External Disk Access Suddenly Slow

It now takes forever to load files (Open a finder window) when I open an external drive partition that contains my imovie files and main backup partition on the same external drive.
I never had a problem before.
The permissions for the "Backup" partition in the external drive are:
- system - Read and write
- admin - Read and write
- everyone - Read
The permissions for the "Movie" partition in the external drive are:
- <my user name> "(me)" - Read and write
- admin - Read and write
- everyone - Read
Both drives load - very - slowly (5 minutes).
I am the admin, and the only user.
OS 10.8.5
Can anyone offer ideas?
Disk utility found no permissions issues.
Thanks.
Mac

It happens a very spooky thing, by trying for the N time to check the disk (with the disk program), it suddenly reapear at the desktop... i was very upset, dont know what have I done lastly, but allas, its now healled. I hope it will keep this way otherwise i'll be back here
Sorry to bother you guys, thank you so much for all the links and the patiente!
(Thanx God I dont have to deal with that DOSlike terminal). At least I learn a good lesson, rookies should never mess with volumes's privileges...
my best kind regards!

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External disk access privileges

I got some VERY bad advice on access privileges and I am now unable to access my external firewire disk. I added my user id to the root of my boot disk and did an apply to all subfolders. I was trying to protect my data, but the disk now disapeared from my desktop. I run the Disk program and it shows the external disk but it doesnt mount it so I can not access it to change the privileges. I get "you can't open the folder because you don't have sufficient access privileges.
Is there any way to fix this? I have done a repair permissions on my boot disk.
Thaank you
G5 Mac OS X (10.4.11)

It happens a very spooky thing, by trying for the N time to check the disk (with the disk program), it suddenly reapear at the desktop... i was very upset, dont know what have I done lastly, but allas, its now healled. I hope it will keep this way otherwise i'll be back here
Sorry to bother you guys, thank you so much for all the links and the patiente!
(Thanx God I dont have to deal with that DOSlike terminal). At least I learn a good lesson, rookies should never mess with volumes's privileges...
my best kind regards!

USB Disk access "Extremely" Slow

I am unable to use my network disk essentially because the disk access write/read times are SO SLOW...I am better off running backups by connecting my disk directly to the compter. Does anyone else have this problem?
It took 5 Minutes to read my Music directory; connected directly via the same cable it takes seconds.
What gives?
Any help would be appreciated.

I got my AE and Seagate FreeAgent Pro hard drive
yesturday and I have the exact same problem.
If I hook up the drive to the computer directly it is
very very fast.
If I hook it up to the AE it takes about 2 hours to
move a couple fils totaling 2 gigs over ETHERNET!
If I transfer the same files over the same network
between 2 computers the speed is much much faster.
Is this normal or some nasty firmware bug. It almost
feels like the AE is using USB 1.0 for some reason.
You guys are funny. How about checking out the specs of USB 2.0 and 802.11g/n?
Go here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/802.11g#802.11g
and here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_2.0
Firewire vs. USB tests are here:
http://www.g4tv.com/techtvvault/features/39129/USB20_Versus_FireWirepg3.html
802.11g:
Release Date Op. Frequency Data Rate (Typ) Data Rate (Max) Range (Indoor)
June 2003 2.4 GHz 19 Mbit/s 54 Mbit/s ~35 meters
802.11n:
Release Date Op. Frequency Data Rate (Typ) Data Rate (Max) Range (Indoor)
Mid 2008 5 GHz and/or 2.4 GHz 74 Mbit/s 248 Mbit/s (2 stream) ~70 meters
Bottom line: 802.11n typical is 74Mbps, 802.11g typical is 19Mbps. USB 2.0 typical is 50Mbps.
On the average, you should expect your speed to drop by over 50% when connecting the USB drive to AESB using an 802.11g device. If your device is 802.11n, then you should have pretty much similar performance.
Now, if you increase the distance from your base station, or you put walls in between, the performance of 802.11g will go down "dramatically", all the way to 2-3Mbps, easy. Not so for 802.11n, which behaves much better at longer distances.

External disk access - USB change to firewire is it OK?

I have my backup external disk connected to my Airport Express via USB. If I unplug it and connect it using the Firewire connection to my Macbook will I still be able to read the data on the disk OK?
Thanks

Hi Robert
Yes
Dennis

Eveything involving disk access is slow

Why is everything to do with HD access seems to be slow, very painfully slow!!
Due to a failed RAID I got a new 500gb Seagate SATA HD drive to install internally.
I have been tiding files up and using 'Archive' a lot and it takes an age to do anything. It seems the size of the Archive is directly proportional to the performance. I have a 63gb folder to Archive and at 12.36gb it is now managing a stellar .01 gb a second, with 4 hours to completion!!
Activity Monitor is only reporting:
Data read/sec 10.58mb
Data written/sec 10.00mb
The best snapshot!@
And is very bad!!
I moved 54gb of Aperture images from my old external FW400 RAID onto a new 500gb internal SATA drive with no real visible performance gain.
Anyone got any hints at what maybe the problem? I don't think its a hardware issue but an OS X issue.
I know Seagate are not the fastest HD on the market but they were the cheapest. I also know cheaper is not the best but a SATA disk on a MacPro should produce much better performance than I am getting.

Hi Pedro,
I'm having the exact same issue as you, whilst transfering files using finder to the Time Capsule or a USB drive attached to the Time Capsule it used to be quick really quick specially via Ethernet connection, after upgrading to Lion the speed is appaling and it can come to a stand still. I have a 100gb iTunes collection on the disk that used to work fine with Snow Leopard now I can't access it. Same goes for the multiple iPhoto collections I have there.
I have tried to format USB drive and Time Capsule HD as well it did not help. Sometimes the transfers can take ages other times they just stop and Finder can be seen on activity monitor as being hanged.
To rule out a problem with the Time Capsule I connected the Mac at work to a windows network I logged in and presto! All network transfers were bad in terms of speed, really bad!
Decided to re-install Lion from scratch but alas the problem is still there.... appareltly Lion 10.7.1 is coming quicker than previously thought....

Finder/Disk Access Extremely Slow

I have a G4 867 (MDD) running OS 10.4.6. After putting my computer to sleep last night, I woke up this morning to find hanging at the login-from-sleep screen. I force-restarted, and since that point the computer, and especially some components of the Finder, has been running EXTREMELY slow.
Symptoms:
-Hard drives are slow to appear (I have two on the primary channel and two on the secondary). They will eventually show up, but it can take over a minute for drives other than the startup drive. When I scan them with Disk Utility, they appear fine.
-Using menus and accessing files in the Finder can take upwards of a minute or so. Likewise, switching between programs can induce waits of about 30 seconds.
-Curiously, once inside a program (say, Safari or iTunes), no problems exist local to the program, and it can run nearly unaffected... but if I need to change applications or access a file outside the program, the problems surface.
Things I've tried:
-Restarting.
-Trashing my Finder prefs.
-Zapping the PRAM.
-Resetting the PMU.
-Running Disk Utility.
-Running Yasu.
-Reinstalling the 10.4.6 Update.
-Trying to reinstall Tiger (which failed; initially, the DVD couldn't see the drives- then, after I checked them with Disk Utility, it could see them but failed to install after checking the DVD and asked me to restart)
Can anyone help?
G4 Dual 867 (Mirrored Drive Doors) Mac OS X (10.4.6) 2 GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro AGP

I got my AE and Seagate FreeAgent Pro hard drive
yesturday and I have the exact same problem.
If I hook up the drive to the computer directly it is
very very fast.
If I hook it up to the AE it takes about 2 hours to
move a couple fils totaling 2 gigs over ETHERNET!
If I transfer the same files over the same network
between 2 computers the speed is much much faster.
Is this normal or some nasty firmware bug. It almost
feels like the AE is using USB 1.0 for some reason.
You guys are funny. How about checking out the specs of USB 2.0 and 802.11g/n?
Go here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/802.11g#802.11g
and here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_2.0
Firewire vs. USB tests are here:
http://www.g4tv.com/techtvvault/features/39129/USB20_Versus_FireWirepg3.html
802.11g:
Release Date Op. Frequency Data Rate (Typ) Data Rate (Max) Range (Indoor)
June 2003 2.4 GHz 19 Mbit/s 54 Mbit/s ~35 meters
802.11n:
Release Date Op. Frequency Data Rate (Typ) Data Rate (Max) Range (Indoor)
Mid 2008 5 GHz and/or 2.4 GHz 74 Mbit/s 248 Mbit/s (2 stream) ~70 meters
Bottom line: 802.11n typical is 74Mbps, 802.11g typical is 19Mbps. USB 2.0 typical is 50Mbps.
On the average, you should expect your speed to drop by over 50% when connecting the USB drive to AESB using an 802.11g device. If your device is 802.11n, then you should have pretty much similar performance.
Now, if you increase the distance from your base station, or you put walls in between, the performance of 802.11g will go down "dramatically", all the way to 2-3Mbps, easy. Not so for 802.11n, which behaves much better at longer distances.

Disk access extremely slow after 10.5.2 Update

I did the update to 10.5.2 today.
1. I tried to update via Software Update. The update started but then stopped with an Error message (Contact Support) and the system freezed. There was just the spinning wheel on blue background for more than one hour. No more harddisk activity. I finally rebooted (hard way). After a reboot I had a somehow upgraded system. But many things did not work anymore (most applications crashed, mail could not access keychain items anymore, etcpp)
2. Then I downloaded the complete Update package to do a manual update (happily firefox still worked). After a manual install it worked. It installed fine and rebooted. Now everything works as it should with the only problem that everything is extremly slow. Starting an application lasts about double the time as normal, loading files takes 3 to 4 times more time than with 10.5.1
To fix these issues I tried several things:
- Fixed permissions
- Cleared all cache files and forced system to rebuild them
- Severall reboots
- Waited until backup completed and Spotlight index was rebuilt
Bootup time is now fine (more or less). Just a little slower than 10.5.1. Application start is still slow but better. But the file access is still extremly slow. This can be observed very well in Parallels which still works fine, but needs 3 to 4 times longer to start (so do all applications within parallels). I checked CPU (Activity Monitor) but could not see anything special.
Any ideas what could be the reason for this behaviour and (more important) how to possibly fix this? I'm thinking about going back to 10.5.1 with time-machine and then try it again with the package install.
Any help/ideas would be appreciated.

Is it slow wireless LAN behavior affecting Time Machine? Check out the third page of this thread, specificallly the post by John Albergo about "delay_ack."
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1394485&start=30&tstart=0
It helped me a lot.

Drive access impossibly slow... Even though target disk!

Drive access on our MacBook Pro is suddenly impossibly slow - taking five, ten minutes to startup, and being unable to complete an install (Java update). I found no errors in disk repair and just 'ignorable' errors in permissions. Programs crashing or haltling - even Finder and Force Quit aren't coming up.
Plugged it into my white MacBook to run Drive Genius to see if the drive could be salvaged, and disk access is slow even this way. Crazy slow, like taking several minutes just to get the drive information.
Size: 499.25 GB (464.96 GiB, 499,248,103,424 bytes)
Formatted As: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Volume Block Count: 121,886,744
Volume Block Size: 4,096 bytes
Volume Size: 499.25 GB (464.96 GiB, 499,248,103,424 bytes)
Journal: Enabled
Used: 259.67 GB (241.83 GiB, 259,666,432,000 bytes), 52.01%
So it seems normal, just really, exceedingly, impossibly slow.
What are the possible solutions? I'm not entirely certain it's just the drive; one of the USB ports on the computer is randomly non functioning, no software indications.
-Crissa

Using the online hardware test tool (Boot using Option+D) I was able to discern that the operaitng system had decided the drive was bad without actually telling me it was bad. Eventually the drive completely failed.
While it was slow, I had backed everything up. I found a guide to replacing the HD, although I did not actually need the fancy screwdriver to put the drive back in. It was very simple!
The USB issue still comes and goes, though.
-Crissa

How do I make a backup of an external disk?

I have an external disk that is formatted in Mac Extended Journal on which I keep movie files and photos.
I had some bad experiences in the past with my first MacBook Air (version 2.1) in which external drives kept getting erased without any good reason. I think it's due to the fact that I had to connect a USB cord to another computer when I had an external drive plugged into the MBA because the MBA could not power it on its own.
I thought it was due to a bad external drive and I took it to Samsung service center and complained that their drive was malfunctioning. I got a refund. But later on, I found that the same thing happened to another external drive and to a USB flash drive, so I realized that it had nothing to do with the external disks and something to do with the computer. I used the same drives that got erased on a newer MacBook Air (version 3.2) and I never had the sudden erasure problem.
Anyhow that's the background to why I want to make a clone of the external disks in my possession. If for some reason, the external disk gets suddenly erased, I would like a copy somewhere in safekeeping so that I do not lose all my movies.
How do I make a clone of an external disk?
I will be using a MacBook Air (3.2) for this task. It has two USB ports. Can I use Carbon Copy Cloner to do this? Just choose a source disk (external disk I want to clone) and a destination disk (the external disk where I want it to be cloned to)?

Many backup utilities like Carbon Copy Cloner and Super Duper can be used to clone drives. They can also clone boot drive to make bootable clones. They use "smart" backups in that they only update what has been changed from the previous backup. That is what you need too since you intend to use USB which is not that fast.
With CCC you can set up a task to start the backup automatically when you plug the backup in and it mounts.
FWIW I use CCC to make daily backups of my disks (scheduled backups can be done by these utilities).

External Disk Permission issues

I share my laptop with a colleague using 10.6.8
Tonight I had to do some shuffling of files on external disks. I kept getting asked to put in her password. The external disks were "read only" and only read/write under my log in, not hers.
I know how to "Find Info" and set the "Ignore permissions" check box so I can fix that... but I've wondered if that means there is some underlying installation error.
What causes external disks to suddenly become read only?
Random facts:
I've repaired permissions in her log in.
She has administrator privileges.
Thanks for any insight.

Is the disk that you are writing to also a bootable disk? In other words, is this the disk she uses to startup the mac from?
If so, you can't write to that disk without messing up the permissions. The general rule of thumb with any bootable disk is only ever copy from it when you're not booted into it. Changing the permissions from your end does not get around this. If you write into another bootable disk from 'outside' of it, you'll just corrupt the permissions for that user when they start up from it.
If you want to make things available to her from your disk, put them in your 'shared' or public folder, or even easier is use Dropbox or Skydrive.

Time Capsule disk access SLOW! 2TB - Dual band

I have a Time Capsule (2TB, Dual Band, Firmare at 7.4.2)
Its been working like a dream, backing up 3 Macs for the last 8 months.
I also use it for connecting two or three other disks via USB and then making those accessible over the LAN, and there is also about 100GB of data on the Time capsule disk itself that i use as a dump for files so i can get to them from anywhere on my LAN.
Lately I started to notice EXTREMELY slow disk access, even when i am connected via ethernet (1000 base) - and equally when I am connected via wifi (n)
for example, copying over a 2Mb photo can take minutes when it should take seconds.
i've been trying to figure out whats going on here for a while and so i checked out the sizes of the backup files.. the sparseimages that time machine creates.
one of them was nearly 1TB, while another was around 500GB and the other was around 120GB
that plus my data meant there was only about 300GB free on the 2TB disk.
I have a feeling the slowness could be down to extreme fragmentation of the drive... ??
so i decided to dump the backup files and copy off my other data and do a erase of the disk and start again.. but get this.. i can't even delete the 1TB file ! I have been trying for about 3 days now and it just will not delete.. i get the Deleting msg box and it just sits there, literally ALL night...
i know it isn't just hanging on the Mac (10.6.4) because deleting the other two images also took a long time (but not this long!)
i can't just wipe the disk now because i can't get my other data off either.. I have tried copying it over the network and onto a USB disk connected directly to the Time Capsule, but 3 days later and i'm still copying files..
to put some context into this, I copied over 1.8Gb today and it took about 4 hours...
has anyone had this problem before?? what on earth is going on?? is it down to fragmentation, or something else?? the TC has been working fine up until a few weeks ago when i started to notice slow speed.
any ideas ?
thanks
Adam

if anyone ever has this issue ....
it must have been EXTREME fragmentation. I bought another 2TB external disk, connected it to the TC, did a complete archive, which took around 24 hours... then i wiped the TC and put stuff back... it now works fine again...

Macbook pro mid-2012 13" has very slow disk access

Until 3 days ago my macbook pro mid-2012 13" running OX 10.8.3 was running fine. Then, it showed very slow response anytime it had to access the hard disk. After doing the usual checks and disk first aid repairs to no avail, I booted from my external disk with an older copy of my hard disk and everything then worked as normal, except when I accessed the internal hard disk, then it crawled once again (spinning beach ball, took many seconds just to open a finder window and then several minutes to display the contents). I ran the Apple Hardware Tests and it said everything was fine, even though it tooks several minutes before the test would actually start. I also ran the program BlackMagic Speed Disk to find out if the disk was having transfer speed problems and it showed a respectible transfer rate (60MB/s), not great but not like the 0.3MB/s I was getting when I tried to back up the internal disk. I was using Carbon Copy Cloner to try to back up the internal disk but had to give up since at 0.3MB/s, it would take days to back up the 250GB on the disk. I found on the web that using "restore" in Disk Utility, I could do a disk copy without the file by file copy which allowed me to back up my disk in "only" 6 hours. Booting from my newly made copy on an external disk worked fine and ran at nearly normal speed (slightly slower since it was an external disk running through USB2). As a final attempt to prove this was a disk problem, I erased the internal disk and reinstalled OSX 10.8. I am still waiting for this install to finish, it has been 5 hours although the progress bar said it should be done in 20 minutes. This was fairly convincing evidence that it is not a software or settings problem. However, all my web searches could find no other case of a problem like mine. I presume I have a failed hard disk but as all the diagnostic programs say it is working fine, I was hesitating to bring it in without hard diagnostic evidence. If anyone knows what might be the problem, it would be much appreciated to hear from you.

It should not take 5 hours to install Mac OS X. There is something wrong with the disk. Try reformatting where you do a wipe of the drive (an select the option to write zeros which will remap bad sectors). Then try to install MAc OS X.
I got this information from here:
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20064489-263.html
Back up your data.
Use Time Machine or a system cloning utility to create a full and restorable backup of your data. If you suspect bad blocks, then when cloning you might consider not using a "block-level" copy process, since this will likely run into problems.
Boot to the utilities DVD.
If you have a boot DVD for a tool like Drive Genius or another drive utility, then boot to that; if not, use your OS X installation DVD (once you select your language, open Disk Utility from the Utilities menu).
Format the drive.
Using your selected utility, format the drive and check for bad blocks. If you are using Disk Utility, click the Erase tab, click the Options button, and then select the option to write zeros to the disk (you do not need to do multipass erase options, as this will provide no additional benefit for managing bad blocks). Writing to zeros may take a couple of hours depending on the size of the drive, but when done the drive will have remapped any blocks that were not reliably read.
Restore the OS installation.
If you have used Time Machine to create your backup, boot to your OS X installation DVD (if you are not using Disk Utility) and use the option in the Utilities menu to restore from backup. Attach your Time Machine drive and then proceed with the restoration, selecting the newest backup as the one to restore to your system. If you have used a system cloning tool, then attach the cloned drive and boot off of it (hold the Option key at start-up to select it from the boot menu). When you are booted to the cloned drive, run your cloning utility to copy the installation back to the computer's main boot drive.An optional approach here is to perform a full reinstallation of the OS from your installation DVD, and then migrate your data, applications, and settings from either the clone or the Time Machine backups using Apple's Migration Assistant.

My Western Digital external hard drive suddenly stopped showing up on my Macbook Pro and disappeared from Disk Utility. It works on a PC.

My Western Digital external hard drive suddenly stopped showing up on my macbook pro and it disappeared from disk utility. I have tried making invisible files visible but nothing has worked and my hard drive shows up on a PC but not my Mac anymore.

What is the manufacturer of the external and how old is it? Does it have its own AC power supply or is it USB bus powered?

I have a 1TB WD external hard disk, which suddenly cannot be detected in my system. When i connect the hardisk to the macbook, the disk appears and immediately disconnects with the message "Disk not properly ejected". Any advice ?

I have a 1TB WD external hard disk, which suddenly cannot be detected in my system. When i connect the hardisk to the macbook, the disk appears and immediately disconnects with the message "Disk not properly ejected". Any advice ?

verify on another Mac if the same
WD is having issues with mavericks as you can see on the WD forum, did you install any WD software (never do that) when you connected the drive for the first time?
possible issue is a dead SATA bridge card or the new WD firmware w/ Mavericks.
SATA card issue
Your dead external hard drive is likely fine! Great hope for your 'faulty' external HD
http://community.wd.com/t5/External-Drives-for-Mac/bd-p/passport_mac
verify on another Mac if all possible

I have transferred my itunes library to an external drive. I then attached the external disk to a new computer. I can now access all songs from the new computer. But I can't access playlists. I can still access all songs and playlists on the old computer

I have transferred my itunes library to an external drive. I then attached the external disk to a new computer. I can now access all songs from the new computer. But I can't access playlists. I can still access all songs and playlists on the old computer

If you right mouse and select Get info it will show you the Apple ID used to purchase these songs.
Usually the name of an apple id is based on the email. So knowing that you may have forgotten the Apple ID password.
You can request a new password here http://www.apple.com/support/appleid/

External Disk Access Suddenly Slow

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