prober: Version: 4.0.0 - SDK 10.0
/Developer/Applications/Utilities/USB Prober.app
Xcode: Version: 4.0 - SDK 10.0
/Developer/Applications/Xcode.app
Xcode SSH Authentication Agent: Version: 4.0 - SDK 10.0
/Developer/Library/PrivateFrameworks/IDEFoundation.framework/Versions/A/Re sources/Xcode SSH Authentication Agent.app
Yasu: Version: 2.8.2 - SDK 10.4
/Applications/Utilities/Yasu.app
YummySoup!: Version: 2.4 - SDK 10.5
/Applications/YummySoup!.app
Time Machine:
Skip System Files: NO
Mobile backups: OFF
Auto backup: YES
Volumes being backed up:
Macintosh HD: Disk size: 297.29 GB Disk used: 181.03 GB
Passport HD: Disk size: 465.44 GB Disk used: 371.48 GB
Destinations:
2Teri BckUp [Local] (Last used)
Total size: 2
Total number of backups: 64
Oldest backup: 2013-08-05 12:04:28 +0000
Last backup: 2013-12-28 02:32:06 +0000
Size of backup disk: Adequate
Backup size 2 > (Disk used 552.50 GB X 3)
Time Machine details may not be accurate.
All volumes being backed up may not be listed.
Top Processes by CPU:
3% WindowServer
1% EtreCheck
1% Finder
1% Activity Monitor
0% sysmond
Top Processes by Memory:
188 MB Safari
160 MB Locum
123 MB mds_stores
78 MB Mail
70 MB softwareupdated
Virtual Memory Statistics:
54 MB Free RAM
1.25 GB Active RAM
1.22 GB Inactive RAM
581 MB Wired RAM
13.12 GB Page-ins
965 MB Page-outs
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Dec 28, 2013 5:03 PMby BobHarris,HelpfulCleanMyMac2 is a known problem child.
Try uninstalling CleanMyMac2. See <https://discussions.apple.com/message/24280326#24280326>, the response by John Galt gives information about uninstalling CleanMyMac2Besides that, I do not see anything else offensive in your configuration.
4GB of RAM is not a lot, but since you are getting all zeros for pageout data, the during your test you were not stressing your RAM, so I would still think maybe CleanMyMac2 is messing things up.
