Hard Disk activity slows machine down

Hi,
I have 4 hard drives in my MacPro and when a disk is very busy regardless of which one, the machine grinds to a halt.
For example, A Parallels VM, which is stored on a separate drive to the boot drive, was flogging the hard disk and my machine ground to a halt until Parallels finished using the drive. It's not the drive the VM was stored on that is problem because I bought a new faster drive and moved the VM there.
I have 4gb of ram
Any ideas?

4GB files on a 32-bit kernel and you run into what I call a bottleneck.
More RAM helps; and using dual RAID0's also allows for more I/O.
2GB left over falls into the anemia category.
The system drive from other experiments, tests, and benchmarks, does a lot more than just sit there and feed up applications.
And just as a fast SSD or 10K drive, or setting those up in RAID0, offers 240-500MB/sec, your memory bandwidth also plays a role.
When working with 2GB files in CS2 and later, arrays for every volume + whatever RAM you can throw at it helps.
Some operations are still single-thread and hold everything up, when you export or save or write to disk RAID makes up for some of that. A file is written out as temp file, old file is renamed, and when done deleted, while the directory and index are updated. And Spotlight rather than wait for things to be done, CAN get in the way while you work.
I don't know the full gist, but back in G3/G4, SCSI arrays made a big enough difference that I splurged on the full setup (two dual channel controllers driving 15K and 10K drives). And without? it was a real tortoise.
If you think 2GB is 'enough' to run OS X alone, let alone Safari, iTunes, Pages or office apps, let alone any pro apps or ones that need some RAM... CS4+ should have an 8GB system.
And the RAM needs of a Mac Pro have just never been as low or comparable to your desktop or laptop system.
But stay with 4GB if you don't mind.

Similar Messages

High hard disk activity caused by systemd-tmpfile

Hi
I have home server PC running pure, console Archlinux on it 24/7. It works fine for about 3 years and still do, but after systemd transition I noticed that my server periodically runs systemd-tmpfile daemon which causes intensive and continuous hard disk activity.
My /etc/tmpfiles.d is empty, but here is the content of /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d folder:
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 30 Sep 20 2012 apache.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 30 Jan 13 17:58 console.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 19 Jan 27 06:41 lastlog.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1146 Jan 13 17:58 legacy.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 29 Feb 5 11:09 lirc.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 24 Mar 5 12:57 mpd.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 33 Feb 25 19:41 mysqld.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 27 Jan 27 09:09 nscd.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 51 Feb 25 17:32 samba.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 36 Oct 13 19:30 saslauthd.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 33 Dec 21 16:39 svnserve.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 736 Jan 13 17:58 systemd.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 449 Jan 13 17:58 tmp.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 30 Dec 13 15:24 uuidd.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 622 Jan 13 17:58 x11.conf
My question is how to know which *.conf file causes such a high HDD activity or how to resolve the problem at all?
Last edited by clovenhoof (2013-03-21 18:20:26)

Ok here is what get with "lsof -c systemd-tmpfile" during this activity:
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
systemd-t 1069 root cwd DIR 8,3 4096 2 /
systemd-t 1069 root rtd DIR 8,3 4096 2 /
systemd-t 1069 root txt REG 8,3 59504 290840 /usr/bin/systemd-tmpfiles
systemd-t 1069 root mem REG 8,3 52144 262523 /usr/lib/libnss_files-2.17.so
systemd-t 1069 root mem REG 8,3 138206 262495 /usr/lib/libpthread-2.17.so
systemd-t 1069 root mem REG 8,3 18760 277530 /usr/lib/libattr.so.1.1.0
systemd-t 1069 root mem REG 8,3 2035539 262449 /usr/lib/libc-2.17.so
systemd-t 1069 root mem REG 8,3 31744 262453 /usr/lib/librt-2.17.so
systemd-t 1069 root mem REG 8,3 16776 299945 /usr/lib/libcap.so.2.22
systemd-t 1069 root mem REG 8,3 165436 262497 /usr/lib/ld-2.17.so
systemd-t 1069 root 0r CHR 1,3 0t0 6461 /dev/null
systemd-t 1069 root 1u unix 0xffff8801393df1c0 0t0 23160 socket
systemd-t 1069 root 2u unix 0xffff8801393df1c0 0t0 23160 socket
systemd-t 1069 root 3u unix 0xffff8801393dba80 0t0 23161 socket
systemd-t 1069 root 4r DIR 8,3 9482240 1970431 /var/tmp
systemd-t 1069 root 5r DIR 8,3 4096 793638 /var/tmp/systemd-private-G25Rag

Satellite L655-11J - Hard disk activity all the time

Toshiba please I need help
The first run of my laptop I entered my location my name and a password, I install Toshiba updates and Windows 7 updates (the notifications I got) then I noticed the hard drive is active all the time and the laptop is very slow. I tried a lot to restore the original Toshiba image the built in the laptop and I finally did it thinking maybe I did something wrong
The hard disk drive still always active (don't know what reading or writing) no monitoring for any activity the laptop very slow and lot of seeking sounds.
any solution please, I got this problem the first use of it :(

I know it has a guarantee and they will replace it for free, but it was a gift from Saudi Arabia, I'm now in Syria :( I've to wait until on of my relative go back there :D
I went to Toshiba in Syria they charge my 7 $ to tell me the hard is defective although I knew it was so, and I will need to pay 100$ for a replacement so I will wait ;)
thanks all, it was my mistake, it is just I noticed the HDD light always on in windows 7 and it was not on in USB Linux so I thought it was a system problem, I didn't have much time to work on it and make tests :D
I'm sorry again

Brand new 27" iMac with Snow Leopard has constant hard disk activity

I just purchased a new 27" iMac which was an upgrade for my 24" with Leopard. I have used my older machine for a good year and not noticed any hard drive activity when idle.
Now on the new machine with Snow Leopard I constantly get hard disk activty every few seconds.
This will happen from:
1) Restart
2) leaving at login screen
3) loggin in and not running anything.
4) Computer screen in sleep mode.
5) well, all the time really.
I have looked at the activity monitor and can see spikes every 5-10 seconds.
I have turned off all processes possible, watched processes for CPU spikes, etc to no avail.
Is anyone else having the same problem and if so can they suggest a fix? I originally thought it may be something writing to a log every so often but I have no idea what and how to find it.
Using iStat just confirms the activity.
Hope you can help as this is driving me mad!
Message was edited by: RedDwarfUK

RedDwarfUK wrote:
I havent really installed much as well. Here are the list of programs I have installed.
Adium
Firefox
New icons
app cleaner
skype
spotify
chicken of the VNC
GoToMeeting
Cisco VPN Client
Xmarks for safari and firefox
I would start by checking each of these items, making sure you have the latest versions of each & that they are compatible with Snow Leopard. Do the same for any Firefox extensions or any plugins associated with any of these applications. In particular, chicken of the VNC hasn't been updated since 2006 & what little compatibility info I can find for it suggests it supports only Tiger (10.4) & 10.3.9. The Download Xmarks page indicates that it is beta software.
Also note that some of these items may do more than just run as applications. On first run or install, some might install startup or login items, or preference panels that remain in effect even when the application is not running. Check /Library/StartupItems & /System/Library/StartupItems -- both are empty by default, so anything you find in them is suspect. Likewise, check the System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items tab. Anything you find in them that does not appear to come from Apple (like iTunes helper) is suspect. Also check the "Other" category of System Preferences.

Wake up: tons of hard disk activity

When the computer is unattended and goes to sleep to save power, there is an insane disk activity during wake up, combined with tons of freezes, etc.
I am not talking about the deep sleep / hibernation where data gets saved to the disk; I'm talking about leaving the computer unattended 20 minutes and then wasting 2-3 minutes until it's done doing whatever with the disk when I wake it up.
Everything is still in ram, I'm constantly waiting for.. whatever happens.
Any idea what the OS might be doing and, especially, how to improve it, if possible?

After checking more closely, it seems like the system is tied by two services:
- syncdefaultd
- cfprefsd
they go crazy after the wake up and tie up the hard drive and freeze the machine. Any idea what it could be for?

Program For Logging Hard Disk Activity

Hey Everyone,
I am having an issue with a server in which the Hard disks keep failing, within the last year 3 of them have died.
I am in need of a program that can record logs of the hard drive activity overnight, a period of about 12 hours. This will help us track down at what time the issue is occuring, and then what is causing it. Something similar to the built-in windows hard
disk monitor is task manager, but with the ability to record would be perfect. I have tried other programs but they log in text, and it would take hours of looking through the logs to find any abnormalities
Does anyone know of such a software?

Might give this a go.
DiskMon for Windows v2.01
Regards, Dave Patrick ....
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties or guarantees , and confers no rights.

HARD DISK PROBS / TIME MACHINE not behaving with TC ? READ THIS!!!!

I had many probs with the hard disk and now have a happy healthy TC working great with time machine, so I though I'd share my experiences with others hoping it will save you my huge pain !
i,
I've spent hours and hours trying to get the harddisk to work properly. Set-up was easy-peasy and the Airport works great for the internet. However, when trying to use time-machine and the hard disk it was a nightmare !!! Each attempt at the back-up failed after about 4 gig with a 'unable to mount volume' error. If I re-tried, it failed. Following some of the tips on the forums, I deleted the back-up file created by time machine on the hard drive and the initial back-up started successfully but failed after about 4 gig again (I had 96 gig to back-up). There are various fixes flying around -
*_ensure you have a name for your computer - should be short and no spaces or funny characters. Same goes for your name of the timecapsule. Some people are saying you should use an ethernet cable for your first back-up but that should not matter at all.*_ I took mine back to the apple store in the end - a mac genius downloaded all the latest patches (only came out 19th march) for the time-capsule firmware, time machine software and airport express. Still didn't work, so conclusion was the time-capsule was knackered !!! SO MY RECOMMENDATION IS TO GET APPLE TO REPLACE IT BUT MAKE SURE YOU TRY THE ABOVE FIRST.
New time-capsule was attached to my imac, started up great first time. My initial back-up ran through perfectly first time through wireless - it took 15 hours but I did have 96 gig to back-up. time machine sees this no problem so it looks like everything is fine. _*I ALSO NOTICED THAT THE TC WAS MUCH MORE QUIET AND LESS HOT.*_
Good luck !!

Hi,
Well, The external drive you have problem with is from a third party vendor :-)
I just looked up your model and we need to start over. 
How do you connect it to your computer?
Is it plugged in to the router via ethernet and you access it over WiFi.
The drive needs to be setup as per supplied instructions.
The manufacturer says it is Time Machine compatible but from my experience I know this is not switched on by default.
The main reason why you cannot access it is you basically have to set it up for your use and most likely authenticate to it.
At this stage I'm quite sure there is no much wrong with that drive. It just need setting up.
Let me know if you have any instructions from Seagate which you can follow.

External hard disk for Time Machine

I'm considering baking up my iMac. I have a Lacie external hard disk with a Master Boot Record partition type. On it, there are already some data files from both Windows and Mac machines.
I understand that, for Time Machine to work, the partition type needs to be changed to GUID (for Intel based Mac). Obviously, I will need to copy these data files to somewhere, then use Disk Utility to change the partition type, partition the hard disk (one partition to be used for Time Machine back-up).
My question is, will it be safe to copy the data files (previously from Windows and Mac machines) back to another partition of the hard disk which will then has a GUID partition type? Will the files (including those from Windows machines) be usable?

KenWong wrote:
I'm considering baking up my iMac. I have a Lacie external hard disk with a Master Boot Record partition type. On it, there are already some data files from both Windows and Mac machines.
I understand that, for Time Machine to work, the partition type needs to be changed to GUID (for Intel based Mac). Obviously, I will need to copy these data files to somewhere, then use Disk Utility to change the partition type, partition the hard disk (one partition to be used for Time Machine back-up).
My question is, will it be safe to copy the data files (previously from Windows and Mac machines) back to another partition of the hard disk which will then has a GUID partition type? Will the files (including those from Windows machines) be usable?
You're slightly mixing terminology.
The *+Partition Map Scheme+* applies to the whole disk, whether it has one or multiple partitions. That's what needs to be GUID or +Apple Partition Map+.
The Format applies to each partition, and may be different for each one. Your TM partition needs to be +Mac OS Extended (Journaled),+ the other one can be +MS-DOS (FAT)+ for use with Windoze.
You can copy those files anywhere temporarily, while re-formattng the disk. It doesn't have to be a separate partition. It could even be CDs/DVDs. As long as you can copy and read back, it doesn't matter. If you put them on your boot drive, Windoze won't be able to read them while they're there, but once you get them back on a +MS-DOS (FAT)+ partition, it will.
See the instructions in item #5 of the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip* at the top of this forum.
We usually recommend putting the Time Machine partition first (at the top of the diagram that Disk Utility will show you), so you can more easily expand or contract it later on, if you need to.

Internal hard disk really slow to write new files

Hi
I've had some problems with my mac lately;
it was running really slowly so I ran tech tool deluxe and it detected a bad surface sector.
I wasn't sure how to fix this so I copied everything from my internal hard disk onto 2 external hard disks.
Then I deleted all documents, files and most apps from the internal hard drive and zeroed out all free space using disk utility. (Which took four days).
Finally I did a re-install of leopard and ran tech tool deluxe again, which came back with no problems.
However, now I'm trying to copy all the files back onto hard disk it's taking a very long time e.g. iTunes files totaling 31.41GB would take 14hours
Trying to move the same iTunes files to the other external hard disk takes 25 minutes.
Any help would be appreciated

Then I deleted all documents, files and most apps from the internal hard drive and zeroed out all free space using disk utility. (Which took four days).
It should not take four days to zero out free space. And it should not take 14 hours to write 30GB of data from a directly connected external drive. There is probably a problem with the part of the drive that was not deleted and zeroed; in the system installation. Or the problem could be in the disk directory structure.
The only way to fix it is to erase the entire drive. You should not need to zero out data, although doing so would do no harm and should take no longer than a few hours (depends on size of drive). Then reinstall a fresh copy of Mac OS X. After going through the updates and installing your apps, restore your personal data from those external drives.
If the drive is still acting slow, you may have a hardware problem with the drive.

Portable Hard disk too slow

Hi
I was using protable harddisk to watch movies. Suddenly one day when i connected to mac it became slow. Its **** very slow.
Its 1 tb. So i really cant format as its collection of movies. So, anyway to recover the slowness of the protable hardisk with some mac software without deleting any files in the Portable hard disk.
I really appreciate if somebody helps me over this. I really want to save my movies in my protable hard disk.
Thanks a lot.

varundev wrote:
Can anybody have any windows software so that i can copy these files from the corrupted hard disk
Now you have introduced a new element. Is this external HDD in a Windows format? If so, I would try to copy the data to another external HDD on a PC.
Ciao.

Airport Extreme - USB Hard Disk Runs Slow

I have the new Airport Extreme with a USB hub connecting to an HP printer and a Hard Disk. Everything works fine except the HD is very slow in Windows Explorer, saving and opening files. The access and speed to the disk from my macbook is great. Runs very slow from my dell laptop running XP.
I am running the Airport Disk Utility.
Any ideas how I can speed up the performance from my Dell laptop w/XP?
Dell Windows XP macbook

I've had a similar problem, but unlike you, the drive's contents completely disappear... I dont dare try to add anything to the drive in that condition.
Here is what seems to work, but I am still fiddling with it. I am a PC Windows XP environment, with 2 wireless laptops and 2 desktops. I was having trouble with the reliability of the drive until I reformatted the airdrive as a MAC HFS+ file using MacDrive. This creates some of its own problems and hence this suggestion might not apply to you. The problem seems to arise when I unplug and reconnect the drives from my Airport. When I plug it in directly to my PC, it says there are some volume errors. When I run the repair facility (kind of like chkdsk on FAT32 drives) and then reconnect to my AEBS, it seems to work. You might want to try that. Hope this is helpful, but clearly, Apple needs to issue a patch to resolve these issues.

Unusual hard disk activity after "Erase free space"

I have two partitions on my hard disk - a small partition for the system software and a big partition for everything else. A few days ago, I backed up a few files from my big partition and then used Disk Utility "Erase free space". Since then, my hard disk is behaving oddly. I can hear it, as if it continuously reading and writting data. At first, I thought it was an auto-update in progress or some sort of automatic system maintenance. But the odd behavior never stopped. I scanned my files with an anti-virus software - nothing wrong. I scanned my files with Disk Utility - nothing wrong. I used Onyx to check the system - nothing wrong. I even erased and reinstalled the system software - no changes! So what could possibly force my hard disk to behave like that? Is something messed up because of "Erase free space"?

You could run fs_usage
To view file activity for all processes with the fs_usage tool, you would enter the following at the Terminal prompt.
sudo fs_usage
If you wanted to limit the display to files accessed by a particular process, you could redirect the output through the grep tool. For example, to display file behavior for the TextEdit application, you would enter the following at the Terminal prompt:
% sudo fs_usage | grep TextEdit
Once your application finishes launching, stop fs_usage by typing Control-C in your Terminal window.
Look for all writes. Might be mdworker (Spotlight)
Try reindexing Spotlight by dragging the HD icon into the Privacy window. Leave it there for a minute and remove it using the minus button.

Hard Disk vs Time Machine

Today I had to install a new hard disk. Whilst installing OS X i reached the section where the installer asked if I wanted to install a backup. Clicked 'yes' then on the next screen the installer did not find my external disk. So after a number of attempts I bypassed this and later used migration assistant.
All seemed well until I went in to Mail. All of the folders are there, but no emails.
When I leave Mail open, and click on Time Machine I cannot see any of my emails.
However, if I enter TM from the icon at the top of my screen I can see the emails. But 'Restore' is greyed out.
How can I get TM to restore these files?
Is it because there is a new hard disk & TM thinks that the files belong to the old HD?
Thanks
Paul.

This is exactly my point.
This action does NOT work. The 'restore' icon is greyed out.
I have suspicions that in performing the restore some of the permissions have been altered so that my account cannot access the TM database.
Currently altering the permissions on my External HD to allow full read & write access.
Started the process at 06:45 [GMT] this morning and right now at 14:51 [GMT] the process is still underway.
Message was edited by: paulbackhouse

Restore one hard disk from Time Machine backup

Is it possible to restore only one disk from Time machine backup? I have a SSD with OSX 10.8.5 on it while user folders are on a separate 4TB hard drive. I also have a Time Machine volume for backups. Yesterday the user drive failed beyond repair, but fortunatly I do have a recent backup. When I tried to resotre following insructions provided in the Time Machine manual, it does not give me an option to resore a specific disk from the backup, and tries to resotre only the System disk backup, in this case the SSD. Is there a way to restore a disk on which no system is installed?

Time Machine - Troubleshooting E3. I can't see backups for a disk/partition that's no longer connected

How to boot Linux USB Hard Disk from Windows Machine?

*Dears,,*
I have XP windows Machine . . .
My laptop is Qosmio F20 155
I need to boot Linux USB Hard Disk .
I tried to enter setup menu to arrange the boot perority to make The USB Hard Disk FIRST but i cannot enter setup menu
Please, help me ASAP
*Many Thanks & Regards,,*
Message was edited by: eng_mohammedmostafa

*Dear,,*
FYI , , ,
We have another laptop (VAIO) and we can enter BIOS and edit the priority boot and it run successfully . . .
But in laptop (Toshiba) We can't make it.
*Thanks & Regards,,*
*Eng Mohammed Mostafa*

Hard Disk activity slows machine down

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for