Slow drive access with Studio M4 Max

[VelcroFace]

Upgrading from a late 2017 iMac to a Studio M4 Max, I am disappointed at how much longer it takes to access my external hard drives. I have a LaCie D2 6TB Thunderbolt 3 drive and a TerraMaster 16TB RAID drive. Sometimes I’ll get a “read only” message when trying to save a file to those drives. Most often, though, it takes about 15 seconds just to access one of those drives. With the iMac, access was nearly instantaneous. I have unchecked “Put hard disks to sleep when possible” in Energy settings. Are there any other settings that might improve disk access?

 

[Bigwaff]

Verify the drives are connected via TB3 in the System Information app > Hardware > Thunderbolt/USB4

 

[!!!]

I have unchecked “Put hard disks to sleep when possible” in Energy settings.

Did you restart after doing this? macOS won't apply the setting until you restart, and this setting will break if you put your Mac to sleep. It's been a bug for about 7 years at this point.

 

[Fishrrman]

"Sometimes I’ll get a “read only” message when trying to save a file to those drives."

Here's something to try.
It's easy and won't hurt anything.

Mount one of the external drives on the desktop.
Do not "open" its icon.

Click ONE TIME on the drive icon to select it.
Now, bring up the "get info" box for that drive. You can just type "command-i" to do this.

At the bottom of get info, click the lock and enter your password.
Put a checkmark into "ignore ownership on this volume" (sharing and permissions).
Close get info.

I'd reboot at this point.
Then try accessing the drive again.
Any difference?

 

[BrianBaughn]

Also…are those the only external drives that are connected?

 

[VelcroFace]

Verify the drives are connected via TB3 in the System Information app > Hardware > Thunderbolt/USB4

Thanks for answering my call for help. The LaCie drive is indeed connected via TB3. The RAID drive is USB 3.2.

 

[VelcroFace]

"Sometimes I’ll get a “read only” message when trying to save a file to those drives."

Here's something to try.
It's easy and won't hurt anything.

Mount one of the external drives on the desktop.
Do not "open" its icon.

Click ONE TIME on the drive icon to select it.
Now, bring up the "get info" box for that drive. You can just type "command-i" to do this.

At the bottom of get info, click the lock and enter your password.
Put a checkmark into "ignore ownership on this volume" (sharing and permissions).
Close get info.

I'd reboot at this point.
Then try accessing the drive again.
Any difference?

Thanks, Fishrrman. Sorry for the delay, as I was out of town for a few days. Your suggestion seems to have fixed the issue. (Knock on wood.)

 

[VelcroFace]

Also…are those the only external drives that are connected?

A third HDD, a 2TB portable USB 3 drive, also is connected as a Time Machine backup. I’ll try disconnecting it to see if that improves the access time.

Whenever I save anything, even if it’s just to the desktop, I see a spinning beach ball for about 15 seconds. I called Apple support regarding this issue, but we got disconnected. They may have suspected it was a crank call.

 

[VelcroFace]

Thanks, Fishrrman. Sorry for the delay, as I was out of town for a few days. Your suggestion seems to have fixed the issue. (Knock on wood.)

Alas, the issue still occurs, but only after the Studio has been idle for a while. It seems to be waiting for one of the external HDDs to spin up.

 

[Mike57000]

Yes, disks are spinning up after automatic sleep. Finder is waiting for disks access.
Try something like 'Amphetamine' with 'Drive Alive' option.

 

[maflynn]

Thanks for answering my call for help. The LaCie drive is indeed connected via TB3. The RAID drive is USB 3.2.

I have a TB5 external drive on my Studio, and it literally the same speed as the internal drive. I have the OWC Envoy Ultra drive. I'm very happy with it

 

[BrianBaughn]

I had SSDs as well as HDDs attached and the HDDs slowed finder actions when mounted.

Keeping the drives spinning with Amphetamine did NOT help enough to even be noticeable.

BTW…bare SATA SSDs attached with a decent SATA to USB3 do NOT slow Finder enough to be noticeable. That's what I use for Time Machine.

 

[VelcroFace]

I had SSDs as well as HDDs attached and the HDDs slowed finder actions when mounted.

Keeping the drives spinning with Amphetamine did NOT help enough to even be noticeable.

BTW…bare SATA SSDs attached with a decent SATA to USB3 do NOT slow Finder enough to be noticeable. That's what I use for Time Machine.

What SATA to USB3 adapter do you use? It’s odd that I don’t have this issue with my old iMac running Ventura 13.7.8.

Slow drive access apparently is a common issue with LaCie drives. Following the advice at another forum, I’ve turned off spindown using “sudo pmset -c spindown 0” in Terminal. We’ll see if that helps.

 

[BrianBaughn]

What SATA to USB3 adapter do you use? It’s odd that I don’t have this issue with my old iMac running Ventura 13.7.8.

I have some off-brand ones from Amazon.

I didn't have the issue with my big SATA HDDs until I got an M1 Mac Studio. Previously, they were connected internally in a Hackintosh. Now, they're in powered USB housings…which might have been a factor. I only turn them on for occasional backups of my USB external SSDs.