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

164 replies

John Galt

Level 10

155,222 points

Sep 26, 2017 10:44 AM in response to J4MMYz

If Spotlight indexing is taking place the processes mds and mdworker will be active.

You mentioned kernel_task and iconservicesagent appear to have been burdening the CPU. Are they still? Does anything else stand out as particularly burdensome?

J4MMYz Author

Level 1

52 points

Sep 26, 2017 11:05 AM in response to John Galt

I don't think so, iconserviceagent seems to flare up when trying to load the folders contents, once they are loaded it's fine and the computer runs perfectly.

I've got to say, the HDD is slowly getting faster, it's still however very slow, i've had the HDD/iMac constantly on for around 5 hours, but it seems to be getting faster now?

John Galt

Level 10

155,222 points

Sep 26, 2017 11:14 AM in response to J4MMYz

J4MMYz wrote:

I don't think so, iconserviceagent seems to flare up when trying to load the folders contents, once they are loaded it's fine and the computer runs perfectly.

I noticed the same thing if I were to intentionally rebuild the icon services database, which causes every icon to be rebuilt with each newly opened Finder window. It only happens once, after which the FInder's performance returns to normal.

J4MMYz Author

Level 1

52 points

Sep 26, 2017 11:21 AM in response to John Galt

Yes this is what is happening. I'll give you an example: A folder contains 50 videos, these videos also have custom thumbnails (if you understand? Where you can screenshot a bit in the vid and paste it as an icon) - upon opening the folder, it shows the default thumbnail for a video, without the time info below the name, slowly, one by one the times & custom thumbnails appear... but instead of taking a few seconds it takes minutes for everything to change, this is reset once I restart the HDD/iMac.

Ive just tried deleting the cache, but nothing has changed. I deleted everything inside: /Library/Caches

John Galt

Level 10

155,222 points

Sep 26, 2017 11:27 AM in response to J4MMYz

Component substitution is often the most expedient means of isolating problems. I'd try installing HS on an external boot USB hard disk drive, preferably USB3. Boot from it, and compare performance knowing it cannot possibly be as fast as running macOS from an internal SSD.

If it's faster, that would be unexpected, and implicates the SSD.

J4MMYz Author

Level 1

52 points

Sep 26, 2017 11:43 AM in response to John Galt

I might of found something. I did some research, found it was advised if Finder was slow to move com.apple.finder.plist to Desktop, restart the computer and if things are unchanged, move it back.

Well, it's sped my HDD up no end, still isn't as quick as it should be though? It's now loading the folders at a normal speed, but still taking time to load thumbnails. Do you have anything else to suggest I could try?

J4MMYz Author

Level 1

52 points

Sep 26, 2017 11:50 AM in response to John Galt

Nah scratch that, i've had to put it back as it was fine until I went into some folders and all custom icons/layout had gone, and was not coming back. I thought I fixed it then -_-. I guess I'll have to wait for the bug update in around a month and see if that improved my performance. Totally disappointed with this software, absolute rubbish

etresoft

Level 9

56,290 points

Sep 26, 2017 11:55 AM in response to J4MMYz

This is your problem: "I do not have a backup so if something goes wrong im done for"

From what I understand, you have updated to High Sierra. You are experiencing significant problems. Your Time Capsule backup has gone off the deep end. You have critical files stored on an external hard drive and you have converted that hard drive to an unsupported and version 1.0 APFS format. Whether this is a hard drive problem or a software problem is irrelevant. It is the security and existence of your data that you should worry about.

We know very little about your external hard drive. We also know very little about High Sierra since it was just released. Is there some incompatibility between High Sierra and the firmware on your external drive? I don't know.

Converting the drive to APFS is going to radically re-arrange the content on the disk. Perhaps you weren't reading from bad sectors before and maybe you are now. Just because a drive isn't making unusual noises doesn't mean it isn't failing.

A good test would be to see if another external hard drive exhibits the same problems. If not, then the drive is probably bad. Does that mean it is a software problem with High Sierra? Maybe. But isn't your data going to be scrambled just the same no matter what the cause is? Do you know how long it takes Apple to fix bugs like this? If you are really lucky and have a few hundred thousand people hit with the same bug, maybe it will be fixed in six months. What are you going to do until then?

John Galt

Level 10

155,222 points

Sep 26, 2017 11:57 AM in response to J4MMYz

Blaming software isn't going to get you anywhere, unless you installed some non-Apple junk that should never have been installed in the first place.

I have HS installed and running on two different external USB2 hard disk drives. It runs perfectly fine. Conclusion: it's not software. Hint: consider your aftermarket SSD.

DNSBRU

Level 1

4 points

Sep 26, 2017 11:59 AM in response to J4MMYz

I have exactly the same problem. My external hard drive was working perfectly fine yesterday. Now it slows down my mac when I want to copy something from it.

ext. HDD is WD Elements 1TB

MacBook Air '13, Early 2014

John Galt

Level 10

155,222 points

Sep 26, 2017 2:02 PM in response to J4MMYz

"Anti-virus", "cleaning" junk and adware... the usual suspects.

John Galt wrote:

Blaming software isn't going to get you anywhere, unless you installed some non-Apple junk that should never have been installed in the first place.

Case in point.

Sep 26, 2017 3:25 PM in response to J4MMYz

Hi,

I have this exact same problem. It first happened when I plugged in an external hard drive after upgrading from Sierra to High Sierra. iconservicesagent basically went crazy and used an astonishing 36GB (yes, GB) of physical RAM on my computer, before running out and continuing to use SSD space to keep using RAM until I ran out of space. I first though it was a problem with permissions, ACL and such, so I tried repairing those, no dice.

Went and did a clean install of High Sierra and the exact same problem happened as soon as I plugged in the external hard drive.

I also have custom icons for my files on that hard drive (by copying and pasting a photo to the icon on the "get info" panel) and that is what is driving the CPU and RAM usage thru the roof.

I have a maxed out late-2015 iMac 5K and the whole thing comes down to a crawl. Finder completely stops responding until I reset the computer or disconnect the external hard drive.

Any ideas as how to fix this?

J4MMYz Author

Level 1

52 points

Sep 26, 2017 3:31 PM in response to John Galt

"Anti-virus", "cleaning" junk and adware... the usual suspects.

John Galt wrote:

Blaming software isn't going to get you anywhere, unless you installed some non-Apple junk that should never have been installed in the first place.

Case in point.

Not sure how you reach that conclusion, I do not have any 3rd party cleaning software. I will put my hands up and admit I have got "Bitdefender Virus Scanner" from the mac app store, but this hasn't been used in ages and has just been deleted, it makes no difference to my outcome and clearly i'm not alone as there are now people commenting, and no it's most obviously not the HDD's fault either and is not failing.

J4MMYz Author

Level 1

52 points

Sep 26, 2017 3:51 PM in response to John Galt

Okay right, unless you have anything to help me with then don't post as you're pretty annoying. I have an issue as do others that CLEARLY is software and not HDD failure, you're telling me other peoples posts with the exact same issues directly after this "update" is hard drive failure? You're wrong.

You've literally spent this whole time giving useless info and not advising to clear caches or certain files that could improve, you're just saying my SSD is duff, my HDD is failing, I have 3rd party cleaning software and thats the cause of all my issues including the few others that have commented. Ok - shall I throw my mac out the window then? Might as well.

Please stop.

John Galt

Level 10

155,222 points

Sep 26, 2017 3:57 PM in response to J4MMYz

My tolerance for those who insist upon installing utterly worthless junk on their Macs isn't low; it's nonexistent.

You have demonstrated an unwillingness to perform reasonable steps to diagnose your problems, and as I wrote earlier it's not reasonable to expect others to help you fix them.

It's very simple. If you want your Mac to work, let it work. If you want to rant, do it elsewhere.

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External Hard Drive incredibly slow after High Sierra