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Beach ball on file delete/move/add...

G

gianthobbit

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 20, 2010
332
0
Any time I move, copy, duplicate, add a file I get the beach ball for 2-5 seconds....

Machine:
2011 MBA w/ 4GB and 256 SSD, Lion 10.7.4

CPU:
First I thought it was the CPU, but after monitoring activtity monitor for a long time its clear that its not it. I get spikes once in a while (chrome and DropBox) but nothing excessive.

Memory
Then I though it was some rouge program or background process. So I canceled all but a handful of my menu bar background apps. Does not seem to have any effect

OS issue
I reinstalled Lion and that really seemed to help a lot. I first uninstalled a bunch of files that I did not need (90 GB free now) before doing so. My issue has come back however, after about 1-2 weeks.

Anyone have any potential solutions? I need to get to bottom of this, putting a damper on my workflow..

Thanks!
 
Launch Activity Monitor and change "My Processes" at the top to "All Processes", then click on the CPU column heading once or twice, so the arrow points downward (highest values on top). Then look to see what may be consuming system resources.

If that doesn't help, there's a possibility your drive may be dying. Be sure you have a good backup.
 
Got a slow local network connection, or a slow mac connected through your wi-fi? Finder likes to check on all disks before it commits to file operations. If a remote drive takes a while to spin up and respond, your Mac will happily beachball away the wait.
 
Kernel_tasks likes to spike also something called sometimes mdWorker. The browser (Chrome Safari spike every once in a great while). Nothing really jumping out at me by taking 80-90% though, a spike would be 40-50%...

Also, I turned my wifi completely off to test to see if it was seeking out other drives. No change in performance...

Any other suggestions, how can I test if the drive is going bad?
 
gianthobbit said:
Kernel_tasks likes to spike also something called sometimes mdWorker. The browser (Chrome Safari spike every once in a great while). Nothing really jumping out at me by taking 80-90% though, a spike would be 40-50%...

Also, I turned my wifi completely off to test to see if it was seeking out other drives. No change in performance...

Any other suggestions, how can I test if the drive is going bad?
Click to expand...
If a drive is constantly active or your CPU utilization is high (possibly with increased temps and fan speed) when you're not running any major apps, you can check to see if Spotlight is indexing by looking at the Menu Bar icon:
attachment.php
(not indexing)
attachment.php
(indexing) (pulsing dot)​
When it's indexing, you may also see increased CPU and RAM usage by the mds and mdworker processes in Activity Monitor.
 
GGJstudios said:
If a drive is constantly active or your CPU utilization is high (possibly with increased temps and fan speed) when you're not running any major apps, you can check to see if Spotlight is indexing by looking at the Menu Bar icon:
Image (not indexing)
Image (indexing) (pulsing dot)​
When it's indexing, you may also see increased CPU and RAM usage by the mds and mdworker processes in Activity Monitor.
Click to expand...

Very interesting. I get the slow read/write speed whenever I drag and drop a file, regardless of if spotlight is indexing.

Odd thing is, when I create a file, or save in an app, no delay at all...
 
What about lions lack of trim support! There a few apps that enable trim, should I try that?
 
gianthobbit said:
over 100% (how is that even possible...), 100-200% now.
Click to expand...
It's possible because you have up to 100% available for each core. On a dual-core machine, up to 200%; on a quad-core, up to 400%.
gianthobbit said:
Hmm I disabled spotlight outright
Click to expand...
I suggest you re-enable Spotlight, then try re-indexing your drive (give it time to complete the indexing, which could take several minutes or hours, depending on the drive): Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes

If that fails to index, enter the following command in Terminal:
sudo mdutil -i on "/Volumes/your drive name"​
 
Just reinstalled Lion (second time), everything seems fine now... Hopefully it sticks. Was about 2 weeks ago I did the last re-install.
 
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