OS X :: Computer Slows Down When External Disks Spin Up?
Apr 2, 2009
I have had this issue for years now on all my Macs.
It happens to me with my current iMac intel, which has 2 firewire drives connected to it (one 800 and one 400).
When the firewire drives randomly spin it, it sometimes makes my iMac stall a bit. Like the beach-ball will sometimes even come up, but otherwise it just like it freezes a split second while it's bringing the hard drive back up the speed.
Why does it do that, and is there anyway around it?
It makes using an external drive frustrating and hurts the beautiful mac experience.
I have 4GB of memory, very fast computer otherwise, so it's not that.
I have 5 external USB disks on my little Mac Mini, and I've noted that if I don't access them for a time they spin down, and the next time I access them I have to wait for them to spin back up again. I don't care for that, and would rather they stayed spun up.
Is there some system setting or UNIX trick I can use to bring that about? Seems there should be?
I currently have over 10,000 photos in my iPhoto library. It really slows down my computer. I bought an external drive and copied all of my photos to it. I cannot get to them on my MacBook anymore but they are still there! How do I get rid of them? how i Photo keeps photos - Data, Originals, Modified.... I have no idea how to maage those files and what to delete in order not to have those huge files on my hard drive any more.
My computer stays at about 40C normally but when I watch videos or dvds my computer gets as hot as 81C but the fan is still at 2000 rpm. If my fan spun faster it should dissipate the heat more right? Is my fan supposed to spin faster? btw I put my umbp (mid 09 2.53ghz) on a fan cooler by antec.
I have some iMacs (running 10.5.6) each with an external direct-connect FireWire hard drive. About every ten minutes, these drives will spin up for a minute or two, then spin down again.
Background: The drives are set as Time Machine backup volumes on their respective iMacs. I assume the frequent accesses I observer are not related to Time Machine (because the accesses are much more frequent than the hourly backup schedule). The drives are not remote-mounted anywhere.
I have my 2011 17" macbook hooked up via a Moshi HDMI adapter to a 24" Acer 1080p monitor... While the image shows properly it makes the computer completely unuseable. I can't play videos and it lags up the machine really bad. I don't get it... i paid $3000+ for this machine and it can't output a smooth HDMI signal without crushing the system?
So after getting my new Macbook Pro 15 inch, I am giving my 3 year old black book to my brother and I wiped the HD for him. Just wondering if I can use the install disks from my new 15'' MBP to put leopard on his computer? The old disks contain tiger.
I have an iMac g4 I have Adobe CS3 on it, and I want to transfer the applications to the new macbook pro I will be getting soon. Unfortunitely I "misplaced" the original disks so all I have is what is currently on my computer.
Is there any way to do this? I have an external hard drive and thought maybe I could some how get the apps on there and then put them on the macbook, but I don't know if that is realistic.
I was trying to burn a new cd and before I used the application I had inserted a blank disk which my computer didn't recognize. When I tried the application to burn the burn folder, I got a message to insert a blank disk. I tried using the Disk Utility, but when I try to select the volume Superdrive, the option is dimmed. How do I eject the blank disk from my Superdrive? I tried restarting but that did not eject it.
1 "Put the computer to sleep when it is inactive for.." 2 "Put display to sleep after..." 3 "Put Hard Disks to sleep when possible..."
I'm guessing that #1 won't spin down the Hard Disks unless #3 is checked? Is that right? I'm also guessing that if I'm downloading a file or securely deleting the trash my iMac won't go to sleep? The reason I ask is because it seems like if I'm deleting the trash and my display goes to sleep, when I come back to the computer i really don't see any progress. What options do you guys typically use? I keep my iMac on 24/7, but didn't know about the first sleep option.
i installed 10.6.3 on my 17" MacBook Pro (updating from 10.5.8). All my external disk drives which had all been visible to the system and accessible before the update no longer were visible to the OS. Not in the sidebar and not in the disk utility. After checking all connections etc. many reboots, resetting the pram i still am unable to see or access these disks. From there i updated to 10.6.8 but exactly the same results. i'm not sure where to go from here. i have 4 externals on 2 different usb routers and 1 external on a firewire router. I'm considering removing the routers and trying each drive separately and directly connected to the laptop.Â
I did a software update for Safari to 5.1.5. I rebooted the system as required. Now neither the firewire external drive, nor the USB external drive are mounted.Â
They both spin and click several times and then stop. The disk utility does not see them. Power cycling the disks does not help.
My 2009 mac-mini started acting up about 2 months ago.The symptoms were:
-- slow response -- freezing for no apparent reason the going again -- failure to shutdown forcing use of the power button -- long boot times -- finder would freeze and could not be relaunched -- iTunes would not quit -- trying to view files on external drives may take an excessive time
I tried "everything" to try to resolve the problem.None of this worked:
-- zapped the parameter ram -- cleared disk permissions -- repaired disks -- booted to safe mode -- ran fsck -- reinstalled Snow Leopard
There were several articles that discussed how to "reliably restart the finder". urls....Although none of the suggestions in the article or in the discussion provided any relief, I was finally convinced that I needed to disconnect all of my external drives and reboot.It appears that we have finally discovered the culprit.I have 4 external drives:
-Seagate GoFlex 3TB USB -Seagate GoFlex 2TB USB -Seagate 1.5TB Firewire
Toshiba 0.5TB USB (Used for Carbon Copy Clone of the internal drive)Booting from this drive did not change the problem.With all of them removed my computer worked just fine.Adding back the 3TB USB and the 1.5TB Firewire, I still have a working system.Since discovery of this error, I've found several articles complaining that this bug has been around long enough that it should have been fixed by now.Apparently Apple points fingers at the disk drive maker and the drive makers point back at Apple.Refering back to the article above, (the HTTP link), these same symptoms seem to appear because of some rogue applications.It -may- be that because I am using Crashplan 3.2.1 to backup this "broken" disk to another locally attached disk, that Crashplan is the "rogue" application.However, I've been using Crashplan for nearly 3 years and have found it to be a great app -- much more reliable than Time Machine (which proved to be nearly worthless when my MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard died and was replaced with a MacBook Pro running Lion.
Disks I put in the Superdrive, external hard drives, or anything in the USB or Firewire (thumbdrive, etc) -- nothing shows up on the desktop. All are visible in Disk Utility. USB thumbdrives and external hard drives are visible in the sidebar in Finder, but disks are not (only disk utility).
Because of this I can't burn a disk because the disk is not being recognized. In Disk Utility, the external hard drives appear mounted and can be opened in Finder, but why aren't they appearing on my desktop (they used to)?
Tried to restart didn't work. Light is on, but nothing makes noise or anyhting. Been charging it for hours so it has power. Tested the chord on my ther computer and it worked
I have a Macbook Pro Intel Core Duo (first generation of MacBook Pro released). I run OSX 10.6.5. My disk utility has detected a problem and says I need the install disks that came with the computer. Called apple and they said I could reboot from snow leopard or the upgrade.** Problem is that I don't have any disks with me except those that came with my brand new iMac. Can I use those to reinstall the system? Is there any other way?
**They also said that after 2007, the install disks that come with computers are keyed to that specific computer so I "might" not be able to use the disk to repair.
Additionally, and I don't know if this makes a difference but I have the airport/time capsule which backs up my computer for easy restore.
It seems whenever I click on spotlight, my whole UI slows down. Most noticeable in dock. Maximize/minimize becomes choppy, dock magnification becomes jumpy. Only a restart fixes this. Anyone have a fix or experiencing the same thing?
I have an early 2008 Macbook Pro and recently, it seems like there are random 5 minute sessions where the hard drive would make noises as if Spotlight is indexing. However, during this time, nothing is happening. Just me browsing the web, not doing anything special. When the hard drive does this, the whole computer slows. It can still be used, but opening new tabs in Safari can take a good 5 seconds and same with opening programs and finder windows and sometimes I even get the beachball.
My Early 2011 MBP 15" core i7 2.2 when finalizing a 720P HD movie in iMove slows to a craw. Is this normal as no outher MBP pre-Lion acted like this. I've been to the Apple Store once because I was getting a charging not charging error with green and amber light while it was creating a 720P HD video in iMovie. Previous MBP's I've had pre-Lion did not act this way, and I'm wondering if its Lion or something else. And the Apple Store seems to act like its ok.
Since installing Lion on my iMac a couple of weeks ago, everything on my computer seems to be running slower. It's not unusual to sit and watch the spinning rainbow wheel for 5 minutes at a time, waiting for something to happen. This rarely happened before the the new OS. Even within applications like Safari, Mail and other apps, things do not act like they used to. I find myself having to click on action buttons 2 or 3 times before I get a response. For example, sorting my mail from "by date" to "by contact" rarely works without having to go to the main menu. I backed up my hard drive before the install, so I could revert back, but I hate to go backwards.
Info:iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.4), 2.8GHz Processor. 4 GB 800MHZ DDR2R
