Fusion Drive going very slow

I recently purchased a new iMac to replace my Mac Pro 1,1 and maxed it out, including opting for the 3TB Fusion Drive but am wondering if I have either too high expectations for the performance or if something may be wrong. When working in any number of applications (typically Adobe's CC suite... Illustratrator, Photoshop, InDesign, etc.) and going to save a file, when I am presented with the Save modal it is frequently a full 20 seconds before the Finder displays all of the filesystem (folders, files, etc.). That seems excessively long and not at all what I was expecting performance-wise.

The drive isn't remotely full with well over 80% of the space remaining and all tests that I have run on the drives in Disk Utility come up with little more than the occasional permission repair need, but no more than usual.

Anything more I might do to improve performance? Is this typical?

TIA!

iMac, iOS 7.0.3, 3.5 GHz, 3TB Fusion Drive, 32GB RAM

Posted on Nov 14, 2013 12:37 PM

25 replies

Jan 8, 2014 2:14 PM in response to joeylake

It certainly sounds like the same issue to me. I took a video of it and I've got a 26 second delay. I would share as it's the most vivid illustration of the problem, but it's of an attempted file save from Mail and I can't really hide all of the background stuff.

Going to be performing a clean re-install of the OS this weekend and see if the problem persists. Will post back the results when I have them.

joeylake

Level 1

10 points

Jan 8, 2014 3:40 PM in response to Richard Benson2

I'll try mine tonight - what video capture did you use? Anything specific (read: free) I wouldn't mind taking a screen capture and posting somewhere...

Would be interested to see if a clean Mavericks install helps - I haven't done that yet for my iMac, but would be willing if it would help.

Jan 8, 2014 3:41 PM in response to joeylake

I did the screen video in the most ghetto way imagineable... with my iPhone. 😉

joeylake

Level 1

10 points

Jan 8, 2014 3:45 PM in response to Richard Benson2

Touche - 😉

Jan 31, 2014 9:44 AM in response to Richard Benson2

Just a general update... not great news thus far though... I ended up returning the iMac and opting for a 1TB Flash drive to see if it was a better fit for the kind of work I am doing. My new iMac arrived yesterday and so far I have had a kernel panic that restarted the computer and it has logged me out twice. And to make matters worse, I am still seeing the exact same long stalls in various (not just Save or Save As) modal windows. Pretty distressing. Guess I'll be heading back to the Apple Store again.

Feb 24, 2014 3:39 AM in response to Richard Benson2

I am seeing the same problem with my latest iMac top end processor 3TB Fusion drive. Everytime I open "Save As" Finder popup. It just take around 20 seconds to show the files. Same behaviour have been observed irrespeictve of the software.

Were you able to solve the issue? What does the Apple Store says?

I am surprised that Flash drive was not able to solve the porblem. This makes me think that it is not related to hard drive.

Feb 24, 2014 8:16 AM in response to lilboylost

I have no idea why your post is saying it solved my question... perhaps I fat fingered the link from my email notification. Is there any way to undo that?

Anyway, they sent me a 1TB Flash iMac. That one was kernel panicing repeatedly from day 1 so they took it back and sent me another one.

And after all of this, it looks like the issue is very likely Mavericks, and not the hardware. I still have the self-same issue that I've had with the last two iMacs and it appears from the growing number of threads as well as articles saying the same that it isn't limited to the iMacs as the same machines that don't exhibit the issue under Lion are seeing it under Mavericks.

None of these have worked for me, but feel free to try these possible solutions that have been bandied about:

Choose a "sort" option when presented with the Save As dialogues. It defaults to "None". Some people have found that that has helped.
If you have SMB sharing turned on in your Sharing preferences, try deselecting it and see if the problem goes away.
Turn off App Nap
Something to do with Ethernet connections and automounting. Try unplugging your ethernet cable (if you can).

The only one I just found that I haven't tried yet is: Re: Slow loading Finder in Mavericks?

This one involves a little Terminal voodoo.

Failing that, I'm afraid I'm still looking for a solution!

Feb 24, 2014 2:40 PM in response to Richard Benson2

OK, I did the terminal hack from that previous thread and having been working all day I am happy to report success! Not a single time today has the Finder experienced a slowdown as has been plaguing me in every previous computer.

So, consider this one solved. Use the method described here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5505550?answerId=23862218022#23862218022

Jun 12, 2014 11:18 PM in response to Richard Benson2

Here are some results from my 3TB fusion drive with 900GB to spare.

Jul 10, 2014 1:16 AM in response to joeylake

I had a similar problem. Tried repairing disk permissions, tried cleaning up with onyx and applejack with no luck. Finally what did work was simply starting up in safe mode (hold shift key down after restart) and it sorted itself out

Hope this works for you

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Fusion Drive going very slow