New iMac 2011

[gunkthruster]

Hello, I just purchased (last week) a 21" imac - core I5 2.7.

This is my first MAC computer, just felt I had to get in on all the hype!
(plus it was time to upgrade - my last computer was a Pentium 4)

So far I'm pretty happy, I have set up boot camp and am so far enjoying the experience.

The few things I've noticed that are a little irritating are:

1. When a USB external drive (it is a WD passport 750GB) is connected, it seems to slow the whole system down. This happens in both Windows and OSX. Switching windows, running applications, etc. As soon as I unplug the USB drive, performance increases dramatically.

2. Another thing I've noticed is choppy audio. This happens in just audio clips and video. Then sometimes it goes away. Really weird. I know Apple and Adobe don't play nice, however with this hardware, this should not happen.

Any suggestions.

 

[johnfkitchen]

Suggestions on the drive issue...

The drive may have problems, use Disk Utility to Repair it.
Maybe Spotlight is indexing it, but I'd be surprised if you could discern any performance impact from Spotlight
Open Activity Monitor and see if you can identify a difference in activity when the drive is plugged in

Question on the audio issue...
How does Adobe fit into this issue?

Finally, these things should not be happening. If it were me, I'd be calling Apple support. My experiences with them have been good.

 

[50548]

Suggestions on the drive issue...

The drive may have problems, use Disk Utility to Repair it.
Maybe Spotlight is indexing it, but I'd be surprised if you could discern any performance impact from Spotlight
Open Activity Monitor and see if you can identify a difference in activity when the drive is plugged in

Question on the audio issue...
How does Adobe fit into this issue?

Finally, these things should not be happening. If it were me, I'd be calling Apple support. My experiences with them have been good.

These things are definitely not normal and should be resolved with some clean-up utility via Onyx or others...

The only slowdown that can occur with external drives is when they wake up (with parked heads) and start spinning - in such cases, you may have a couple of seconds' delay until disk operations resume.

As for audio, you may check whether this is due to Internet connection as well (if streaming speeds are slow you may face sync issues)...

 

[VulchR]

...
Maybe Spotlight is indexing it, but I'd be surprised if you could discern any performance impact from Spotlight
...

On my admittedly older MacPro, Spotlight really grinds things to a halt - to the point I have turned it off (and yes - there's nothing wrong with my HD (other than being old) because I have checked it with the disk utility). Besides doesn't Spotlight front-load the work, in effect performing as much indexing as possible when the drive is first connected? If so, it might be worth allowing Spotlight to index the external HD overnight just to make sure the process is complete.

 

[gunkthruster]

I think it may be a problem of the drive was never formatted for MAC. It was my Windows backup drive. OSX has no problem reading the files, and when copying it is MUCH faster than the Dell I was using. It's just that when it says plugged in and not being accessed.
Also, the audio issue I'm pretty sure it a Flash thing. It happens in youtube, and specifically the "online guitar tuner" http://www.gieson.com/Library/projects/utilities/tuner/
Internet speeds are pretty fast, I have a 30mbs connection from Comcast. I download at 2 - 3.5MBps.
Unfortunately it's random, like if I keep replaying the video a few times, eventually the audio is fine.
I will check with Apple when it happens again.

Thanks for replies.