Open and Save Dialogs Slow to Open and Populate

I have noticed on my Mac Pro ( original 2006 model ) 6Gb Ram with two external firewire drives ( One a Drobo ) that over 24 hours and especially overnight the Save As dialogues get slower and slower. Once the files are selected file operations seem to run at normal speed it is getting the dialogues in the first place takes ages. A reboot restores previously fast access. Thus it seems to be something that builds up over time.

I also have a Drobo connected via firewire 800. Did anyone try disconnetcing tha Drobo to find out if it is the cause to our problems?
I have a Mac Pro 2008, 8 core, 8 GB ram and I have to restart it every day to get the open/save dialogs to work normally. Before updating to Snow Leopard I had my Mac Pro running for several weeks without restarting.

Wow. Very interesting. Do all of us have Drobo's?? I have a drobo and its exactly as everyone else describes. Everything is fine for a day or two, but after that, everything slows down. Menus, Open & Save dialogs, etc. I thought removing smart folders fixed it, but it didn't. Must have just provided temporary relief of some sort.

Am thinking this must be a drobo issue.

JP

It's definitely not tied to just Drobo, but may be related to external drives being connected. Is there anyone with this problem that has no external drive connected?

I also meant to add that I believe the delays are connected in some way to disk spin ups as you can hear the external disks spinning up prior to menus appearing even though the save as is not related to that particular disk. I turned off Disk Spin down in the Power system preference but I believe this relates to internal disks only.

Sure. The system waits until it knows all about the storages; the useron the other hand need just one drive, mostly he knows where he wants to store a file or fetch an object. This difference is boaring.

_____ k.

Spoke too soon. the problem has eased somewhat but still exists. Also I noticed the other day when my computer has not been restarted for some time, that one application completely was unusable every time it accessed data. Restarting cured it! I have no external hard drive.

Disconnected all external drives, no drobo (what's that), carried out all suggestions in this thread and it still happens. It's a Snow Leopard problem which Apple needs to sort out quickly if it intends to attract Windows users.......or stop people switching back to Leopard.

Still no solution for this problem?!?
I have also noticed that, when the open/save dialogs issue is present it also affects mounting .dmg images in Finder, which also takes much longer than usually. Also Boxee and VMware Fusion begin to behave strangely, when the problem starts.

To help narrow down this issue I'm posting some more details of my Mac Pro system:

Potential issue causing hardware:
- I have a Time Capsule (1st gen., 500 GB)
- I have a Drobo connected via FireWire 800
- Apple Cinema 30" + 2 other LCD displays
- 2 graphic cards installed (1x GeForce 8800, 1x Radeon HD 2600)
- Canon USB scanner
- Canon color laser printer
- Logitech USB hub
- Logitech MX revolution mouse
- Apple wireless keyboard
- Wacom Intous4 graphic tablet

If anyone notices some similarities, please post and help to narrow the problem down.

Other issued applications, when the dialog boxes problem is present:
- in VMware Fusion 3.01 under Windows XP I get "Limited or no connectivity", so my virtual Windows machine is not connected to the internet. Only solution is to restart the whole system (Mac OS), just restarting Windows virtual machine doesn't help.
- Boxee (home cinema player) gets really slow and unresponsive. Only Mac OS restart helps.

Once restarted, everything work fine for some time. After 8h - 24 hours of uptime the problems begin to show again.
I'm really tired of restarting my Mac Pro 2-3 times a day because of this lame issue. Before Snow Leopard I had an uptime of multiple weeks.

Switching to Leopard doesn't help. I'm running Leopard and experiencing exactly the same problem with the Open/Save dialogue.

Seriously??? Are you certain? This is making me wonder if its something else. Do you have a drobo? I wonder if its a drobo software issue...

Im having the same problem 2009 MacPro 16GB RAM & Drobo. Restarting every day or so is the only way to get around it. Its not only the Open & Save dialog, the whole system seems very sluggish.

Does anyone from Apple Tech Support read and respond to these posts?

No