Firewire 800 slow performance

I am getting a super slow performance on my 2008 8-core standard mac pro, I cant get more than 25mb/s in any external drive in any of the 2 ports.
Its very frustrating for me.
I am running Leopard 10.5.8.

Well, what kind of external drives are you using...?
As far as I know, FireWire 800 has a “theoretical” transfer rate of
up to 800 Mbits/s - that’s about 100 MB/s...
Under real world conditions one might achieve a maximum sustained
transfer rate of rather 40 to 50 MB/s...
Using a high-performance (7200 rpm) external drive, or an “VelociRaptor” (10000 rpm)
might increase performance...
Regards
Nolan

Similar Messages

Why is firewire 800 slow on new iMac?

I have two, new G-drives. One of them is used for off-site data storage. I need to copy about 225 GB of data (a single data file) from one drive to the other each week. Using my 13" MacBook Pro (2.66 GHz Intel Core Duo), the process takes about an hour. Using the SAME drives and the SAME cables, it takes about 6 hours to copy the same amount of data using our brand, new 21" Intel iMac. Obviously, the new, state-of-the-art iMac should AT LEAST be as fast as the year + old MacBook Pro. Any ideas how to get the iMac up to speed?
Thanks!
Philip

Thanks to everyone who commented on this problem. This morning I unplugged all the drives and the computer, came back to it five minutes later, plugged in the iMac and cleared the PRAM. Then I plugged the firewire 800 drives in and began copying the now-259 GB datafile from one G-drive to the other. The speed is back! It is copying a gigabyte every 20 seconds/ 3 gigs per minute. The 259 GB of data will copy in less than an hour-and-a-half.
Main lesson learned: At least with these new iMacs and probably with all Macs, using a firewire 400 drive attached to the firewire 800 port will cause the system to switch itself into a firewire 400 mode and keep it there even after removal of the firewire 400 device(s). Rebooting does not reset firewire 800 functionality. Zapping the PRAM, however, does clear the problem allowing the computer to revert to firewire 800 functionality. I had also unplugged the machine so maybe the SMC circuit was reset by that, too. The bottom line is this procedure worked. This experience makes me have to think about eliminating the firewire 400 drives from my systems.

Firewire 800 slows my MBP down

Hello there,
Since the last three days, for unexpected reason, my MBP becomes very sluggish as soon as I plugin my Lacie LittleBig FW800. Even if the Hard Drive is not involved (like using expose & spaces, opening unrelated apps). As soon as I dismount and unplug the drive the MBP goes back to normal. The strange thing is that, if I plug in another FW800 Drive the mac behaves normally.
Any help Is greatly appreciated
Many thanks indeed.
my gear is
Lacie LittleBig FW800 640GB

It might be that Spotlight is working busily to catalog the external harddrive's contents.
It's subtle but you might be able to see a blinking dot within the magnifying glass icon. If having a Spotlight icon for the external drive is unnecessary you can turn it off using System Preferences->Spotlight->Privacy.
Just a thought,
dick glendon

Slow firewire 800 speeds on early 2008 macbook pro 17"

I've got an early 2008 macbook pro 17". I'm transferring files between a WD mybook studio II (2TB) configured as raid-1 to a sata dock with a seagate 1TB drive daisy-chained over firewire 800. both 1TB drives in the WD mybook and the 1TB seagate in the sata dock are 7.2k rpm. I'm running a block-level clone FROM the mybook TO the seagate using Carbon Copy Cloner which i would think would be the fastest real-world test i could do. I'm getting pegged speeds of 40MB/s. This is on par with other regular read/write speeds i've noticed in the past. this seems way off. to remove variables i unplugged my two firewire 400 drives (as i've heard that may slow things down, even though they're not doing anything during the clone) and it SLOWED DOWN the fw800 clone to 38MB/s ! plugging the two firewire 400 drives back in during the clone brought the speeds back up to 40MB/s. i don't have a unibody 2009 mbp that had the firewire issues.
1) HDD's should read at 70-80MB/s and at least write at 59 MB/s, why am i not getting that using firewire 800 and two 7200 rpm drives ?? (i know the wd mybook is raid-1 but i'm reading from it...shouldn't effect read performance)
2) (less important) why on earth would having two firewire 400 drives plugged in and inactive make the firewire 800 transfer speeds go up/down 2MB/s
i'm willing to experiment with anyone's suggestions. huge thanks in advance.

i have a similar problem.
i have a new seagate freeagent 1tb drive w/FW800, FW400 and USB2.0 ports, and its connected via the FW800 port/cable to my macbook pro, and read/write speeds are really slow, particularly read speeds.
i'm currently working on an audio project with around 15 audio tracks running at once, and it chokes the drive ('HD overload' errors), so i've done some benchmark testing using Drive Genius and Xbench. the results show that the drive is averaging around 12mb/s read speed, and around 26mb/s write speed. grim.
i tried the drive with the FW400 connection on my missus' old imac g5, and its much faster than my mbp's FW800 connection, so i decided to try the drive back on my machine with OSX booted in Safe mode, and benchmark it again. the results are massively different; the FW800 connection is very fast (as you'd expect).
both the tests were done with all my peripherals attached (usb hub, ethernet cable, usb2 ext. drive) so i don't think the problem is with those.
what i'm wondering is if there are any known system extensions that can screw with the FW bus speeds? if not, any pointers as to where i should start troubleshooting?
many thanks!

External firewire 800 Iomega HD too slow since Lion Upgrade

Hi all,
Since my upgrade to OSX Lion im having the issue that my external Iomega HD is too slow to even playback my song (only audio files, About 9 Tracks of them). I removed all 3rd party plugins but the issue still occurs.
Is anyone experiencing the same issue? Any ideas on how to resolve it?
System:
iMac Middle of 2010
4GB 1333 Mhz DDR 3 Ram
External Harddrive is a iomega 1TB firewire 800 disk.
With Snow leopard it worked well... Maybe i was too fast with updating this time...
Cheers

Sorry little addition:
It s about an external fw hd working with Logic- not in general slow performance.

Firewire 800 not running as expected. VERY slow

Ok so this is my first post here. I looked all over google and various places but cannot find out whats going on (im also not very computer literate so please bear with me!). Heres my deal:
I am a musician working with garageband and I have always been recording to my internal drive until recently. I was unaware until I read some posts here from the good people like you guys, that that is not a good idea to record to your internal drive. So, I got an external firewire 800 drive (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001DGZ05A) and this cable (http://www.amazon.com/2M-Firewire-800-9PIN-Cable/dp/B000XQILWK/ref=pdbxgy_e_imgb). When I received it, I first used disk utility and reformatted it for Mac OS Extended Journaled. Then I proceeded to move a couple sample libraries and my entire "Garageband" folder (with my saved songs in it) to the external. I instantly knew something was wrong. The files were taking forever to get written over. It took about 15 mins for a 5GB folder to be moved over. I was already discouraged. Anyway, I plugged in the USB cable that came with the external and tried moving the same files and it was MUCH faster. The same 5GB file was moved over in a matter of minutes.
I then tried recording to the drive (using firewire again) and it would hardly even PLAY the song without stopping every couple seconds (too many effects error, and yes ALL the tracks were locked). Tried to record as well and i'd get even less time before garageband would stop the song with the same error. So I disconnected firewire and went USB. Thru USB the song didnt stop once, not on playback OR recording. Then I moved the songs back to my internal and played them (and recorded) with no problem either. So what gives? I cant figure out if I'm doing something wrong, or if my external HD is bad? Or the cable is bad? Or maybe the firewire port on my mac mini is bad (i've never used it before for anything other than this external drive). Or i'm thinking maybe my processor isnt strong/fast enough to record to the external firewire drive? Im working with a mac mini 120GB internal HD and the 2ghz intel core 2 duo with only 2GB ram (i know thats not ideal for recording and im planning to upgrade at some point, but i have been recording to the internal just fine with the RAM i have now and never had a problem until trying to record to the firewire drive). I was going to go out today and get a new cable and see if that was the cause of it. Anyway sorry for the book-length post! But PLEASE SOMEBODY help me here! ..as i said, im not very computer literate and only just started producing music using computers so please use dummy terms lol ..thanks in advance
P.S. this is my first post so im sorry if I should've posted this in a different category.

Hi,
Are you using an audio Firewire 400 interface (daisy-chained through you external FW800 HDD) ?
I've same problem (mac mini June 2010) so I think it is a compatibility problem between the mac (perhaps only with mini) and some recent Firewire chipsets found in external HDD. I read somewhere that Apple does not support anymore PLX (that acquired Oxford) chipsets for external HDD connected to Mac Pro.
I tried then using the Sonnet Yin Yang adapter (to avoid daisy-chaining), however it is the same :
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=13360117#13360117
The problem does not happen when daisy-chaining through FW400 (from the audio interface to the HDD).
Using the external disk only (FW800), I get up to 60 Mbyte/s sequential write and up to 70 Mbyte/s sequential read (that is using xbench - in memory read, you shouldn't try between two disks as the slower will be the limiting factor). My external HDD is a WD Caviar blue so it also helps.

Lion very slow starting apps with Firewire 800 drive mounted. Any ideas?

Lion very slow starting apps with Firewire 800 drive mounted.
When my Firewire 800 drive is in sleep mode, when I start up an app like MS Excel or Addressbook. I get a spining wheel and a delay before the app launches. Any ideas? Never happened in 10.6.

Long shot: What format is the drive?
Regards
TD

Slow large file transfer speed with LaCie 1T firewire 800 drives

I am transferring two large files (201gb and 95gb) from one LaCie 1T firewire external drives to another one (using separate connections to a PCI Express firewire 800 card in my Quad G5. The transfer time is incredibly slow – over for hours for the 201gb file and over 2 hours for the 95gb file.
Does anyone have any ideas why this is so slow or what I might try to speed up the transfer rates?
Thank you.
G5 Quad 2.5 8GB DDR2 SDRAM two SATA 400GB Mac OS X (10.4.5)

You posted this in the Powerbook discussion forum. You may want to post it in the Power Mac G5 area, located at http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=108

Does daisy chaining Firewire 800 drives reduce performance?

Hello,
Based on the recommendation of a very knowledgable Apple Cert. Instructor, I learnt that a very good drive configuration for editing in FCPX is to have 3 separate drives: Boot disk, Events, and Projects. The reason, I suppose, for having the Events and Projects folders on separate drives is because FCPX is constanty reading and writing data into those 2 databases, which would mean that having both databases on one drive strains performance since the drive would have to write all edit changes constantly in the projects folder while reading video footage constantly from the events folder.
That sounds logical so I'll accept it as being true, but here's the intro to my question: I have an iMac (see the specs below) with 1 firewire 800 port, and my extra 2 drives would need to be daisy chained (FW800) to share the 1 port.
1. Does the communication to the two drives suffer for being daisy chained into 1 port, i.e. is the 800Mb/s transfer rate halved between the 2 drives or is full 800 to both at the same time?
2. Does the computer handle the communication with the 2 FW drives via that 1 port evenly so that I takes full advantage of having separate physical disks dedicated to just reading and writing Media and Project data?
It might seem riduculous to go to such Media Management extremes, but FCPX seems to struggle when I get deep into a project and the performance gets sluggish. that's why I'm trying to optimize the workflow.
Thank you,
Reynaldo
System specs: 27" iMac (mid 2010) 2.8Ghz quad-core i5, 8GB RAM, ATI Radeon 5750 with 1GB GDDR5 Memory
External Drives: LaCie D2 Quadra 2TB 7200RPM and Lacie D2 Quadra 3TB 7200RPM

If all the devices in the chain are FW800 then there will be no degradation.
If any of the devices in the chain are FW400 then complete chain drops to FW400 performance.
Allan

Firewire 800 running slow

Hello,
Have a new MacBook Pro connected to a Lacie Rugged portable drive using Firewire 800. The speed is much slower than I expected. Seems to be about 43 MB/sec as opposed to the theoretical 100 MB/sec. Any suggestions?

There often isn't much of a difference and your actual usage can also make a big difference. On copying large files to and from you should be able to get about 75MB/s with a good drive. In the best case my Western Digital Caviar SE16 750GB drive will get to this however my Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 160GB will cap out at about 60MB/s and it's in the same two drive enclosure. Having said that, if I try copying a large number of small files my WD drive can drop down to 45MB/s or so which is no better than FW400.

Will I notice a significant performance drop if I run my Imac 8,1(early 2008) direct from an external firewire 800 Harddrive

Will I notice a significant performance drop if I run my Imac 8,1(early 2008) direct from an external firewire 800 Harddrive

I notice quite a difference in two of my externals because of that (the 5400 rpm drive was a warranty replacement and I had no idea it wouldn't be 7200 rpm - but that's another subject.....).

What FireWire 800 drive (2.5") to build/buy for MacBook Pro?

Hello community, this topic is to request a little help choosing a FireWire 800 storage solution. About once every two days, I need to run a virtual machine, either Windows XP or Ubuntu. The disk image is currently located on an external USB 2.0 Western Digital hard drive, which is also used for not-speed-sensitive storage. Performance is decent, as long as I quit all possible application before launching (I have 4GB RAM, planning on 8GB upgrade very soon) and don't launch too many apps in the virtual machine, however, I feel performance is lagging since I can see the virtual hard drive indicator turning red most of the time, and the 4 white LEDs on the WD going back and forth (although it doesn't necessarily indicate heavy activity). Especially, restoring to and from saved states routinely takes 45 seconds or more. The external drive is about 90% full most of the time, and may be a contributing factor to the slow feeling. Hence, I thought about putting this FireWire 800 port to good use, and plug a compatible drive in it. I had the following requirements:
3-year warranty an absolute minimum, 5 years
would be ok (my current WD MyPassport has 5). Reason is I consider if manufacturers trust their drive for 5 years, it shouldn't be a source of worry for many years to come. I consider 2-year warranty to be substandard drives.
2.5" form factor. Reason is I rarely happen to have enough room or steady power to lay and plug a full 3.5" drive, unless it uses a battery, which is extremely rare and would add bulk in my bag.
Ability to saturate FW800 port. I think a more performant drive would be a waste of money since they constantly go down in price, and I may be able to get a better deal by the time I switch to Thunderbolt-based MacBook Pro. Admittedly, this is a "soft" requirement, given expected use.
Under $150 (would come to $170 tax,S&H included)
I understand pretty well that the two latter points come in opposition and need a compromise, so I think a large compromise on drive size is to be expected. So far, I thought about these solutions:
Fully manufactured, i.e. Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex + FW800 dongle. Major drawback: dongle is expensive, and appears to use a proprietary connector. If it breaks, impossible to replace it quickly. Alternative: LaCie Rugged (pretty big for a 2.5" drive), G-Tech (usually quite expensive).
Handmade from performance platter drives, i.e. Western Digital Scorpio Black + FW800 enclosure. Major drawback: wouldn't saturate a FW800 port since it comes in SATA300 flavor only, but I get the strong feeling it would perform better than many manufactured drives.
Handmade from SSD, i.e. Corsair + FW800 enclosure. Major drawback: from this page, major compromises would have to be made on capacity. Affordable SSDs seem to be limited to 40 or 60GB, and while I don't put capacity as a priority, I may have to use the high-performance drive for other tasks, such as editing short high-def movies, or add a third virtual machine. Considering the Windows virtual drive needs to be around 15GB, and 25 for Ubuntu, 60GB wouldn't leave enough elbow room.
What solution would be better advisable, and what arguments would you put forth for it?

Reply on a dead topic:
After a word, Macally used the Oxford chipset. So Macally I went, and put a Scorpio Black 500GB inside. Ran fine, but I got it stolen in a coffee shop a few days after I started to use it. Had no time yet to do a backup, so data was lost. Surveillance cams weren't working at the time of the theft, nobody has seen anything, and, as usual, police won't do anything about it.
Second drive I got was also a Scorpio Black I put inside the Mercury Mini enlosure from OWC. Marginal difference experienced from the Macally, but most recent Oxford chipset would ensure fewer head parkings, that are very noisy and unsettling, so much I thought there was something wrong with the drive, and still think there is, despite reassurance from Western Digital.
The mobile drive I happen to use is the lesser-performance G-Drive from Hitachi, a 750GB version.

Aperture Slow Performance

Aperture 3 is running very slow on my MacBook Pro Retina 2012...I think a big factor might be that I have roughly 20,000 photos/videos in my library, and the library is stored on my external drive as a managed one. I have a WD 2TB Firewire 800 (I use a Firewire 800 to Thunderbolt adapter to use it) external...I know that Firewire 800 is extremely slow compared to USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt. But is there any way I could boost Aperture's performance?
Every time I open up Aperture, it is "Processing". This will last easily 1-2 hours, making it barely useable. Most of the time it will give me a spinning rainbow wheel and I will have to force quit. Should I create separate libraries because mine is decently large? I really would like to keep all of my photos/videos in one location on my external, but if keeping everything on the local drive would be better, I can try that. Any advice would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks!

What is your Aperture 3 version? Have you updated to the latest version? If not, update to Aperture 3.5.1 for the best compatibility with MAvericks.
If you have Aperture 3.5, make sure your Preview preferences are set according to this support article: Aperture 3.5: Set "Share XML with other applications" to "Never" for better performance and faster quit times
Every time I open up Aperture, it is "Processing". This will last easily 1-2 hours, making it barely useable.
You may have imported corrupted videos or image files, that cause Aperture to continually try to create previews. Is Aperture more responsive, when you launch it with the Shift-key held down? That is a sure sign for problematic content in the library. Try, if removing your last import from the library fixes this. (see: How to Screen an Aperture Library for Corrupted Image Files or Videos)
Or the internal libraries in your Aperture library need repairing. Try the First Aid Tools: See: Repairing and Rebuilding Your Aperture Library: Aperture 3 User Manual
-- Léonie

Firewire 800 vs SATA

Are there any indications that Apple may move away from Firewire 800 on future (Intel) PowerMacs towards SATA drives?

The problem I'm seeing with the external drives is
that a few vendors (e.g., WiebeTech) offer drives
that either interface with SATA or Firewire 800, but
not both. So if I buy the Firewire 800 version now, I
cannot use it with a SATA interface in the future.
And if I buy the SATA interface version now and a
SATA interface card for my current (older version)
G5, I will need to buy a new SATA interface when I
replace my G5. Time for a decision...
If you go with FW800 you are buying expensive technology that uses a chipset that changes frequently. You need to experience losing data with a Mac OS X update - that causes problems with FireWire before you can appreciate the simplicity of external SATA.
In addition, FW800 usually marries you to old IDE drives that will be useless when you finally realize how much better SATA is for speed and reliability. You cannot use IDE drives with FW800 except with extremely expensive enclosures that perform slower than SATA.
The fact that you may have to use your SATA setup on the old system until new drivers or SATA host adapter cards are available for the new system is not much of a drawback compared to having to replace all of your IDE hard drives with SATA drives when you finally make the move to external SATA.
FW800 is where I use to be, but its slower, unreliable with upgrades, expensive and uses old IDE drives that don't make sense buying anymore. Why buy into dead end hard drive technology when SATA is the present and future?
Michael

Hard Drive Speed Difference Between FireWire 800 and Internal Drive

Right now I have my entire 1.5 TB Lightroom photo library on an external drive connected to my new Mac Pro via FireWire 800. Will I experience dramatic or even noticeable speed improvements if I move this drive to one of the internal SATA hard drive bays in my Mac Pro?
I would likely buy a new drive and SuperDuper the external to this new drive I put in the Mac Pro.
Thanks,
Matt

SATA II 3Gb is only the controller bus and has almost nothing to do with actual individual drive speed. Confusing the bus interface with hard drive speeds is not a clear way to compare.
Just pull the drive out of the FW case is all you probably need to do. Actual FW800 is less than 80MB/sec and more like 72-75MB/sec - which is as slow as your hdd gets from slow inner tracks.
Other than green, most 1.5TB drives average minimum 75MB/sec to max 115 with average in mid-90s. And the first 1/2 of a drive is where best performance comes from.
The size of the data and media library, amont of free space, all play a role.
I think FW should be left to backups, an alternate boot volume, off line data.
If it was Aperture library, but otherwise SSD is not realistic or viable. Nobody uses RAM disks as they are inefficient.
I still find 10K VelociRaptor ($279 / 600GB) fast, smoother, more responsive, great for system and data drives, even if they are only 135MB/sec, or about what some of your 2TB drives can offer.
QUICK TAKES - A striped pair of Velociraptor 600G 10K HDDs matches the speed of one SSD. For less that the price of one 256G SSD, you can buy two 10K 600G Velociraptor HDDs. If you stripe them (RAID 0), you get the same sustained transfer speed as the SSD. http://www.barefeats.com/quick.html
If you are not already using all the internal drive bays, just nice to have them handy before going external. Also take a look at two other articles on Barefeats:
THINK INSIDE THE BOX: Internal Storage Innovations for the Mac ProOctober 6th, 2010
EXTERNAL STORAGE INNOVATIONS for Mac Pros -- (Added results for ATTO R680 SAS RAID adapter.)

Firewire 800 slow performance

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