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Finder Extremely Slow to List Files with SSD?

Ok, I have an odd performance issue and want to see if anyone else has seen similar behavior.

Occasionally, when I click on a directory in Finder, it takes several seconds before giving the listing, which is odd as the SSD is otherwise quite fast. (I have the new MBP i7 17" with the 512GB SSD.)

Also, Word is occasionally freezing up on me when editing some large docs sourced from Windows office, some with embedded graphics, etc. - it beachballs and does not come back with time, and a couple of times has exhibited other odd behaviors including blank dialog boxes during save, blank menus, and changing the display of my document to all question marks as if in an unsupported font. I know Office 2008 is buggy, esp. when working with big docs and complex docs from the Windows versions, but two days ago, I got several of those symptoms at the same time (not entirely surprising), and when I killed Word, got an error message (which I should have written down but didn't) saying that there had been a disk error and that my document was inaccessible, and expressly suggesting that I had a bad disk.

My system log is of course full of Word errors ("Unable to lock window," "Cannot map backing data shmem," "Unable to allocate xxxxxx bytes for bitmap data" and others), but none with the text of the error message I got, and I might just chalk this off to Word for the Mac being a clunker, but the fact that directories are sometimes slower than expected combined with the error message suggesting disk failure gives me pause.

So I'll put it out there - have you ever gotten an error like this when Word for the Mac crashed? When browsing files in Finder, does it ever stop for several seconds, a noticeable delay, before displaying a directory, even with an SSD? Any ideas what might be causing this? (Do I have a bum SSD?)

MBP 17" Mid-2010, i7, 512GB SSD, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on May 4, 2010 10:30 AM

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17 replies

May 4, 2010 10:46 AM in response to JiminSF

Oh, and I'm not sure it matters, but I'm using the column view - could this have something to do with the preview or something? And I've only noticed it happening in directories with lots of MS Office documents, though that's much of my work lately, so this doesn't mean those are the only places it's happening, just the only ones I've noticed.

May 7, 2010 7:31 AM in response to JiminSF

After doing a little research, I deleted the Finder preferences (com.apple.finder.plist in the Library | Preferences folder), but it's still doing the same thing - some directories take 3-4 seconds to load, and after more exploring, it doesn't matter how many files are in there. Some of the iTunes media folders that just have a single subdirectory and no actual data files do the same thing, and once I've hit a folder once, it seems to stop doing it for a while in that directory, as though it were caching the contents, but once I've looked at a bunch of other directories, it'll do it in that place again as though that spot were no longer in the cache. Any ideas? What would make Finder absurdly slow to read or display a directory on such a fast machine & drive?

Jun 13, 2010 7:39 PM in response to JiminSF

I have the same problem too. It is like Finder working on building caches, the first time I click on a local folder (library or system) then it will take quite some time (may be up to 30~60 secs) to see the listings. I aware about this slowness just 1~2 months back which not sure due to any application installation or OS upgrade/patches. However, after that, if I open another Finder window and click on the same folder again, this time the listing comes out immediately (which I suppose is the normal performance for MBP).

Tried googling but most is about SMB, which is slow too, but now our problem is this slowness even happening on the local folders that stored on SSD!!!

Appreciate suggestions to solve this or at least a way to troubleshoot this. Thanks

Jun 30, 2010 2:51 PM in response to JiminSF

I'm in the same boat, about a minute to get the files, but when I cd around in terminal its instant, and I only got the machine yesterday so I know its not the drive (I had this problem on my old one, but I was convinced my drive was dying)

tried re-indexing to no avail, but Ive heard this problem being linked to the mouse/trackpad prefs which makes no sense, though that was with much shorter wait times of like 4 seconds.

will continue looking for a solution and if anyone finds one please post it here, im almost thinking to just write a script that opens every folder on the comp on startup such that I can get around when I actually need to. but still that wouldnt help when recently saved things dont show up on finder

Aug 16, 2010 1:18 PM in response to JiminSF

My company just purchased 11 brand new 27" inch i7 iMacs 4GB of RAM running 10.6.4 and we see the same issue. Finder is slow to populate the contents of mounted network folders (on Win 03 and 08 servers). Some times the contents show within 2 seconds, sometimes 15 seconds. It is very frustrating for our users that want to jump around quick. Also, it is very slow to place files in InDesign of photos that are stored on the network.

All machines are bound to Active Directory and they are connected to a gigabit blade in the datacenter. We moved from a bunch of G5 dual and quad core machines running 10.4.11 with no network issues. I blame Snow Leopard. Anyone have any luck with fixing this issue?

-Kyle

Sep 8, 2010 2:33 AM in response to KSalewski

I migrated my old Mac Book Pro to the new one and could copy your problems. My SSD is slower but must be 2xfaster (SATA1 -> SATA2). But my SSD is now half a speed than SATA1 !!! Only 52 MB/s. On the old MAC Book Pro (Mode 2006) the SSDs speed is 123 MB/s.But it should be about 220 MB/s. I didn't test a Linux Live CD right now.
Will report if the Linux Live CD performance will show the right performance. If so, the Apple chipset driver (Sata driver) has a problem.

Sep 8, 2010 3:02 AM in response to Frankenburger

I now tested with the SystemRecueCD 1.5.8 64 Bit mode. I made a small testpartition to test via linux.The EFI loader hides the real Apple partition so i reparted my disk. What can i say. The Intel 3400 Sata controller pushes my SSD to the limit of 223 MB/s. So there must be a problem with the sata driver on OSX. Anyone with the same problem ?

Finder Extremely Slow to List Files with SSD?

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