Nothing like a long weekend with lots of computer problems to sort out on your homework. Normally, I don't mind sitting down with a cup of joe, some new programs to install, maintenance tasks to oversee and so on. But this morning, I'm stumped over what to do to solve a serious performance problem with my iMac. Can you help? Here's the setup:
Prior to today, I've been running:
- An iMac Intel Core 2 Duo 17″ (late 2006). The guts of it all OEM: 1 GB (2×512) RAM, 250 GB HD, SuperDrive.
- A 500 GB LaCie USB 2.0 External HD.
- Two external optical drives; one that can read/burn CDs and one that can read//burn DVDs/CDs. Both of these are connected via FireWire
- Operating system: Mac OS 10.4.x
- Network: Wireless Airport on iMac to DLink wireless router to Sympatico DSL. Using OpenDNS
Over the last few weeks, system performance (and by this, I mean basic tasks like copying a file or selecting a menu option or switching between apps) has degraded to the point where it could take several seconds simply switching from one app to another. No new software or devices were added over this time.
Running Apple's Hard Disk Utility, I discovered some “Minor” problems on the internal hard drive. I booted up in safe mode, which automatically forces a disk repair, and, upon running disk utility again, the disk appears fine.
Performance problems persisted.
I ran disk utility on the external drive. No problems.
Earlier this week, I decided to upgrade the OS.
The upgrade took 5+ hours to install. (I'd heard it can take a while but 5 hours seems silly).
Performance problems persisted.
Last night, I loaded everything I needed on the internal drive and backed up to the external drive. THen I proceeded to do a clean install of the OS 10.5.6. I ran Software Update to get the latest Java machine and other updates.
Still got problems. (Copying 2 GB of files I'd backed up on my external drive back to the internal drive took more than 2 hours! via USB 2.0)
Ran Hard Disk Utility again. Everything's fine. Still have performance problems.
Shut power down on all external drives and re-booted.
Ah-ha! Now we're gettin' somewhere. Performance seems normal. System is responding to basic commands in the what seems like a normal way.
But I need those external drives. First bright idea: Perhaps it's the cheap Dyntech 5-port USB hub that's gumming things up. To test, I disconnected the hub and connected the LaCie external drive directly to the iMac.
Back to the same old problem.
Ok — so it seems pretty clear that the iMac and the LaCie drive, which once got along famously, are now like an old married couple — grumpy and slow to respond to each other's requests. Again — neither the LaCie drive nor the iMac internal drive report any problems via Hard Disk Utility. Files are being successfully copied back and forth albeit at a mind-numbingly slow speed. But for all intents and purposes, so long as the iMac is attached to the LaCie drive, it has all the zip and functional usefulness of my old Centris 610.
Any and all suggestions gratefully welcomed in comments below.
THE NEXT DAY: Some commenters below warned that my LaCie external HD may be about to fail. I, too, worried about this and so I've been trying to get the files off of my external drive and back onto the iMac's internal drive. It took 7+ hours to transfer just 40 GB of home movies. Today, I plugged another external USB 2.0 drive into the iMac – a Western Digital 1 TB MyBook. It's brand new. I left the LaCie powered up but disconnected from the iMac. With the brand new MyBook now the only external drive plugged into the iMac, the same performance problems have returned. So I plugged the LaCie back into the Mac and tried to transfer files from the LaCie to the MyBook. Transfer speeds are blazingly fast. 4 GB files are coming over from LaCie to MyBook in under 2 minutes.
And here's another clue.
Copying a folder with 600 MB of files from one external drive to the other takes less than 3 minutes. Normal.
Copying the same folder from the internal drive to either external drive takes less than 3 minutes. Normal.
BUT — copying the same 600 MB folder from either external drive to the internal drive is taking 20 minutes or more.
I'm no expert but quite experienced with Macs. It sounds to me like a problem with your external hard drives:
“Shut power down on all external drives and re-booted.
Ah-ha! Now we're gettin' somewhere. Performance seems normal. System is responding to basic commands in the what seems like a normal way.”
I don't have a solution for you, but I recommend that you make sure that your external hard drives are backed up somewhere, because it sounds like they are about to fail.
Does the drive has the same problem when connected to your other Macs?
Have you tried to use a different USB port on your iMac? Maybe the one you are using is not playing nice with your external drive.
Drives can sometimes begin to degrade without really telling you about it, i.e., internal firmware will begin to skip over bad blocks, which degrades performance, but you won't get any messages about it since it is technically still working.
You'd need to use something that can report, in depth, the details from the SMART onboard monitoring, and Disk Utility only gives you an “ok” “not ok”, rather than a “will soon be not ok”, or something a little bit more granular than that.
Things you can try: in Terminal, do “dmesg” — this will spam your console with output from the kernel and drivers that, if you were running a console-only machine, would have been output to your main console. The stuff at the bottom is what you're concerned about, if it has some repeating message about hard drive badness, that's your culprit. It may not have any useful info, though.
Do you have a warranty with LaCie? Does it work on Windows? That is what I'd try next. Plug it into an XP box, and if it -does- work, take the opportunity to copy all of your critical files from the LaCie to somewhere else.
Its an apple , you shouldn't expect too much…… Buy Junk, expect junk performance.
As a long time PC-user, technology executive and Apple admirer, I must say that it is reassuring to know Apple-folks can encounter those type of events that make computer users, the world over, tear out their own hair, just like PC-folks.
The (awesome) Apple marketing machine would make us believe otherwise.
As I've often said, I am a techno-klutz … but I can't help commenting, since I'm on an iMac too 😉
Anyway …
• Given copying from ext. 1 to 2 and vice versa is normal
• and copying from “in” to “ex” is also normal
• wouldn't this “BUT — copying the same 600 MB folder from either external drive to the internal drive is taking 20 minutes or more.” indicate your problem lies with the internal drive?
And could it be the OS itself?
OK, you are permitted to laugh if I just stated the obvious.
Happy Passover, Happy Easter!
Try downloading Onyx, a free OS X maintenance utility.
Little known fact about macs that Apple should REALLY tell new users up front: There are utilities built in to OSX that run on a schedule, but only overnight. One is scheduled to run every night, one is set to run once a week, and the third is set to run once a month. In order to have these utilities run, you need to leave your computer turned on overnight. Onyx will let you run them on your own schedule.
When I have disk problems, the first thing I do is run Disk Warrior. It usually finds and fixes problems Disk Utility does not. Best HD utility available IMHO. 2nd thing to do is unplug your iMac for 20 seconds and let system reset, more or less equivalent to zapping the PRAM. Then I'd check the SMART utility for the internal drive to make sure it is checking out okay. DW has a disk checker utility for SMART as well.
If all that is gold, plus the system is newly reinstalled, then start looking at the USB connection. If your optical drives copy data back and forth with no issues, then that pretty much rules out the iMac except for the USB system.
Then I might try running various tests like small file copies, then larger file copies, or even making a gig disk image and copying it back and forth.
Activity monitor can show you read and write operations on the hard drives in real time, plus there are plenty of other utilities that do this. You can start looking for relationships and narrowing down the problem. If it is indeed only copies from a USB drive to the internal drive that are hosed, and it seems to happen only with USB connected drives, and it is global for any USB drive, it would seem like a warranty issue to me and if the warranty is still in effect, I'd call Apple. Ask for a higher tier cause they are sure to start walking you through a bunch of stuff you have already done.
Thanks for the input. To update: Lots and lots has been done here. I have had two long support calls with Apple; a number of diagnostic approaches have been used. The machine has come with me to my all-Apple workplace where our resident in-house tech support team has applied its black arts. The long and short of it? The internal drive performs normally when data is being read off ot if. It performs abnormally when data is being written to it. How abnormally? When we tried to “zero” the disk with Apple Disk Utility, Disk Utility informed us it would take more than 4 days to zero this 250 GB drive.
We — me, Apple tech support, inhouse tech support at work — still cannot say if this is a drive issue or if there is a problem with the i/o system coming off the processor. (Apple Hardware Test says everything's fine, I should add). So, having exhausted all the disk diagnostic approaches we can think of, we are now going to crack open the case, throw in a hard drive we know to be working correctly, and see what happens. If we still take forever to write to the disk, then we know we have a problem with a component that is not the drive. If the replacement drive works, then I'm off to local electronics retailer to buy a new internal drive.