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Major delays on initial saves
#2839 09/03/09 10:11 PM
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The first time I save a document in virtually any application, the delay before the save dialogue appears seems interminable -- in the case of "save as PDF" from the print dialogue, among others, the wait can be almost half a minute. There is a shorter 15 second delay before the contents of a secondary disk initially show up in a finder window, and in some applications (NoteTaker) before the list of recently viewed items appears in the File/Open drop down list.

All subsequent saves and opens (one application at a time!) are instantaneous per normal. I assume that means software, not hardware, is the culprit -- unless my Wacom Cintiq monitor, which will not let the computer sleep, could be at fault. Although I've had the problem from day one, I'm currently running OS 10.5.7 on a 2x3.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Mac-Pro with 4 internal hard drives. I run Cocktail 4.3.3 pretty regularly.

Any help, including speculation, would be much appreciated.

Re: Major delays on initial saves
JM Hanes #2841 09/03/09 10:44 PM
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Open/Save windows will trigger the spin-up of all your attached drives, so if you have multiple drives and one or more of them is slow to spin-up then that could be what you're seeing. Although 15 seconds or more seems to be a rather large delay. Have you checked the S.M.A.R.T. information for your internal drives recently to see if any of them are showing signs of issues? DiskWarrior and TechTool Pro have S.M.A.R.T. testing and Apple System Profiler has a simple S.M.A.R.T. status indicator.

Also, if you have have low available memory that could cause an additional delay if the open/save window information has been paged to disk at some point.


iMac 2.7 GHz Core i5, 12 GB RAM, OS X 10.9, Int SATA 1 TB, Ext Fire 2 TB / 1 TB / 1 TB / 500 GB / 300 GB
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Re: Major delays on initial saves
Kevin M. Dean #2861 09/04/09 01:30 AM
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Thanks for responding, Kevin!

According to the System Profiler, the S.M.A.R.T. status is fine on all four of my internal drives, which don't spin up like external drives till I access them, as far as I know, at least. The delay when they first do seems more understandable, comparatively short, and doesn't seem to affect any other operations. It's the 20-30 second wait for initial saves that really drives me nuts. I've got 32 gigs of 800MHz memory, and keep one of my drives completely empty for Photoshop to use.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I haven't upgraded to the latest Tech Tool. I guess now would be a good time! Disk Warrior takes so long to get off the ground that I've rigged up a little device to hold down the "c" key while I go off to load the dishwasher, do the laundry and weed the garden.

I'm not sure what being "paged to disk" is, but I'd be interested to know. I live in fear of someone telling me I can fix things right up in the terminal window, which I've never had the guts to use.

Re: Major delays on initial saves
JM Hanes #2865 09/04/09 02:47 AM
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Originally Posted By: JM Hanes
It's the 20-30 second wait for initial saves that really drives me nuts.


You may want to have the Console app open during the next time this occurs and see if any interesting messages appear that may indicate an issue.

Originally Posted By: JM Hanes
I've got 32 gigs of 800MHz memory...I'm not sure what being "paged to disk" is, but I'd be interested to know.


32 GBs of ram is the maximum for your computer, so you shouldn't have memory issues then. Paging to disk is when data is taken from memory and written to your hard drive to free up memory for other uses. Later that data can be retrieved back from disk into RAM which can cause a delay.

Originally Posted By: JM Hanes
I'm embarrassed to admit that I haven't upgraded to the latest Tech Tool. I guess now would be a good time! Disk Warrior takes so long to get off the ground that I've rigged up a little device to hold down the "c" key while I go off to load the dishwasher, do the laundry and weed the garden.


With the multiple drives you have, I suggest picking one of them and install another Operating System onto it... trim the apps you don't need from it and install Techtool and Diskwarrior on it and any other Troubleshooting apps you have. This way you can boot from the drive and run your fixit apps a lot quicker than booting from the cd.


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Re: Major delays on initial saves
JM Hanes #2875 09/04/09 05:45 AM
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My daughter had 6 or 7 large VM files accumulated due to running Firefox (with two dozen tabs), Safari, MS-Office, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, plus various IM applications all at once, leaving them open for days on end. When she rebooted, those files cleared and her computer's responsiveness improved a lot.

With external drives, having four or so such drives can result in 10-20 second delays as they spin up when files are about to be saved. To see if this is happening with you, perhaps you can dismount all but one of your drives and see if that makes a difference?


iMac Intel Core 2 Duo 2.67 GHz, 4 Gig RAM 10.5.8
Macbook Pro Core 2 Duo 3.06 GHz, 4 GB RAM, 10.6.3
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Re: Major delays on initial saves
JM Hanes #2937 09/05/09 05:25 AM
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Wow. Ya'll were right about the drives after all. I hadn't thought of just unmounting them with the disk utility as a test. It would be hard to believe that I'm not a total newbie, but I didn't realize that when the secondary drives appeared in a finder window sidebar, it meant that they were mounted. For some reason I assumed that's what was happening during the delay in opening them. tongue

I restarted, and after I had unmounted the drives, I could even "save to PDF" in no time flat! The very first time. Thank you! Thank you! Life is good!

And special thanks to you Kevin -- for pointing to FTM over on the cnet board.

Re: Major delays on initial saves
JM Hanes #2944 09/05/09 08:39 AM
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I have a similar problem with just one external, firewire-connected backup Iomega drive. When it spins (and one can hear it), nothing can happen to the main disk, no save, etc. It does it once in an hour or so, In between, all is well.


Alex
3.1 GHz 13" MacBook Pro 2015, 8 GB RAM, OS 10.11.2, Office 2011, TimeWarner Cable
2.8 GHz Xeon Mac Pro 2010, 16 GB RAM, OS 10.11.2, Office 2011, LAN
Re: Major delays on initial saves
macnerd10 #2952 09/05/09 10:46 AM
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For precisely these reasons, I have opted to never sleep my hard drives (Energy Saver preference pane). The delays are too annoying.


Jon

macOS 11.7.10, iMac Retina 5K 27-inch, late 2014, 3.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 1 TB fusion drive, 16 GB RAM, Epson SureColor P600, Photoshop CC, Lightroom CC, MS Office 365
Re: Major delays on initial saves
JM Hanes #2964 09/05/09 01:14 PM
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Originally Posted By: JM Hanes
Wow. Ya'll were right about the drives after all.

And special thanks to you Kevin -- for pointing to FTM over on the cnet board.


Yeah, I wish the drives would only spin-up once selected in a File Open/Save window and not all at the same time when the window is opened. In the finder it's one at a time and I see no reason why the F O/S window can't be the same. I have 5 drives myself, but my delay is only a few seconds so it's not 25-30 seconds bad. Still seems really slow. You might try having 1 drive at a time mounted to see if it's any particular one that has a larger delay.

Over on Cnet, yeah it seems me and donikatz are getting the word out, but we've started getting responses already from people who don't know the difference between the MacFixIt site articles and the MacFixIt Forums and are just preaching the Cnet party line.

Check out our comments on Cnet


iMac 2.7 GHz Core i5, 12 GB RAM, OS X 10.9, Int SATA 1 TB, Ext Fire 2 TB / 1 TB / 1 TB / 500 GB / 300 GB
Former MacFixIt Forums member since 11/17/99
www.rhubarbproductions.com
Re: Major delays on initial saves
Kevin M. Dean #2989 09/05/09 05:50 PM
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Quote:
.....we've started getting responses already from people who don't know the difference between the MacFixIt site articles and the MacFixIt Forums and are just preaching the Cnet party line.


The tkessler responses were a hoot. The old forums were "limited," so we moved to cnet to enhance your experience, but don't worry, MacFixit hasn't really changed! I commented here as DeRerum (@ 11:05 pm), if you can actually get the page 3 to load.

Did you interact with tkessler back at MFI? I'd say he/she, who apparently thinks his/her content was the heart of MFI, is in for a surprise. About the only way you can even find it is from a MacFixIt redirect, and the only place the "Welcome to the new MacFixit on CNET!" thread shows up is in the Mac Lounge forum -- for "things that might not be related to Apple products...with Apple users." So much for enhancement!

I'm sure cnet captured a bunch of new registrants for their own Mac forums, from the folks trying to find MFI. Even if the former community abandons ship, though, cnet has still put a competitor out of business. It's a win/win acquisition. Which was the whole point, of course. Wouldn't you just love to know how much they'd paid, and who got the dough?

Re: Major delays on initial saves
JM Hanes #3182 09/07/09 02:46 PM
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Odd Epilogue for the files:

Unmounting secondary drives when I started up seems to have solved the time delays. This morning I left them mounted and had ..... no problems, so the medicine must have cured something. It's good to know what to do if delays crop up again, but it's kind of creepy to think that maybe my computer is learning things....
shocked

Re: Major delays on initial saves
JM Hanes #3184 09/07/09 03:44 PM
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Since an application keeps track, in its plist(s), of which directory you most recently opened a file from in an Open… dialog (via the NSNavLastCurrentDirectory key), it seems likely that the apps giving you the delays were ones in which you frequently opened files located on the secondary drives; the spinup lag would've been responsible for the delays.

When you unmounted those drives, the locations recorded in the plists were no longer available, so the Open… dialog for such an app defaulted to your startup drive's Documents folder as the navigational starting point (that's how it works for me, anyhow).

With the drives left mounted again, the plist of any app from within which you last opened files during the period that those drives were unmounted still points to whichever directory on your startup drive contains the last-opened file, so the secondary drives don't come into play in such an app's Open… dialog until the next time you navigate to a file that's located on one of them.

If none of that has the ring of truth (assuming it's even sufficiently coherent to have a ring laugh ), it's possible that the original problem was cache-related, and that the period of banishment of the secondary drives effectively updated the relevant cache(s), but that would be beyond the scope of my understanding to explain.



dkmarsh—member, FineTunedMac Co-op Board of Directors
Re: Major delays on initial saves
dkmarsh #3199 09/07/09 05:00 PM
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If I only have to read a post twice, I figure that's coherence. If it takes me more runs than that, I figure it's above my pay grade, so you're safe either way.

I do frequently open Photoshop docs from my third and/or fourth drives. so that seems the likely stumbling block. Would the same apply, do you suppose, because Photoshop uses my deliberately empty second drive for operations? On second thought, I'm not sure I actually dismounted the second drive though, thinking that the on/off would quickly become a pain when just running Pshop from the main drive which fills up pretty fast.

There's probably a way to get around it, but I'm sure it would involve working in the terminal which I find so intimidating that I've never used it. It really amazes me how often even the Apple troubleshooting pages send you there, when sticking to the user interface instead of having to look under the hood was always one of its biggest attractions. Seems rather counterproductive given Apple's push for new users! I was really proud of my conflict resolution skilz, till Apple made a newbie out of me, myself. But I digress. shocked

I doubt the problem is cache-related, unless that's a bigger universe than I realize, because I clean them out pretty regularly with Cocktail, to no effect.

Re: Major delays on initial saves
JM Hanes #3208 09/07/09 06:01 PM
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Originally Posted By: JM Hanes
I do frequently open Photoshop docs from my third and/or fourth drives. so that seems the likely stumbling block. Would the same apply, do you suppose, because Photoshop uses my deliberately empty second drive for operations?

Not to steal Dave's thunder, but you can check that for yourself. tongue PS lists its scratch disks under its Prefs (Plug-Ins & Scratch Disks, or Performance panel), and uses the startup drive as default. To read about PS' scratch disk behavior and recommendations, enter 'scratch disk' in the PS Help Viewer (Help menu).


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