External Hard Drive incredibly slow after High Sierra

Question

Level 1

52 points

External Hard Drive incredibly slow after High Sierra

Absolutely fuming isn't the word, ever since Apple stopped making us pay for updates they have been buggy garbage.

Rant over: I'm experiencing a very slow external HDD which is used for files after this update. If I do not have it connected, my iMac works fine. As soon as I connect it and want to browse, it freezes a lot, takes an age to load contents, sometimes even taking 2 minutes. I thought maybe it was because it is indexing, I left it for several hours but it still wont work properly.

Activity Monitor shows high CPU usage with kernal task & iconserviceagent when trying to load these folders, the HDD also makes a lot of noise as if it's under high load.

I've tried upgrading it to APFS which can be done on a HDD, no idea why people say it cannot be done as it has been done with mine! - still no improvement.

Really no idea why I trusted another update, think i'll leave it next time, Sierra brought bugs and High Sierra has totally ruined my computer. My iMac is 21.5 late 2013 with an SSD upgrade. My external HDD is a 3TB Seagate HDD.

Any help, or people with the same issues?

iMac

Posted on Sep 26, 2017 6:08 AM

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Answer 1

etresoft

Level 9

56,308 points

Sep 26, 2017 7:27 AM in response to J4MMYz

J4MMYz wrote:

Thats a joy, Time Capsule filled up yesterday, for some reason unknown to me I decided to wipe it and order a new HDD which comes Friday. Thats whats concerning me now as I do not have a backup so if something goes wrong im done for.

What is the best course of action? Hopefully Apple will have a fix for this?

The best course of action is to stop posting on the internet, drive to the nearest place where you can buy an external hard drive, and back up all of your data. Time Capsule is a nice convenience when it is working properly, but there is no substitute for a good backup drive.

No, Apple is not going to fix your 3rd party hard drive.

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Answer 2

Jan 8, 2018 2:03 PM in response to nvdd

Amazing that the burden is on us to explain in detail the issue. Hey Devs, try to add a custom icon to a video file and you will see what everyone is talking about. How hard is that? You want a detail? OK. Click on a file. When the file is highlighted you see a shaded square. When you add a custom icon, it fills the entire square and distorts the image. Now go and do it yourself.

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Answer 3

Jan 16, 2018 4:58 PM in response to J4MMYz

I'm not sure, but I think I may have a similar problem.

Ever since the update to High Sierra, attempting to save anything to USB is extremely slow.

Doesn't matter if it is a rotating hard drive or flash memory. I have tried USB2 & USB 3 drives with no difference.

I cannot sync iTunes to my old phone nor my brand new phone without it stalling and having to restart iOS.

I just backed up my old phone using iTunes on a USB cable. Took about 15m to do the initial encrypted backup, then around three hours to copy it back to the new phone.

Reading from USB is a little slow, writing via USB is mind numbingly slow. USB is now pretty much unusable.

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Answer 4

gola

Level 1

4 points

Feb 2, 2018 10:56 AM in response to J4MMYz

Please people stop harassing the OP. I have the exact same problem and no APFS and not a bad hard drive. We are looking for suggestions on how to fix this. Loading folders seems to be extremely slow while copying etc. is at normal speed.

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Answer 5

Babusha

Level 1

4 points

Apr 9, 2018 8:57 AM in response to J4MMYz

I agree with you. It's not your drive. I use a zip drive for simple excel budget spread sheet. After downloading high sierra a few days ago this drive runs and runs about 2 min after adding just 1 or 2 cells of digits. I get the same notices. Verifying file, finder using drive, spinning color wheel etc. I have many zip disks and all run the same. It's not rocket science just software. After a few minutes of running the drive will eject. Again why the slowdown?

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Answer 6

May 26, 2018 3:47 AM in response to ztripz

I have exactly the same issue with my High Sierra with my WD My Passport. I don't know Terminal commands; may i request you to mention the exact commands which helped solve your issue, so that i can copy-paste and run in terminal. Many thanks.

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Answer 7

J4MMYz Author

Level 1

52 points

Sep 26, 2017 6:15 AM in response to putnik

So why doesn't Apple make this more clear before it is done? Also, I really don't think that my HDD being APFS is the problem - it was terrible before I did this, and has slightly improved since.

Also, it's not recommended for HDD's? Looks like SSD's also as my computer was lightning fast and now is a dog. It takes forever to start up, my keyboard wont work for a bit either until everything catches up. I really regret this.

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Answer 8

J4MMYz Author

Level 1

52 points

Sep 26, 2017 8:19 AM in response to John Galt

I haven't been just sitting on this site complaining, I have tried things such as First Aid not the HDD, everything was fine. I've tried booting into safe mode and the HDD is still slow. I've been keeping an eye on Time Capsule which has been trying to back up for the past 20 minutes, it's only backed up 50MB of 8GB - it's not backing up the HDD either so it's obviously also running slow.

Total mess, I wont upgrade next year that will sort my problems. Cannot understand why this is just me?

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Answer 9

Old Toad

Level 10

215,280 points

Sep 26, 2017 12:20 PM in response to DNSBRU

Download and run Etrecheck. Copy and paste the results into your reply. Etrecheck is a diagnostic tool that was developed by one of the most respected users here in the ASC and recommended by Apple Support to provide a snapshot of the system and help identify the more obvious culprits that can adversely affect a Mac's performance.

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Answer 10

etresoft

Level 9

56,308 points

Sep 27, 2017 5:02 PM in response to Pichini13

Pichini13 wrote:

In my case, that's pretty much it.

I have tried it with 3 different external hard drives with three completely different sets of data and the result is the same. In a clean install of High Sierra, with absolutely nothing installed or configured, just plug in the hard drive with the files with custom icons, open it in Finder and you get your bug. It's astonishing easy to reproduce.

There has got to be something more to it. I'm running fine here:

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Answer 11

J4MMYz Author

Level 1

52 points

Sep 26, 2017 12:29 PM in response to Old Toad

Heres the report, I have removed/cleaned up the things in red that was prompted. As you can see, highest CPU usage from iconserviceagent

EtreCheck version: 3.4.5 (455)

Report generated 2017-09-26 20:25:00

Download EtreCheck from https://etrecheck.com

Runtime: 1:54

Performance: Excellent

Click the [Lookup] links for more information from Apple Support Communities.

Click the [Details] links for more information about that line.

Click the [Remove/Report] links to remove adware or update the whitelist of legitimate software.

Click the [Clean up] link to delete unused files.

Problem: Computer is too slow

Description:

External HDD extremely slow loading contents

Hardware Information:ⓘ

iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2013)

[Technical Specifications] - [User Guide] - [Warranty & Service]

iMac - model: iMac14,1

1 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5 (i5-4570R) CPU: 4-core

8 GB RAM Upgradeable - [Instructions]

BANK 0/DIMM0

4 GB DDR3 1600 MHz ok

BANK 1/DIMM0

4 GB DDR3 1600 MHz ok

Handoff/Airdrop2: supported

Wireless: en1: 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac

iCloud Quota: 39.65 GB available

Video Information:ⓘ

Intel Iris Pro - VRAM: 1536 MB

iMac 1920 x 1080

Disk Information:ⓘ

KINGSTON SV300S37A240G disk0: (240.06 GB) (Solid State - TRIM: No)

[Show SMART report]

EFI (disk0s1 - MS-DOS FAT32) <not mounted> [EFI]: 210 MB

(disk0s2) <not mounted> [APFS Container]: 239.85 GB

USB Information:ⓘ

USB30Bus

Seagate Expansion Desk

Expansion Desk disk2: (3 TB)

EFI (disk2s1 - MS-DOS FAT32) <not mounted> [EFI]: 210 MB

(disk2s2) <not mounted> [APFS Container]: 3.00 TB

Apple Inc. BRCM20702 Hub

Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller

Apple Inc. FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in)

Thunderbolt Information:ⓘ

Apple Inc. thunderbolt_bus

Virtual disks:ⓘ

My SSD (disk1s1 - APFS) / [Startup]: 239.85 GB (166.22 GB free)

Physical disk: disk0s2 239.85 GB (166.22 GB free)

(disk1s2) <not mounted> [Preboot]: 239.85 GB

Physical disk: disk0s2 239.85 GB

(disk1s3) <not mounted> [Recovery]: 239.85 GB

Physical disk: disk0s2 239.85 GB

(disk1s4) /private/var/vm [VM]: 239.85 GB

Physical disk: disk0s2 239.85 GB

SEAGATE (disk3s1 - APFS) /Volumes/SEAGATE : 3.00 TB (1.17 TB free)

Physical disk: disk2s2 3.00 TB (1.17 TB free)

System Software:ⓘ

macOS High Sierra 10.13 (17A365) - Time since boot: less than an hour

Gatekeeper:ⓘ

Mac App Store and identified developers

Possible adware:ⓘ

Adware: /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.MyUpdater.agent.plist

One possible adware file found. [Remove/Report]

Clean up:ⓘ

/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.MyUpdater.agent.plist

/Applications/MyUpdater/MyUpdater -guid 22164498041898502 -source nwt-1634

Executable not found!

~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.ea.origin.WebHelper.plist

/Applications/Origin.app/Contents/Library/LaunchServices/com.ea.origin.WebHelpe r

Executable not found!

2 orphan files found. [Clean up]

System Launch Agents:ⓘ

[not loaded] 9 Apple tasks

[loaded] 179 Apple tasks

[running] 99 Apple tasks

[killed] One Apple task

one process killed due to insufficient RAM

System Launch Daemons:ⓘ

[not loaded] 37 Apple tasks

[loaded] 188 Apple tasks

[running] 100 Apple tasks

[killed] 4 Apple tasks

4 processes killed due to insufficient RAM

Launch Agents:ⓘ

[loaded] com.oracle.java.Java-Updater.plist (? 4737623b 72ac4dde - installed 2017-08-23) [Lookup]

Launch Daemons:ⓘ

[failed] com.MyUpdater.agent.plist (? 281a5689 0 - installed 2016-08-26) Adware! [Remove/Report]

[loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist (? 2afb3af7 eb6bee8f - installed 2017-08-29) [Lookup]

[not loaded] com.apple.installer.cleanupinstaller.plist (? 1963bf56 0 - installed 2017-09-26)

[loaded] com.apple.installer.osmessagetracing.plist (Apple, Inc. - installed 2017-09-21)

[loaded] com.bombich.ccchelper.plist (Bombich Software, Inc. - installed 2016-11-01) [Lookup]

[running] com.cleverfiles.cfbackd.plist (Justin Johnson - installed 2016-05-31) [Lookup]

[loaded] com.ea.origin.ESHelper.plist (EA Swiss Sarl - installed 2017-09-25) [Lookup]

[loaded] com.oracle.java.Helper-Tool.plist (Shell Script e3fefdd2 - installed 2017-07-22) [Lookup]

[running] org.serviio.server.plist (Shell Script 16e32f40 - installed 2017-09-21)

User Launch Agents:ⓘ

[loaded] com.ea.origin.WebHelper.plist (? 89771325 0 - installed 2017-09-25) [Lookup] - /Applications/Origin.app/Contents/Library/LaunchServices/com.ea.origin.WebHelpe r: Executable not found!

User Login Items:ⓘ

Mail Application - Hidden

(/Applications/Mail.app)

Internet Plug-ins:ⓘ

FlashPlayer-10.6: 27.0.0.130 (installed 2017-09-12) [Lookup]

QuickTime Plugin: 7.7.3 (installed 2017-09-21)

Flash Player: 27.0.0.130 (installed 2017-09-12) [Lookup]

JavaAppletPlugin: Java 8 Update 144 build 01 (installed 2017-08-23) Check version

PepperFlashPlayer: 27.0.0.130 (installed 2017-09-12) [Lookup]

Safari Extensions:ⓘ

[enabled] AdBlock - BetaFish, Inc. - https://getadblock.com (installed 2017-09-25)

[not loaded] Adblock Plus - Eyeo GmbH - https://adblockplus.org/ (installed 2016-12-22)

3rd Party Preference Panes:ⓘ

Flash Player (installed 2017-08-29) [Lookup]

Java (installed 2017-08-23) [Lookup]

Time Machine:ⓘ

Skip System Files: NO

Mobile backups: OFF

Auto backup: YES

Volumes being backed up:

My SSD: Disk size: 239.85 GB Disk used: 73.62 GB

Destinations:

Time Capsule [Network]

Total size: 2.00 TB

Total number of backups: 3

Oldest backup: 26/09/2017, 17:43

Last backup: 26/09/2017, 19:27

Size of backup disk: Excellent

Backup size 2.00 TB > (Disk size 239.85 GB X 3)

Top Processes by CPU:ⓘ

57% iconservicesagent

35% kernel_task

4% mdworker

4% WindowServer

3% mdworker

Top Processes by Memory:ⓘ

1.39 GB iconservicesagent

705 MB kernel_task

433 MB Safari

148 MB com.apple.WebKit.WebContent

95 MB java

Top Processes by Network Use:ⓘ

Input Output Process name

4 MB 44 KB com.apple.WebKit.Networking

43 KB 6 KB Mail

29 KB 0 B java

19 KB 8 KB mDNSResponder

8 KB 11 KB apsd

Top Processes by Energy Use:ⓘ

21.92 iconservicesagent

5.64 WindowServer

0.54 java

0.50 corespotlightd

Virtual Memory Information:ⓘ

4.70 GB Available RAM

1.49 GB Free RAM

3.30 GB Used RAM

3.22 GB Cached files

21 MB Swap Used

Software installs:ⓘ

OptimUSB: 7.0 (installed 2017-09-01)

Adobe Flash Player: (installed 2017-09-12)

Adobe Pepper Flash Player: (installed 2017-09-12)

OptimUSB: 7.1 (installed 2017-09-13)

The Unarchiver: 3.11.2 (installed 2017-09-13)

OptimUSB: 7.2 (installed 2017-09-17)

The Unarchiver: 3.11.3 (installed 2017-09-17)

Bitdefender Virus Scanner: 3.9 (installed 2017-09-19)

MyDrive Connect: (installed 2017-09-25)

Bitdefender Virus Scanner: 3.9 (installed 2017-09-26)

Install information may not be complete.

Diagnostics Information:ⓘ

2017-09-26 14:52:00 Finder.app Hang [Open]

Reply

Answer 12

Sep 26, 2017 4:38 PM in response to J4MMYz

Have you tried removing the custom icons from the external hard drive?

Open Finder, select all files and the press Option-Command-i and one "get info" panel will show up for all files. Select the icon where the custom icon usually go and the press delete on your keyboard.

That should help you in the meantime. Fair warning, this will erase all your custom icons and there is no getting them back, so use at your own risk. This just solved my problem. It's a stopgap but it worked for me.

As for bug reporting, you can do that here:

https://developer.apple.com/bug-reporting/

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Answer 13

nvdd

Level 1

4 points

Jan 6, 2018 3:03 AM in response to J4MMYz

Are you guys still having problems? I just got an email from Apple dev saying "Can you please clarify what problems exist with the current icons, as well as a sysdiagnose?" I'm not sure what to reply

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Answer 14

Jan 8, 2018 2:05 PM in response to nick12202

Thankfully i've had no issues with the thumbnails, I had the problem with transfer speeds but i'm able to add custom icons to movie files with no problem.

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Answer 15

mkaug

Level 1

4 points

Jan 29, 2018 9:52 AM in response to putnik

I was having the same problem, and this completely solved my slow loading hard drive! THANKS!!!!!

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