2011 2.2ghz cant run CS5 files off external (vid)

[Kanthony]

I'm having some very frustrating problems with my new 15". I thought that 10.6.7 would have fixed this but I was wrong, and to be honest I don't know what is causing this issue.

Basically my problem is this, when I am working with a medium to large sized PS CS5 file off of my WD Studio External Drive fw800 Photoshop will freeze and give me a beachball after I do a couple edits, add a few layers, and bring in images into the file and then try to save it. I can use other applications that are open, but just not Photoshop or Bridge, as I've found that if Photoshop crashes, it takes Bridge with it. The only way I can fix the problem is by unplugging the drive I'm working off of whenever Photoshop freezes and gives me a beachball, then photoshop goes back to working perfectly, but it won't allow me to save the changes I've made to the file to the original file location on the external. I've recorded a few vids showing what happens, I'm uploading them to youtube right now. I can work off of my internal drive with no problems so far, but I can't use an external scratch disk, or work from files on my external. The drive works fine on all my other macs so I'm sure it's not corrupted or damaged. Ideas?

http://www.youtube.com/user/kyleanthony8?feature=mhum

 

[MacHamster68]

i consider 8gb ram and only 2.2 ghz i7 or not as cs5 has a bit of trouble using more cores less are better , is a bit insufficient for photoshop cs5 to really work with it ,and external drive anyway if you work with larger files (350mb +) the MBP in that configuration is not really suitable for that kind of workflow with cs5 , for that kind of work a MacPro or at the very least a iMac , as CS5 is i guess about double more ram hungry then CS4 ever was and you are limited to just 8gb and cs5 doe not make use of all your cores to their full potential
..a reason why i stick to the cs 3 as it even works on my old iMac core duo 1.83ghz and 2 gb ram without a glitch (but not really fast but rarely see the spinning wheel)and i have a external drive connected via firewire 400!alongside the internal velociraptor which helps a lot as 10000rpm , as the external should only be backup !!!
but maybe that helps
look a bit further down the page there is everything about cs5 and how to make it perform better ..in your case SSD is a must
http://macperformanceguide.com/index_topics.html

 

[Kanthony]

but i consider 8gb ram a bit insufficient for photoshop cs5 to really work with it and external drive anyway
but maybe that helps
look a bit further down the page there is everything about cs5 and how to make it perform better
http://macperformanceguide.com/index_topics.html

added video, excuse my ****** voice.


8gb is plenty for what I'm doing. 4gb would be plenty for what I'm doing. I've used a 2.53 C2D 15" mbp to do far more intensive processes than this. Somethings not working correctly.

 

[MacHamster68]

i still hold it , its simple a photoshop problem , its like with everything adobe does ,developers seem to have no idea what they are doing especially if it comes to develop software for OSX in recent years and the only way is to get your new MacBookPro upgraded with ssd and forget to work from external hdd's

older MPB's and iMac's can run cs5 slighly better with only core 2 duo's and less ram ..seems like the chaps at adobe cant afford new hardware for testing their software and leave it to frustrated users like us , thats why i sold my adobe creative 5 master collection again on ebay and made a huge loss and gone back to creative suite 3 , as all their minimum requirements for the 5 is just some figures they thought look nice to sell that crap to OSX users , under windows it performs much better even on pentium4 pc's , but i will not install windows to run new adobe software ..never

if there would be a real alternative i would ditch adobe software for good , but so far i tried everything thats out there that claimed to be a alternative , but everything lags either functionality or user friendliness...gimp runs,but especially gimpshop is great (just installed still testing )and comes very close very close indeed to photoshop and performs much better then photoshop and less demanding on hardware
give it a try http://www.gimpshop.com/

the only other source of your problem could be the chipset of the new MPB , if its a 6 series chipset (h67 or how its called )then you are out of luck anyway , as its intel's fault not apple's read
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4143
ok if you got a sandy bridge MPB then ok it is apples fault , which shows never buy new stuff apple has just released , thats why i am always years behind
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/20625

so i guess everything together explains why photoshop is freezing in your MPB

 

[Kanthony]

After some research, I think my problem lies in the drives I'm using, WD Studio Passports via fw 800. I think the high write/read speeds of the MBP is causing whatever app to crash that is writing data to the drive. I've noticed that when I'm copying large files to the passport over fw800, it'll get about 80% transferred, then freeze and hang up. There's some identical cases in this thread:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1962297&start=60&tstart=0

I'm going to go to bestbuy and get a few other drives and see if another brand works better.

 

[MacHamster68]

good luck

 

[Kanthony]

Just got back. Conclusion=


4 of the WD Studio Passport Drives via fw800 I tried to write data to froze my machine. I just bought a G Drive Mobile from Bestbuy, and it works like a charm, every issue I had with the WD Studio's is gone. Verdict, don't use WD Passport Studios with these machines.

 

[jeffy.dee-lux]

I had the exact same issue. I went through the RMA process with WD, got a replacement drive, but they sent me the exact same model. Fortunately, at this point I had a directly line of contact with somebody in support. I told her what was happening, and she suggested a few things, including installing the "Turbo Drivers" here:
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=205&sid=108&lang=en

So far, I have not had the problem again since installing. I'm going to give it a day before I get back to them just to make sure it isn't an intermittent problem.

Edit: nevermind, i spoke too soon! The problem persists.

 

[CHSeifert]

First - don't run heavy files from an external HDD, preferably run them from a SSD if possible.

Secondly adobe programs in my view no longer run as great on OSx as on win 7, which is why I run my CS5 Adobe master collection from my windows machine - I never have any problem, but it's also a heavy specced machine.

For my serious photoshop, indesign and illustrator work I use my LianLi Monster build PC with 3 SSD SATA 3 drives, Radeon 6970 2 gb ram, i7 2600k Sandybridge 3.4 ghz cpu and 32 gb ram and no beachballs

 

[legreve]

i consider 8gb ram and only 2.2 ghz i7 or not as cs5 has a bit of trouble using more cores less are better , is a bit insufficient for photoshop cs5 to really work with it ,and external drive anyway if you work with larger files (350mb +) the MBP in that configuration is not really suitable for that kind of workflow with cs5 , for that kind of work a MacPro or at the very least a iMac , as CS5 is i guess about double more ram hungry then CS4 ever was and you are limited to just 8gb and cs5 doe not make use of all your cores to their full potential
..a reason why i stick to the cs 3 as it even works on my old iMac core duo 1.83ghz and 2 gb ram without a glitch (but not really fast but rarely see the spinning wheel)and i have a external drive connected via firewire 400!alongside the internal velociraptor which helps a lot as 10000rpm , as the external should only be backup !!!
but maybe that helps
look a bit further down the page there is everything about cs5 and how to make it perform better ..in your case SSD is a must
http://macperformanceguide.com/index_topics.html

Hahaha... sorry but are you really saying cs5 will not properly on a 2011 mbp? I guess mine Is one of those bumblebees who wasn't told it can't fly ( analogy...).
I works fine... more than fine. The only time I'm waiting for.several seconds is when I do an extensive liquify action, apart from that its instant reaction.

The real problem here OP is thinking you can work directly on a fw800 drive. Why would you even? The fw800 doesn't have 800mb/s... its some what lower.
Get back to copying files over after completion, you'll be much happier

 

[theSeb]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8G4 Safari/6533.18.5)

Megabytes vs megabits. ^

 

[rmitchell248]

Hahaha... sorry but are you really saying cs5 will not properly on a 2011 mbp? I guess mine Is one of those bumblebees who wasn't told it can't fly ( analogy...).
I works fine... more than fine. The only time I'm waiting for.several seconds is when I do an extensive liquify action, apart from that its instant reaction.

The real problem here OP is thinking you can work directly on a fw800 drive. Why would you even? The fw800 doesn't have 800mb/s... its some what lower.
Get back to copying files over after completion, you'll be much happier

While I laughed at the idea that that one guy was telling him that he needed more ram and that the 2.2 was not set up for CS5 I find your claim to the real problem just as amusing! Why can he not use a FW800 drive to hold his files?

Do you know that once he accesses his project by opening it in CS5 that the external HDD is not used again until he goes to save it? So he opens CS5, opens his FW800 stored file then everything goes to the RAM and to the cache that's (should be in this case) on his computers internal HDD. So explain to me where the FW800 bottle neck is? hint: there is not one.

From what I can see he simply had an image with a text layer over it and this froze up his system. Even if this image was 30mp with one or two text layers it would load from a FW800 in the blink of an eye.

To the OP, I am glad you sorted it out! Good thing you did not run out based on some of these responses and buy a 500gb SSD and 16Gb of Ram at the cost of 3200 just so that your computer can still freeze when you plug in a FW800 drive LOL.

 

[frankieboy]

Good thing you did not run out based on some of these responses and buy a 500gb SSD and 16Gb of Ram at the cost of 3200 just so that your computer can still freeze when you plug in a FW800 drive LOL.

Exactly! There's the art and science of troubleshooting, and then there's opinions. They aren't the same thing and it is not helpful to pose opinions as troubleshooting to people having real issues. At best it is a waste of time, at worst it can cause real harm. There are plenty of opinion threads here for the blowhards who want that.

WD externals have a long history of problems with Macs. The reputation of their internal drives is much better. It must be something about the bridge board they use in their externals.