Dual g5 way slower than powerbook? WTF?

[PCM]

Hi all,

I'm desperately trying to figure out why my dual 1.8 g5 with SATA drives and 2GB RAM is noticeably slower than my mom's powerbook 1.5 g4 with 512 RAM. Both are running most recent versions Tiger.

My g5 has two drives... an 80GB SATA and 250 gig SATA. Everything runs fairly slowly compared to the powerbook and i often have to wait a bit to see the contents of a folder (as if the HD is waiting).

Why might my system be so unresponsive? I run Onyx fairly often.

Thanks

 

[mduser63]

I can't say I really have any ideas, but something certainly isn't right. I have a dual 1.8 and a 1.33 GHz PowerBook (see signature) and the G5 is VERY much faster than the PB both for intensive tasks and as far as general snappiness and Finder responsiveness goes.

 

[ITASOR]

First thing I would do is reformat and clean install Tiger on the G5. Will bring it back to "factory fresh" like when you first got it.

 

[risc]

You will find that the 2nd drive is what is slowing down the system. The drive is being put in to sleep mode which is why you are feeling like you are waiting for the drive to spin up, because you are!

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/2130870/

 

[TheMasin9]

power prefs

i think there is a pref thing that lets you turn on or off harddisk sleeping...

 

[risc]

i think there is a pref thing that lets you turn on or off harddisk sleeping...

Yep and if you had of read my link to another post I made (I can't be bothered explaining it constantly) I explain how this option only stops the drives sleeping for 3 hours, it doesn't actually stop the drives sleeping.

 

[HiRez]

Yep and if you had of read my link to another post I made (I can't be bothered explaining it constantly) I explain how this option only stops the drives sleeping for 3 hours, it doesn't actually stop the drives sleeping.

Any idea if this is still the case when you have two internal drives in a software RAID array in a G5?

 

[risc]

Any idea if this is still the case when you have two internal drives in a software RAID array in a G5?

The only times I've noticed the system locking up with the beach ball of death is when the 2nd drive (internal or external) has gone to sleep, usually you'll find finder stops responding while the 2nd drive spins back up. Since RAID works both drives as a single drive it shouldn't be a problem at all, unless you have a 3rd external drive which isn't part of your array. OS X is always accessing the root drive so it shouldn't really have time to enter power saving mode.

 

[PCM]

Yes thanks folks that did the trick. I would have gone crazy if I had to do a clean install again (that would be twice).