Degraded system performance - possibly caused by external LaCie HD

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Level 1

4 points

Degraded system performance - possibly caused by external LaCie HD

I'm stumped over what to do to solve a serious performance problem with my iMac. Here's the setup:

Prior to today, I've been running:

An iMac Intel Core 2 Duo 17" (late 2006). The guts of it all OEM: 1 GB (2x512) RAM, 250 GB HD, SuperDrive.
A 500 GB LaCie USB 2.0 External HD.
Two external optical drives; one that can read/burn CDs and one that can read//burn DVDs/CDs. Both of these are connected via FireWire
Operating system: Mac OS 10.4.x
Network: Wireless Airport on iMac to DLink wireless router to Sympatico DSL. Using OpenDNS

Over the last few weeks, system performance (and by this, I mean basic tasks like copying a file or selecting a menu option or switching between apps) has degraded to the point where it could take several seconds simply switching from one app to another. No new software or devices were added over this time.

Running Apple's Hard Disk Utility, I discovered some "Minor" problems on the internal hard drive. I booted up in safe mode, which automatically forces a disk repair, and, upon running disk utility again, the disk appears fine.

Performance problems persisted.

I ran disk utility on the external drive. No problems.

Earlier this week, I decided to upgrade the OS.

The upgrade took 5+ hours to install. (I'd heard it can take a while but 5 hours seems silly).

Performance problems persisted.

Last night, I loaded everything I needed on the internal drive and backed up to the external drive. THen I proceeded to do a clean install of the OS 10.5.6. I ran Software Update to get the latest Java machine and other updates.

Still got problems. (Copying 2 GB of files I'd backed up on my external drive back to the internal drive took more than 2 hours! via USB 2.0)

Ran Hard Disk Utility again. Everything's fine. Still have performance problems.

Shut power down on all external drives and re-booted.

Ah-ha! Now we're gettin' somewhere. Performance seems normal. System is responding to basic commands in the what seems like a normal way.

But I need those external drives. First bright idea: Perhaps it's the cheap Dyntech 5-port USB hub that's gumming things up. To test, I disconnected the hub and connected the LaCie external drive directly to the iMac.

Back to the same old problem.

Ok -- so it seems pretty clear that the iMac and the LaCie drive, which once got along famously, are now like an old married couple -- grumpy and slow to respond to each other's requests. Again -- neither the LaCie drive nor the iMac internal drive report any problems via Hard Disk Utility. Files are being successfully copied back and forth albeit at a mind-numbingly slow speed. But for all intents and purposes, so long as the iMac is attached to the LaCie drive, it has all the zip and functional usefulness of my old Centris 610.

Any and all suggestions gratefully welcomed.

Multiple, Mac OS X (10.5.6), Have 450 Mhz Cube, iMac Intel, and MacBook Intel

Posted on Apr 10, 2009 10:58 AM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Apr 10, 2009 12:23 PM in response to davidakin

By any chance is Spotlight trying to index the external drive?

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Answer 2

davidakin Author

Level 1

4 points

Apr 10, 2009 2:55 PM in response to Kappy

Hmm. Hadn't thought to check that out. Will do. Still -- even if it is indexing it, that wouldn't account for what's been two or three weeks now of substandard system performance.

Here's a great illustration of how bad it is: I want to move my backed up 'Movies" folder on the external drive back to the internal drive. It's only 80 GB of data - Estimated time to copy: 100+ hours. That just ain't right.

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Answer 3

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Apr 10, 2009 3:33 PM in response to davidakin

True unless you frequently attach and detach the drive so that indexing never is completed. To see if this may be the case with the drive attached, open Spotlight preferences, click on the Privacy tab, then drag the drive's icon into the list.

You can also try a few other things, but start by downloading and installing AppleJack - VersionTracker or MacUpdate. Read instructions and run the program to do some cleanup. For other maintenance tips see:

Kappy's Personal Suggestions for OS X Maintenance

For disk repairs use Disk Utility. For situations DU cannot handle the best third-party utilities are: Disk Warrior; DW only fixes problems with the disk directory, but most disk problems are caused by directory corruption; Disk Warrior 4.x is now Intel Mac compatible. TechTool Pro provides additional repair options including file repair and recovery, system diagnostics, and disk defragmentation. TechTool Pro 4.5.1 or higher are Intel Mac compatible; Drive Genius is similar to TechTool Pro in terms of the various repair services provided. Versions 1.5.1 or later are Intel Mac compatible.

OS X performs certain maintenance functions that are scheduled to occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly period. The maintenance scripts run in the early AM only if the computer is turned on 24/7 (no sleep.) If this isn't the case, then an excellent solution is to download and install a shareware utility such as Macaroni, JAW PseudoAnacron, or Anacron that will automate the maintenance activity regardless of whether the computer is turned off or asleep. Dependence upon third-party utilities to run the periodic maintenance scripts had been significantly reduced in Tiger and Leopard.

OS X automatically defrags files less than 20 MBs in size, so unless you have a disk full of very large files there's little need for defragmenting the hard drive. As for virus protection there are few if any such animals affecting OS X. You can protect the computer easily using the freeware Open Source virus protection software ClamXAV. Personally I would avoid most commercial anti-virus software because of their potential for causing problems.

I would also recommend downloading the shareware utility TinkerTool System that you can use for periodic maintenance such as removing old logfiles and archives, clearing caches, etc.

For emergency repairs install the freeware utility Applejack. If you cannot start up in OS X, you may be able to start in single-user mode from which you can run Applejack to do a whole set of repair and maintenance routines from the commandline. Note that AppleJack 1.5 is required for Leopard.

When you install any new system software or updates be sure to repair the hard drive and permissions beforehand. I also recommend booting into safe mode before doing system software updates.

Get an external Firewire drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):

1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial - not yet universal binary)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
4. Deja Vu (Shareware)
5. Carbon Copy Cloner (Donationware)
6. SuperDuper! (Commercial)
7. Intego Personal Backup (Commercial)
8. Data Backup (Commercial)
9. SilverKeeper 2.0 (Freeware)
10. MimMac (Commercial)
11. CloneTool Hatchery (Shareware)
12. Clone X (Commercial)

The following utilities can also be used for backup, but cannot create bootable clones:

1. Backup (requires a .Mac account with Apple both to get the software and to use it.)
2. Toast
3. Impression
4. arRSync

Apple's Backup is a full backup tool capable of also backing up across multiple media such as CD/DVD. However, it cannot create bootable backups. It is primarily an "archiving" utility as are the other two.

Impression and Toast are disk image based backups, only. Particularly useful if you need to backup to CD/DVD across multiple media.

Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance, optimization, virus protection, and backup and restore.

Additional suggestions will be found in Mac Maintenance Quick Assist.

Referenced software can be found at www.versiontracker.com and www.macupdate.com.

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