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

Top-ranking reply

Pichini13

Level 1

4 points

Posted on Sep 26, 2017 5:03 PM

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.

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164 replies

J4MMYz Author

Level 1

52 points

Nov 1, 2017 4:08 AM in response to Zigoto

hasn't for me. It's still very slow at loading video custom icons. I'm going to chase Apple as time is really pressing on and there still isn't a fix for this, it's pretty unusable

Actually, I have noticed the icons seem to load very slightly faster, still an absolute age though. Like you said, I'm not getting any verifying window anymore which is good and videos seem to open a lot quicker, but it hasn't solved the custom icons issue.

aaaok

Level 1

9 points

Nov 1, 2017 5:50 PM in response to J4MMYz

Personally, the betas have been really stable for me ever since 10.13.1 other than this one huge bug (that was already there in 10.13.0) and other related external HDD bugs. I'm not sure if 10.13.2 has introduced any new bugs since I've only been using it for about an hour though.

I usually wait before installing the betas on my main computer, but I've been installing them ever since 10.13.1 specifically in the hopes of them fixing this bug.

J4MMYz Author

Level 1

52 points

Nov 1, 2017 6:52 PM in response to aaaok

Well something i've found that still exists, when wanting to make a custom icon for a video now, it comes out as square like an old video from 2003... instead of being widescreen HD in a rectangular icon. So we still cannot make new custom icons for videos, but at least the loading times have been sorted. I've sent off my feedback so hopefully this will get acknowledged.

aaaok

Level 1

9 points

Nov 8, 2017 12:36 PM in response to RyanMv4

A workaround that I've used is to make the image a perfect square (512x512 or whatever) before copying and pasting it as the icon.

If you have Photoshop (or whatever), create a new square image document, then paste the image you want. Then save it as a transparent PNG, so it'll be a square image, but with the borders transparent. Then open the file and copy the whole image, then paste it as usual. Obviously annoying and not ideal at all, but it's a workaround for now.

tbirdvet

Level 6

17,783 points

Nov 13, 2017 4:11 PM in response to tbirdvet

I just installed High Sierra on an external SSD to test. Worked fine. Then I updated the SSD to APFS and then it took what seemed like forever to boot up. Once up it operated fine. Today I went to start up and the SSD had completely failed. Mac no longer even sees the SSD. Strange but I guess it could just be a coincidence.

AbeOdd

Level 1

11 points

Nov 18, 2017 3:57 AM in response to AbeOdd

PS: Especially considering that the new Apple philosophy forces professional users to connect A LOT of external devices and drives to their Mac, this issue should be fixed quite fast because it slows down the whole process of use of the Mac.

Nov 20, 2017 6:44 PM in response to J4MMYz

I have experienced issues with two of my external drives since the upgrade and they thought I was crazy at the apple store when I told them I didn't think this was a coincidence. I am not a techy person, but with an 11 month old 1 TB External Drive now beeping at me and an 4TB Lacie Porsche Design not even recognizable (and also under a year old), something is not right.

Nov 21, 2017 7:09 AM in response to DWegsPhotos18

Yep - everyone at Apple seems surprised, so I guess none of them use external drives.

To further compound the issue, now try to use the external disk through the network. It will take 10 minutes just to get a thumbnail preview of a jpg to display.

Nov 24, 2017 5:57 PM in response to J4MMYz

My external drives are all not the new APFS, but after reinstalling my Mac Pro and formating to the new APFS, all my external drive data trasnfers are very very slow. I feel it on whatever I want to do. It just takes forever.

Lightroom got also ver slow. Importing a SD-Card takes now hours what was before some 15 to 20 minutes.

Moving a folder with photographs 60GB from the internal SSD to a external Thunderbolt 2 HDD takes hours not minutes.

Anyone an idea what to do?

This made my Work-machine unworkable and a pure wast fo my time.

ultraon

Level 1

8 points

Dec 2, 2017 9:00 AM in response to J4MMYz

Hello, I've updated to High Sierra from El Capitan a couple weeks ago, and some days ago I've heard from my external storage Transcent StoreJet 3Tb USB3.1 some strange clicks, i turned off Mac, then turn on again and the sound has gone, but today it appears again. I'm not sure the issue in HDD, I will find how to resolve issue.

112524

Level 1

8 points

Dec 5, 2017 3:00 PM in response to J4MMYz

Same problem, ever since updating to High Sierra all my external hard drives and usb flash drives have been painfully slow to load and frequently freeze. They all work fine in other macs (not running High Sierra)... coincidence.. probably not! Hopefully Apple will acknowledge these bugs sooner rather than later and issue a fix!

Dec 12, 2017 3:27 AM in response to ferko

Can you confirm this is still the case Ferko, are the transfer speeds still ok with external hard drives? as I only now about you and another guy saying the latest update has worked, but i'm still wary on upgrading yet again to High Sierra incase the update doesn't fix it for me.

Dec 12, 2017 3:35 AM in response to Laurent Earth

Thanks, I have a 4TB external which I use just for movies, few hundred on there, but on Sierra I never have an issue, the folder opens up quickly, custom thumbnails show pretty much instantly etc.... but when I upgraded, it took ages for the folder to load, it would take seconds just for 1 thumbnail to load, and then transferring movie files from my desktop to that external hard drive would take forever, as I said, 45 minutes for a 700mb file which is awful, yet on Sierra it's literally seconds, so I had to downgrade back to Sierra but i'm having font issues with Sierra so I really want to upgrade (again) but just a bit wary with the whole thumbnail and transfer speed again.

Dec 12, 2017 3:43 AM in response to J4MMYz

Ah, really :-( I use custom icons for pretty much everything on my iMac, as it's my work computer for graphic design I find it easier going from folder to folder from seeing my custom icons instead of seeing the same folders with different names underneath, and with my movies I upload the actual movie cover, again it's easier for me to scan through and look at the covers than trying to read the names for each one, so if new icons are not working then I suppose i'll have to wait :-( will do the bug reports now for both the font issue on Sierra and the whole thumbnail/external hard drive issue on High Sierra.

J4MMYz Author

Level 1

52 points

Dec 12, 2017 3:49 AM in response to UrbanKaos

Thank you, it seems as though when pasting a video screenshot, either to a folder, video etc - it wont paste in the same dimensions as the video, it will paste square/squashed. I would guess it's the creation process of a new custom thumbnail, I thought it was part of the issue to do with the slow down on external HDD's but obviously a separate issue which doesn't seem to have any interest in being fixed.

Please all, if you could confirm this issue and report it will stand us a chance.

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External Hard Drive incredibly slow after High Sierra