The cause of my slow MP 5.1?

[macstatic]

I have a feeling my Mac Pro 5,1 should be faster than it is. I suspect the hard drives or how they interact with each other. Here's my setup:

• Mac Pro 5,1 (mid-2010) 2.8GHz quad-core
• OSX 10.9.5 Mavericks
  
• 24GB RAM (3x 8GB memory modules -I've learnt that this configuration should be more efficient than filling up all 4 slots)
• 2X (internal) SSDs:
  • Samsung (128GB) 830-series: for OSX, apps (and admin user account)
    
  • Samsung (128GB) 830-series: for Adobe Lightroom cache and Lightroom catalogs
• 3x (internal) hard drives:
  • Seagate 3TB (ST3000DM001-1CH166): for all user accounts (except admin)
    
  • Western Digital 3TB (WDC WD30EZRX-00MMMB0): for Time Machine backups
    
  • Western Digital 3TB (WDC WD30EZRX-00MMMB0): for Chronosync backups

My setup is probably not so unique except that I've separated the user account from the OSX drive (as explained here, in the Mac Performance guide). I often get he dreaded "spinning beachball", which I find a bit odd. It often happens when I try to save something and takes 4-5 seconds before it disappears (and the file-selector appears) so my guess is that a hard drive has gone to sleep and wakes up again. I suspect the slower Western Digital drives to do that (I haven't seen the need to invest in expensive high performance drives for that purpose) but the Seagate drive shouldn't have any such issues as far as I've know. Could it be that OSX needs all attached drives to spin up before doing any disk activity? Anything else I might have missed?

 

[Fooze]

Have you tried enabling TRIM on the SSD drives?

 

[macstatic]

I did actually have TRIM-enabler (the free 2.2 version; later versions have to be purchased) installed, but I just checked and TRIM was turned off.
I think at the time (a few years back) I concluded from the many discussions on the subject that SSDs with built-in "garbage collection" it actually worsens its performance with TRIM enabled, so I turned it off and never looked back.

I've just turned it on again, rebooted and will see if that changes things.
I also realized that I had the "Energy saver" system preference's "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" enabled (assuming this would make my drives last longer), so I've disabled (turned off) that feature and will see if that makes a difference.

Another observation: the 2nd SSD (for Lightroom catalogs/Lightroom cache) is attached to a Silicon Image SIL-3132 eSATA PCIe card instead of to one of the four drive bays. This is because I mechanically fitted both SSDs in the (empty) DVD-drive bay area, where one goes to the 2nd DVD SATA cable and the other has a cable which goes to the PCIe card.
If this is a problem I actually have an unused 2.5" to 3.5" hard drive adapter which would allow me to place it in one of the four drive bays instead. Could this be the cause of my issues?

 

[h9826790]

I have a feeling my Mac Pro 5,1 should be faster than it is. I suspect the hard drives or how they interact with each other. Here's my setup:

• Mac Pro 5,1 (mid-2010) 2.8GHz quad-core
• OSX 10.9.5 Mavericks
  
• 24GB RAM (3x 8GB memory modules -I've learnt that this configuration should be more efficient than filling up all 4 slots)
• 2X (internal) SSDs:
  • Samsung (128GB) 830-series: for OSX, apps (and admin user account)
    
  • Samsung (128GB) 830-series: for Adobe Lightroom cache and Lightroom catalogs
• 3x (internal) hard drives:
  • Seagate 3TB (ST3000DM001-1CH166): for all user accounts (except admin)
    
  • Western Digital 3TB (WDC WD30EZRX-00MMMB0): for Time Machine backups
    
  • Western Digital 3TB (WDC WD30EZRX-00MMMB0): for Chronosync backups

My setup is probably not so unique except that I've separated the user account from the OSX drive (as explained here, in the Mac Performance guide). I often get he dreaded "spinning beachball", which I find a bit odd. It often happens when I try to save something and takes 4-5 seconds before it disappears (and the file-selector appears) so my guess is that a hard drive has gone to sleep and wakes up again. I suspect the slower Western Digital drives to do that (I haven't seen the need to invest in expensive high performance drives for that purpose) but the Seagate drive shouldn't have any such issues as far as I've know. Could it be that OSX needs all attached drives to spin up before doing any disk activity? Anything else I might have missed?

HDD sleep when idle is enabled? If yes, switch that off to see if any improvement.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Not having TRIM enabled is big. I forgot to do it on one of my SSDs and write speeds were terrible after about 10 months. Enabling TRIM got some of the speed back, but when I put in a newer, larger SSD with TRIM, write speeds were more in line with what I expected.

Another factor would be your relatively base 2.8GHz quad core. Have you considered adding a 6-core or quad core in the 3.3ghz+ range? The x5677 is really cheap ($25) and is the fastest quad you can get. The W3690 or x5690 are the fastest 6-core you can run, but they cost a bit more ($110).

 

[kohlson]

Once the HDDs spin up, does performance get back to where it should be. Normally with the sleep setting, they stay "up" for a length of time, and performance should be pretty good.
Is there any possibility you're hitting virtual memory (swap)? If so, this could easily account for performance issues. Easy to check: Activity Monitor-Memory tab. Or, if available, stick another memory stick in and see if that helps.
While using 3 of the available memory channels is optimal performance (CPU-memory transfers), it's about 5% on overall throughput. If memory is swapping to virtual, that's obviously a much greater memory/throughput impact.

 

[macstatic]

Once the HDDs spin up, does performance get back to where it should be. Normally with the sleep setting, they stay "up" for a length of time, and performance should be pretty good.

I need to check it over a period of a few days I think, but so far so good.

Is there any possibility you're hitting virtual memory (swap)? If so, this could easily account for performance issues. Easy to check: Activity Monitor-Memory tab. Or, if available, stick another memory stick in and see if that helps.
While using 3 of the available memory channels is optimal performance (CPU-memory transfers), it's about 5% on overall throughput. If memory is swapping to virtual, that's obviously a much greater memory/throughput impact.

I've never really understood the Activity monitor, but the way it shows right now is:

Physical memory: 24.00 GB
Memory used: 20.57 GB
Virtual memory: 24.00 GB
Swap used: 0 bytes

App memory: 11.14 GB
File cache: 7.55 GB
Wired memory: 1.88 GB
Compressed: 0 bytes


So does this mean that I've actually used 20.59 GB of the available 24 GB physical RAM I have?
But why does it say 24 GB alongside "virtual memory"?

I do have a lot of tabs and windows open in Firefox, and there are a few general use apps open at the same time (Safari, Text edit, Preview...) but nothing which I would consider "demanding", so I find it strange that almost all of the physical RAM is already used if I've interpreted the above correctly.
[doublepost=1519380080][/doublepost]

Not having TRIM enabled is big. I forgot to do it on one of my SSDs and write speeds were terrible after about 10 months. Enabling TRIM got some of the speed back, but when I put in a newer, larger SSD with TRIM, write speeds were more in line with what I expected.

Which SSD were you using with the sub-par performance?
So enabling/disabling TRIM isn't something that makes an immediate noticeable impact, but rather noticeable over time?
I would think the SSD with OSX and my apps on it would be mostly read and not so much write (or anything at all?).
The other SSD which is used for Lightroom catalogs and Lightroom cache would of course be used a lot for writing, but this surely shouldn't impact the entire computer's performance?

Another factor would be your relatively base 2.8GHz quad core. Have you considered adding a 6-core or quad core in the 3.3ghz+ range? The x5677 is really cheap ($25) and is the fastest quad you can get. The W3690 or x5690 are the fastest 6-core you can run, but they cost a bit more ($110).

I had a look in the System profiler for any clues but there wasn't any mention of the CPU specifics other than this:

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro5,1
Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 2,8 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 8 MB
Memory: 24 GB
Processor Interconnect Speed: 4.8 GT/s
Boot ROM Version: MP51.007F.B03
SMC Version (system): 1.39f11
SMC Version (processor tray): 1.39f11
Serial Number (system): ------
Serial Number (processor tray): ------
Hardware UUID: ------

So I would probably have to physically look inside and can do that when I look into cleaning the (noisy) CPU fan.
Could that be the X5677 I already have, or are you saying that in itself could be a (cheap) upgrade?
I remember looking into CPU upgrades a few years ago and believe it was a relatively easy thing to do but I don't know if I'm willing to spend that kind of money right now, unless I really need to.
Where did you find an x5677 for US$ 25?

Oh, I forgot to list up the graphic card in my specs. I have an ATI Radeon HD 5870 with 1GB VRAM. As far as I've heard this is a decent card and probably shouldn't have any negative effect on the overall speed, right?

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

I need to check it over a period of a few days I think, but so far so good.




I've never really understood the Activity monitor, but the way it shows right now is:

Physical memory: 24.00 GB
Memory used: 20.57 GB
Virtual memory: 24.00 GB
Swap used: 0 bytes

App memory: 11.14 GB
File cache: 7.55 GB
Wired memory: 1.88 GB
Compressed: 0 bytes


So does this mean that I've actually used 20.59 GB of the available 24 GB physical RAM I have?
But why does it say 24 GB alongside "virtual memory"?

I do have a lot of tabs and windows open in Firefox, and there are a few general use apps open at the same time (Safari, Text edit, Preview...) but nothing which I would consider "demanding", so I find it strange that almost all of the physical RAM is already used if I've interpreted the above correctly.
[doublepost=1519380080][/doublepost]

Which SSD were you using with the sub-par performance?
So enabling/disabling TRIM isn't something that makes an immediate noticeable impact, but rather noticeable over time?
I would think the SSD with OSX and my apps on it would be mostly read and not so much write (or anything at all?).
The other SSD which is used for Lightroom catalogs and Lightroom cache would of course be used a lot for writing, but this surely shouldn't impact the entire computer's performance?




I had a look in the System profiler for any clues but there wasn't any mention of the CPU specifics other than this:

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro5,1
Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 2,8 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 8 MB
Memory: 24 GB
Processor Interconnect Speed: 4.8 GT/s
Boot ROM Version: MP51.007F.B03
SMC Version (system): 1.39f11
SMC Version (processor tray): 1.39f11
Serial Number (system): ------
Serial Number (processor tray): ------
Hardware UUID: ------

So I would probably have to physically look inside and can do that when I look into cleaning the (noisy) CPU fan.
Could that be the X5677 I already have, or are you saying that in itself could be a (cheap) upgrade?
I remember looking into CPU upgrades a few years ago and believe it was a relatively easy thing to do but I don't know if I'm willing to spend that kind of money right now, unless I really need to.
Where did you find an x5677 for US$ 25?

Oh, I forgot to list up the graphic card in my specs. I have an ATI Radeon HD 5870 with 1GB VRAM. As far as I've heard this is a decent card and probably shouldn't have any negative effect on the overall speed, right?

The SSD I had was a SATA Sandisk Plus. After that long with no TRIM, my write speeds were down to around to something like 60MB/s, Read was also down to about 130. Once I enabled TRIM, read speeds recovered to the drive’s promised 500MB/s, but for some reason write didn’t fully recover, but it did jump to about 200MB/s. Run the Blackmagic speed test to see what your results are. TRIM may be a big deal.

As for your CPU, what you have is likely the Xeon W3530, which at best boosts to 3.06GHz in single thread workloads. The x5677 starts at 3.47GHz and boosts up to 3.7GHz. So you’d see about a 25% increase in performance there. Depending on your workload, something like the 6 core x5670 would even be a nice improvement for around $50. I can give you better comparisons when I get home, as I used to have a Mac Pro with a few of these CPUs (w3520, x5670, x5677, W3690), and I ran some benchmarks after each upgrade. I got all these CPUs on eBay from well-rated sellers.

 

[h9826790]

The SSD I had was a SATA Sandisk Plus. After that long with no TRIM, my write speeds were down to around to something like 60MB/s, Read was also down to about 130. Once I enabled TRIM, read speeds recovered to the drive’s promised 500MB/s, but for some reason write didn’t fully recover, but it did jump to about 200MB/s. Run the Blackmagic speed test to see what your results are. TRIM may be a big deal.

As for your CPU, what you have is likely the Xeon W3530, which at best boosts to 3.06GHz in single thread workloads. The x5677 starts at 3.47GHz and boosts up to 3.7GHz. So you’d see about a 25% increase in performance there. Depending on your workload, something like the 6 core x5670 would even be a nice improvement for around $50. I can give you better comparisons when I get home, as I used to have a Mac Pro with a few of these CPUs (w3520, x5670, x5677, W3690), and I ran some benchmarks after each upgrade. I got all these CPUs on eBay from well-rated sellers.

TRIM shouldn’t affect read speed. It’s just a function to let GC work more effectively, avoid unnecessary internal data movement, free up more cells for the future faster write operation.

After you re-enable TRIM (after a long time didn’t have it), it may take some time for the controller to get the necessary info from the OS, free up the cells by GC, and fully recovery the write speed.

Anyway, I don’t think TRIM is related to this 4-5s beachball issue. Write speed will be affect if no TRIM, but not this kind of few seconds “freeze”.

However, the symptom is very match that waiting for HDD to spin up. If this option is enabled. Try de-select it.

Besides, external HDD enclosure may also cause this kind of "waiting for spin up" issue.

 

[kohlson]

Physical memory: 24.00 GB
Memory used: 20.57 GB
Virtual memory: 24.00 GB
Swap used: 0 bytes

App memory: 11.14 GB
File cache: 7.55 GB
Wired memory: 1.88 GB
Compressed: 0 bytes

Activity can be hard to understand. But from what I see:
- At this moment you're using all but 3.5 GB of your physical memory (20.57 of 24 GB)
- You also have 24GB of virtual memory available. At this moment you are not using any VM. For most systems (IIRC, and my Unix background may influence this thinking) virtual memory equals actual installed memory. VM is there because otherwise, when you run out of actual memory, the system crashes. So while the slowdown is painful, it beats the alternative.

Activity monitor gives further detail on memory usage:
- 11.14 GB is being used by Apps. This *can* be compressed, but at the moment 0GB is compressed. MacOS compresses memory because it's a way to free up memory for other uses that's faster than swap. So if you have an app that is open but doesn't appear to be used "in awhile," it will compress that memory first, pushing out the requirement to go to swap.
- 1.88 in wired memory. This is system-related processes. Can't/won't be compressed or swapped.
- File cache of 7.55 GB. Apps/data run faster when they live in memory rather than from disk, so this helps system performance. As the workload increases (more apps opened) this cache memory is instead used for app memory. One way to think of this is "the amount of memory available before requiring VM, but put to good use in the meantime."

All this adds up to 20.57GB.

Try leaving Activity Monitor open, and when there is a system performance issue check the memory tab and see if VM is being used.

Apple's memory management struggled for awhile, but got much better in later releases. 10.9 was at the front end of that improvement.

If you're interested, Apple publishes a developer white paper on top level OS subjects, for each release. https://images.apple.com/media/us/osx/2013/docs/OSX_Mavericks_Core_Technology_Overview.pdf

 

[macstatic]

Activity can be hard to understand. But from what I see:

Thanks for the explanation. I will take you up on that advice to keep Activity Monitor running and check to see if virtual memory is used whenever I experience a slow machine again.

If you're interested, Apple publishes a developer white paper on top level OS subjects, for each release. https://images.apple.com/media/us/osx/2013/docs/OSX_Mavericks_Core_Technology_Overview.pdf

Thanks. Despite the geek-talk there were some useful explanations in plain English as well which could come in handy for related questions. Is there a web location for white papers on all other OSX releases as well? Truncating the above URL didn't yield any results.
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The SSD I had was a SATA Sandisk Plus.
[....snip.....]
Run the Blackmagic speed test to see what your results are. TRIM may be a big deal.

Sandisk is a reputable brand -are their SSDs up to the standards of Samsung (I've heard they're among the best, of course depending on the specific model)?

I just tried running the Blackmagic speed test but was told that both my SSDs were read-only!
They both have the same file-ownerships ("show info" from the Finder):

system: Read & write
wheel: Read only
everyone: Read only

Does this sound right?

As for your CPU, what you have is likely the Xeon W3530, which at best boosts to 3.06GHz in single thread workloads. The x5677 starts at 3.47GHz and boosts up to 3.7GHz. So you’d see about a 25% increase in performance there. Depending on your workload, something like the 6 core x5670 would even be a nice improvement for around $50. I can give you better comparisons when I get home, as I used to have a Mac Pro with a few of these CPUs (w3520, x5670, x5677, W3690), and I ran some benchmarks after each upgrade. I got all these CPUs on eBay from well-rated sellers.

Thanks for looking into this.
And they're all just a matter of unplugging the existing CPU chip from its socket and installing the new one in its place, right? I believe there was the job of cleaning away the old heat-paste and spreading some new paste in its place as well, but no modifications or tricky stuff to do?

Are they used or new chips you're referring to and can you recommend a safe eBay seller where I can buy them from, ensuring I don't end up with Chinese fakes or something?

UPDATE: I believe you're right about me having the W3530, because that's what running Geekbench just told me.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

TRIM shouldn’t affect read speed. It’s just a function to let GC work more effectively, avoid unnecessary internal data movement, feel up more cells for the future faster write operation.

That’s what you’d think, but for whatever reason, my own experience did otherwise. After TRIM was enabled, read saw a huge gain in speeds. Maybe it freed up the controller? I think I have some screenshots of the before and after (have to check when I get home). Maybe the drive was getting close to full from the lack of TRIM and overall performance was degraded?

Thanks for the explanation. I will take you up on that advice to keep Activity Monitor running and check to see if virtual memory is used whenever I experience a slow machine again.



Thanks. Despite the geek-talk there were some useful explanations in plain English as well which could come in handy for related questions. Is there a web location for white papers on all other OSX releases as well? Truncating the above URL didn't yield any results.
[doublepost=1519414177][/doublepost]

Sandisk is a reputable brand -are their SSDs up to the standards of Samsung (I've heard they're among the best, of course depending on the specific model)?

I just tried running the Blackmagic speed test but was told that both my SSDs were read-only!
They both have the same file-ownerships ("show info" from the Finder):

system: Read & write
wheel: Read only
everyone: Read only

Does this sound right?




Thanks for looking into this.
And they're all just a matter of unplugging the existing CPU chip from its socket and installing the new one in its place, right? I believe there was the job of cleaning away the old heat-paste and spreading some new paste in its place as well, but no modifications or tricky stuff to do?

Are they used or new chips you're referring to and can you recommend a safe eBay seller where I can buy them from, ensuring I don't end up with Chinese fakes or something?

They are used, but honestly CPUs are pretty simple, especially Xeons with LGA sockets. No concerns about bent pins, and there is a lid on the CPU itself. I haven’t heard of fake CPUs in this regard, but Intel does stamp them with their model number.

If you do go that route, I recommend you search for guides, but essentially you just eject the CPU tray, remove the heat sink, clean off the thermal paste, remove old CPU, add new CPU, apply new thermal paste and reassemble. The challenge is having a long enough hex wrench to remove the heat sink. I performed 4 swaps total on the same Mac Pro with no issue. It got quicker each time, maybe 20 minutes (though it is no race).

Consult this thread for compatible CPUs. Pick one and then search eBay for the model number.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mac-pro-cpu-compatibility-list.1954766/

 

[kohlson]

Is there a web location for white papers on all other OSX releases as well?

Here's how I found this paper:
In google, "Mac OS X Mavericks white paper". No quotes.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

A quick follow up of the benchmark results. I'm using the W3520 as the baseline, which is a 2.66GHz part, so slightly slower than your W3530. The % score is the percent increase in FPS that CPU offers over the W3520. Handbrake is the test, same video conversion, same settings. I use Handbrake because it scales well with cores/threads. I threw in the Core i5-7500 from my new iMac as another point of comparison: You can see why the W3690 is still just over $100.

W3520 - 4C/8T - 2.66GHz - Baseline
X5677 - 4C/8T - 3.47GHz - +27%
X5670 - 6C/12T - 2.93GHz - +47%
i5-7500 - 4C/4T - 3.4GHz - +64%
W3690 - 6C/12T - 3.47GHz - +73%

 

[macstatic]

Thanks for those test results. I'm on the lookout for replacement CPUs for a good price, so we'll see.

It's been a little while since I posted and I've had Activity Monitor running all the time so I can check it whenever the spinning beachball pops up again, which it has. Not as often as before, but now and then, and in those instances I see that no virtual memory has been used, so what else might I look into?
I do have many tabs open at once in Firefox, but wouldn't virtual memory kick in if it would be a problem? As far as I know, having multiple tabs open doesn't mean they access the transfer any new data from the Internet until a tab is actually accessed.

 

[kohlson]

IIRC, the spinning beach ball means that the application is taking too long to respond. I think the time on this was 2 seconds, but perhaps someone with more current knowledge can verify/correct. At any rate, the beachball just means the response is slow, but doesn't really provide any clues as to why. There are some obvious causes - memory, "slow" HDDs, and failing drives. But processes can still execute in tabs, even if they're not the ones you have open in front of you. Some sites have updating ads, and/or other data. And according to Activity Monitor, I have a comcast tab (1.32 GB), news.google (759MB), finance.yahoo (503MB) and 3 macrumors tabs: 395+278+271MB). gmail is often over a GB. So yeah, these tabs chew up memory. (All Safari on 10.13.3)

 

[h9826790]

IIRC, the spinning beach ball means that the application is taking too long to respond. I think the time on this was 2 seconds, but perhaps someone with more current knowledge can verify/correct. At any rate, the beachball just means the response is slow, but doesn't really provide any clues as to why. There are some obvious causes - memory, "slow" HDDs, and failing drives. But processes can still execute in tabs, even if they're not the ones you have open in front of you. Some sites have updating ads, and/or other data. And according to Activity Monitor, I have a comcast tab (1.32 GB), news.google (759MB), finance.yahoo (503MB) and 3 macrumors tabs: 395+278+271MB). gmail is often over a GB. So yeah, these tabs chew up memory. (All Safari on 10.13.3)

The memory usage in Safari 11.0.3 (13604.5.6) is abnormally high. I suspect there is a memory leak.

The memory usage build up over time, and not quite linear to tab counts. e.g. My Safari only has 7 tabs open now. And it already used up 12GB of memory. Except one tab is facebook, all other tab are just simple webpage (forum, Apple refurbish items shop, Nvidia support page, etc). This kind of usage should only need 2-3GB memory. But when I keep the tab opened, over 12 hours, the memory usage now raise to 12GB.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

The memory usage in Safari 11.0.3 (13604.5.6) is abnormally high. I suspect there is a memory leak.

The memory usage build up over time, and not quite linear to tab counts. e.g. My Safari only has 7 tabs open now. And it already used up 12GB of memory. Except one tab is facebook, all other tab are just simple webpage (forum, Apple refurbish items shop, Nvidia support page, etc). This kind of usage should only need 2-3GB memory. But when I keep the tab opened, over 12 hours, the memory usage now raise to 12GB.
View attachment 753006

I think there may be something wrong on your end. I rarely fully close Safari (same version as you), and I'm at ~500MB with 5 tabs open. 16GB of RAM here, and Safari never seems to get out of hand for me.

 

[h9826790]

I think there may be something wrong on your end. I rarely fully close Safari (same version as you), and I'm at ~500MB with 5 tabs open. 16GB of RAM here, and Safari never seems to get out of hand for me.

Yeah, already report that to Apple

 

[orph]

how long have you had the problem?
have you had beachballs for years or just recently (maybe after instaling a new app?)

did you ever have all the system data on just one SSD ?
i suspect splinting the system account on to a SSD and a HD may be the problem just buy a samsung ssd 850 evo 200-500GB and stick everything on that it will make life easy in a lot of ways and im mostly thinking about permissions problems, there hell

you do mention 'do something - beach ball - drive spins up - then no beach balls' so i relay suspect the Seagate drive with the user accounts on

you are on osx10.9 Mavericks >.< thats not the best place to be 10.12 is nice and stable (thats what i use) unless you have software that cant run on a newer OS it's worth thinking about an upgrade.

a safe restart is worth a go to fix permissions that may be it.

TRIM is good

also got to point out you have two back up drives ? why two Chronosync & Time Machine ??
do make shore there not in a backup loop, but thats a pure gess on my part as i dont know what each drive is backing up.

i relay cant gess what you do on your mac from the description is it a work computer or just a home computer, is it any app that gives the beachball or all apps?

and last of all why do you think "I have a feeling my Mac Pro 5,1 should be faster than it is" in what way is it not as fast as you hope? in any app? on comparison to what?

how much spare room on the system SSD (more than 10% free?)

some times a clean install is a good option (clean as in not clean install then use time machine to put the problem back on a real clean install with manual install of each app/file that is needed) but thats a last resort

ps 3 RAM slots full is not going to matter 99% of the time and if you ever run out of ram it will not help but from your fine if your not going in to swap

 

[macstatic]

how long have you had the problem?
have you had beachballs for years or just recently (maybe after instaling a new app?)

For years.

did you ever have all the system data on just one SSD ?
i suspect splinting the system account on to a SSD and a HD may be the problem just buy a samsung ssd 850 evo 200-500GB and stick everything on that it will make life easy in a lot of ways and im mostly thinking about permissions problems, there hell

I have too many files taking up too much space to make that economically feasable.
I've run Disk Utility now and then to see if I had permission problems but without any improvement as far as I can tell. What should the correct permissions be for each drive?

you do mention 'do something - beach ball - drive spins up - then no beach balls' so i relay suspect the Seagate drive with the user accounts on

Yes, but I disabled the OSX Energy saver "Put hard drives to sleep when possible".

I do have another drive related concern which might be worth mentioning....
I've set up a dual backup system (in addition to backing up to external drives): Time Machine backs up to an internal WD Green drive.
Another WD green drive is used for backing up using Chronosync. It clones the boot drive (OSX and apps) and backs up my files from the Seagate drive. My concern is because it's identical to the drives I actually use, I often pick a backup file to read/edit instead of the original, and occasionally the apps also get messed up (so I run one from the backup drive). Now and then, when doing a right-click on a file and selecting "open with..." I get double entries of each app. I can fix it by rebuilding the Launch services.
I wish I could have my Mac back up to the same drive but without allowing me normal access to it (i.e. search results won't come up with this drive or the file-selector won't let me open anything from it).

you are on osx10.9 Mavericks >.< thats not the best place to be 10.12 is nice and stable (thats what i use) unless you have software that cant run on a newer OS it's worth thinking about an upgrade.

I've deliberately chosen to stay with 10.9.5 for now since I feel that newer versions just remove the useful stuff (even Mavericks has removed stuff like the old style file labelling which in Mavericks is now just a coloured dot, unless you install XtraFinder to get it back) and replace it with even more useless "consumer" stuff which usually gives no benefits and just demands more processing power from the machine.
I probably also need to spend more money on upgrading the software which currently runs just fine on my 10.9.5. Mac.

a safe restart is worth a go to fix permissions that may be it.

Yes, I'll give that a go, although I've done it before without any noticeable improvement.

TRIM is good

It's enabled now, after suggestions earlier in the thread.

also got to point out you have two back up drives ? why two Chronosync & Time Machine ??
do make shore there not in a backup loop, but thats a pure gess on my part as i dont know what each drive is backing up.

Please explain what a "backup loop" is.
Time Machine is great for quickly allowing me to get back a file I've accidently deleted or wrongly edited and resaved. But I've been warned against trusting Time Machine 100% as it apparently has several shortcomings, so I decided to install a second backup system, namely Chronosync which should be much better. This also means I most likely have a fully working backup in case one of the backup drives goes down. I do back up to external drives as well, but not regularly as it's more of a hassle. With the two built-in drives, each backing up their own way it all works automatically once set up.

i relay cant gess what you do on your mac from the description is it a work computer or just a home computer, is it any app that gives the beachball or all apps?

It's a home computer. It's hard to pinpoint when the beachball pops up. I've had the Activity Monitor running all the time and have checked for virtual memory when it's happened, but that can't be it as virtual memory hasn't even been used in those instances. 24GB RAM is probably enough for my use.
I'm not sure how to analyze the rest but CPU usage is going beyond 100% now and then in Firefox. I should probably try running the computer without Firefox for a while and see if there's any change.

and last of all why do you think "I have a feeling my Mac Pro 5,1 should be faster than it is" in what way is it not as fast as you hope? in any app? on comparison to what?

No scientific analysis, just a feeling compared to other computers and stuff like Lightroom taking forever to display photos etc.

how much spare room on the system SSD (more than 10% free?)

Around 36GB out of 128GB free.

some times a clean install is a good option (clean as in not clean install then use time machine to put the problem back on a real clean install with manual install of each app/file that is needed) but thats a last resort

Been there, done that. But it is a good suggestion which I've followed many times as it often fixes a lot of frustrating problems.

ps 3 RAM slots full is not going to matter 99% of the time and if you ever run out of ram it will not help but from your fine if your not going in to swap

I must have been misinformed before deciding to go that route, but 24GB appears to be enough for my use anyway.
[doublepost=1520289026][/doublepost]

But processes can still execute in tabs, even if they're not the ones you have open in front of you. Some sites have updating ads, and/or other data. And according to Activity Monitor, I have a comcast tab (1.32 GB), news.google (759MB), finance.yahoo (503MB) and 3 macrumors tabs: 395+278+271MB). gmail is often over a GB. So yeah, these tabs chew up memory. (All Safari on 10.13.3)

How do you check how much memory each tab in Firefox takes?
Also, is it normal to have multiple instances of the same process name in Activity Monitor?
For instance, right now I see 4 instances of "Firefox web content" and 11 instances of "Safari web content" to take two examples. They all belong to my username.

 

[kohlson]

Also, is it normal to have multiple instances of the same process name in Activity Monitor?

Yup. It's generally correlated to the tabs you have open. Sometimes these are distinct line items, and other times I've seen them under "Safari" or "Firefox" with a twisty to expose the sub processes.

 

[orph]

1. id gess your doing something wrong, maybe the overly complex setup or installing apps that give you problems

2. "too many files" iv got a 250 GB SSD as boot drive, i do video editing, photography & websites with no problem so i dont see why its not an option to buy a 200-500GB SSD a samsung 850 evo is a nice drive option.

3. you may have set that but sounds like thats not working if
"do something - beach ball - drive spins up - then no beach balls"
is true (drives do auto sleep independent of the OS & WD greens relay like to sleep a lot)
+ why do you have two sets of live redundancy on a home computer? thats not an ideal setup for 99% of users

4. iv stuck on older versions of OSX for software (CS3 held me back for years) but osx10.9 is old and not ideal you will have problems from that id recommend thinking about OSX10.12 if you dont have any costly software holding you back.
from better optimization to newer apps to security updates it's worth moving on, and you will relay start hitting problems soon with osx10.9.
i know the old feel of OSX10.6 is fading but the apps i use do the work the OS is a backdrop to work.

5 worth a go always

6 good, if you do upgrade your SSD boot drive i think ssd over provisioning is still recommended (10%)
https://www.seagate.com/gb/en/tech-insights/ssd-over-provisioning-benefits-master-ti/

7 for a home computer this sounds way to complex, sounds like a bad workflow if your needing that.
as i say with RAID it's not a backup, you have infinite undo's.
i use versioning of save files & most apps only change meta/side files or save files and not the original files so it's not something iv ever see as a problem?
sounds like you are using a workflow from the early 2000's

8 sounds like your ram is fine,
100% = 1 cpu core being used fully. so on my computer MP 5.1 6c 12t, 100% = 1 of 12 threads being maxed out so a app can use up to 1200% (12 threads maxed out)

9 well your computer is 9 years old so yes it's going to be slower, plus your talking about lightroom (what version??).
lightroom is famous for being slow like super slow but you also only have at most a 128GB library of light room files (on that SSD) so i cant see it being a big problem for you.
if you want it faster a cpu upgrade is a good option the X5677 CPU is worth a look 3.46GHZ 4c
https://forums.macrumors.com/forums/mac-pro.1/
light room is lightly threaded, and i dont know what version you are on but the older versions are well know for being slow (well and the newer ones too )

iv got 788GB in my LR CS6 library at the mo seems ok for speed to me, im realistic on how fast it's going to be.
when/how is it slow for you?

this may help https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/lightroom/kb/optimize-performance-lightroom.html
also adobe forums are worth a go asking for help with LR

10 36GB is good, rule of thumb is to keep 10% free

11 k, is good to see your not clean installing then restoring from backup as that will bring back any problems you had

12 well 3 sticks v 4 sticks is a tad pointless but as your not going over your ram limit it's not going to matter relay

13 your on a older version of osx so i dont know what version of Firefox you have, firefox splits the load up to lots of tasks and thats a good thing, when it was locked to just one it was much much slower to see ram use just look at activity monitor and add it all up. same for safari and chrome

hope that helps, i assume you just use the computer for light web use and light photography for fun from what you have outlined, so i am taking the angle that the drive setup your trying to use is overly complex for what you want but it may also be some kind of app that you have installed giving you the problem & it seems to be if your even being confused & using the wrong files at times.

backups are good but im not sold on your setup it seems to complex for you and you have not given a use case for why you need it.

but if it works for you then it's fine, it's better than no backup

ps i use double redundancy for older files and triple for files within about a year old. backups are good but the double redundancy is all external not internal.

 

[joot]

Inside your Mac Pro dusty?

 

[h9826790]

I think WD Green has very aggressive power management from the firmware. Regardless your power setting, it will park the head of the HDD, which may cause the whole computer waiting for it’s I/O respond.