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

Sep 26, 2017 4:04 PM in response to J4MMYz

Well, it's clearly a software problem. I did a clean install and the problem immediately presented as soon as I plugged in a newly formatted external hard drive, with a couple of files with custom icons, so clearly this a High Sierra only, software related problem.

Anti-Virus and failing hard drives have nothing to do with this clearly nasty bug that is not present on Sierra and prior OS's. I did a clean install and used a new hard drive formatted first with HFS+ and the APFS.

My i7-6700K was showing 100% usage for more than 30 minutes and RAM usage went as high as 60GB, until the SSD ran out of space and the process was killed, only to be initiated immediately again and iconservicesagent proceded to to the exact same thing, again and again and again.

J4MMYz Author

Level 1

52 points

Sep 26, 2017 4:14 PM in response to Pichini13

Thank you, finally someone with a brain. We'll have to wait for a bug fix then, and i'll learn by not upgrading my mac to the next software next year!!! What a total mess.

Again, before I get any comments back to what i said: Why would a failing HDD suddenly come out when the software is installed, with mulitple people - why would it slow the computer down when trying to load folder contents, but as soon as the folder contents are loaded or the drive is no longer connected, the computer works fine. Highest CPU load is from iconserviceagent.

In reply to the high load sounds from the HDD, it's been silent, i've been watching the Activity Monitor and as soon as iconserviceagent popped up (no idea why either) it made sounds. I know what a failing HDD sounds like, and indeed a dead one. This HDD has always made sounds under high load since new, it's 9 months old. My 2012 iMac which is now my dads with a HDD has always made loud noises since NEW - so if thats failing it's done alright for 5 years. Cmon seriously, you're barking up the wrong tree if you think it's mechanical.

Pichini13 if you have any work around or improvements please let me know. Do you have any videos on your HDD, before they open does it show a window with "verifying"? I'm not sure if this points to a security feature going loopy. Either way it's something new with OS High Sierra thats messed this up.

Sep 26, 2017 4:20 PM in response to J4MMYz

I ended up going back to Sierra, I did a backup just before upgrading to HS. What I'm working on right now is filing a bug report with Apple (you should do the same) and removing the custom icons from those files and see if that does the trick. If this works, then we just have to wait for a fix and then promptly add the custom icons back to the files.

As for the "verifying", it did not happened to me, but the boards are littered with people complaining about that.

J4MMYz Author

Level 1

52 points

Sep 26, 2017 4:32 PM in response to Pichini13

I wish I could go back to Sierra, but my Time Capsule got full, so I removed my HDD from the backups and backed up the system, only to today upgrade it to APFS which doesn't support Time Capsule (thanks for the warning Apple) so i'm now left with no Sierra backup, only this garbage. So i'm stuck.

How do I file a bug report with Apple? I'm definitely going to do it as I cannot stand for this.

etresoft

Level 9

56,314 points

Sep 26, 2017 4:36 PM in response to J4MMYz

J4MMYz wrote:

How do I file a bug report with Apple? I'm definitely going to do it as I cannot stand for this.

Go to http://bugreport.apple.com to file a bug report. You may need to create a free developer account.

High Sierra is a brand new operating system and is bound to have lots of problems. Backups are essential.

J4MMYz Author

Level 1

52 points

Sep 26, 2017 5:01 PM in response to Pichini13

Sorry I was supposed to answer that. I'd love to but I think i've got over 5,000 custom icons there is no way I'm doing that lol. Thank you for the link to bug reporting I shall do that. I'm getting a new HDD to replace my Time Capsule as it's too small, i'm planning on moving the contents off my current 3TB HDD to this new 4TB, which is 500rpm's faster also, I'm wondering if it's going to change anything or if it's going to act the same, if it works normally on this new HDD it'd point to something not working correctly with existing files on external HDD's but I think you mentioned you pretty much tried something like this already and it made no difference?

Sep 26, 2017 5:03 PM in response to J4MMYz

You can try clearing the icon cache:

Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:

/Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store

Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select

Services ▹ Reveal in Finder (or just Reveal)

from the contextual menu.* A folder should open with an item selected. Move the selected item to the Trash. You may be prompted for your administrator login password. Restart the computer and empty the Trash.

*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. In the Finder, select

Go ▹ Go to Folder...

from the menu bar and paste into the box that opens by pressing command-V. You won't see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.

J4MMYz Author

Level 1

52 points

Sep 26, 2017 5:14 PM in response to Pichini13

Is there a way I can do this without permanently losing these custom icons? As you can appreciate it will take hours to remake them after either the fix or knowing it wasn't the issue. Can I simply move it out on to the desktop, so I can move it back if it doesn't fix anything?

Also: I copied a folder which has a custom icon with 5 videos in, also with custom icons to my SSD, as I mentioned before it takes a very long time to load the contents of the folder which intern slows the computer down and flags that iconserviceagent to use CPU.

Well, since it had loaded everything in that folder so everything was up to speed again, I copied the folder from the HDD to my SSD, it moved 5GB in a normal time, INSTANTLY loaded the folder icon, and upon clicking into the folder instantly displayed the videos and played them straight away.

EDIT: Just copied the folder back to the HDD from the SSD, in a new location. It's now completely slow again.

Sep 26, 2017 5:17 PM in response to J4MMYz

The method described above will erase the icon cache from the OS, not from your files. This will force High Sierra to generate the icons again for every single file you see in Finder, but only once and that might take care of your problem.

I've been working on a High Sierra Virtual Machine using Parallels and transferring the files from one hard drive to the other, seems to also fix the problem, then again, I have clear caches, removed icons and God know what else, so something worked or a combination of all of the above, who know, hahaha.

I will make some more tests and then try to upgrade again and see if it works.

I'm leaning towards an icon database corruption as the culprit as looking thru the forums, people who upgraded to Yosemite, Mavericks, Sierra and now High Sierra, have experienced this behaviour.

Sep 27, 2017 1:16 PM in response to etresoft

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.

Sep 27, 2017 5:09 PM in response to etresoft

The only difference I see is that you are using only a couple of files and they should be easy to process.

In my case, they are video files (.mkvs). They are around 30-40GB each and about 500 of them per hard drive.

I also noticed this on another hard drive that had 747 .m4v files from the iTunes Store (with no custom icons) and those did not cause a problem. But on that same drive and folder, I had 25 .mkvs with custom icons and the bug presented itself. As soon as I removed the custom icons from those 25 files, problem solved for that drive. Funny thing is, High Sierra would not let me add custom icons to those files again.

J4MMYz Author

Level 1

52 points

Sep 27, 2017 5:10 PM in response to etresoft

Yeah very strange. My CPU goes to around 50% usage for iconserviceagent - I sent the screens off to Apple with the bug report.

Maybe this is just a luck thing, I agree there must be more to it. Strange how some people can be fine and others have major issues. Then again, my iPhone 6 upgraded to iOS 11 with no hassle/issues... my dads iPhone 6's sound wasn't working after the update, I had to restart it using the home button/lock button together to force restart, then it worked... really strange how it's all the same devices but some get problems and some don't.

Pichini13 - Do you have a lot of files on your HDD also to replicate this issue? Since Etresoft doesn't obviously have a lot of files in his test.

Etresoft, try getting some videos around 500MB, around 5 or so and try the test again. My HDD seems to load pictures and smaller videos almost normally compared to loading higher data.

edit: ok Pichini13 replied as I typed this nvm

J4MMYz Author

Level 1

52 points

Sep 27, 2017 5:14 PM in response to Pichini13

Okay this is strange. I read what you said about not letting you custom icon those files again. I have a video without a custom icon, so I screen shotted the video, pasted it as normal and the icon instead of being rectangular, is square and has made the icon look very weird also. It's definitely custom icons causing this issue. Shall we update the bug report we sent? I'm not even sure if Apple will reply to it, would be nice so I could at least shine some light on this. Either way the link to this discussion was provided to them also so hopefully they read this.

DNSBRU

Level 1

4 points

Sep 27, 2017 11:10 PM in response to J4MMYz

In my case it’s pretty much the same scenario. Large video files (some around 4 GB, others around 20 GB) with custom icons. My External HDD is unusable, same as yours J4MMYz. This needs to get fixed.

J4MMYz Author

Level 1

52 points

Sep 28, 2017 3:13 AM in response to DNSBRU

DNSBRU have you filed a bug report? The more people that do this the better chance of us getting heard.

All, I'm pretty certain I know what the issue is. Before the update, if you was to paste an icon (normally a screenshot of the video) in the Get Info window you'd get a rectangular icon, which is correct and normal. However, after this High Sierra update - custom icons are either broken or bugged, because they cause an unbelievable lag in performance as we are complaining about here, and if you now want to do a custom icon (which is what i've found) it now comes out square and stretched, it does still cause issues... I only find these issues to be on my external HDD, my internal SSD everything works normal, but it still gives the video a square icon.

How does this bug reporting work, does Apple actually reply to you? Or do you just get blanked so we are left unassured this will be sorted.

The thing that worries me is in Sierra there was a bug with the Finder view "Arrange By Kind" - this did not get fixed until High Sierra, and it was such a minor bug... it was very disappointing that it took so long to be fixed - well if this takes a year to be sorted I don't know what i'll do.

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External Hard Drive incredibly slow after High Sierra