Zippy Mac...not so much..

Hey to everyone I still know.

I have a Mac speed question and I decided to post here as people in video tend to live or die by whether their machine is happy or not.

1.83 GHz Intel DuoCore Mac Mini
2GB Internal Memory
80GB Internal Drive
Tiger OS-X 10.4.11

It's an aggressively unremarkable machine.

But it's getting slower.

I edit several hours of sound (pretend I said video) every week and I've been doing it long enough to have a very good idea how long it should take. The last couple of months or so, the whole process seems to be slowing down. Not sparklers in the air or flags snapping in the breeze slow, but just enough to warrant a second glance before I go out shopping for milk and eggs.

Last week the editing didn't fit in the time allotted to it. It's more and more like editing through deep, wet snow (I know all the LA people will relate to this immediately).

I cleaned out the 80GB internal drive. It's hovering around 40GB of work and it never got over 90% full. There are no other attached drives or devices.

The drive passes Error Check and Repair Permissions.

I ran Mac Janitor to clean and organize the logs.

There's an analysis tool on the System Install CD and the machine passes that just fine. I did the long, careful test.

I got out my AppleCare license and CD, but downloaded the newest TechTool DMG anyway. I didn't run the whole thing, but all the selective tools I did run pass with flying colors.

Since I'm bilingual, I'm itching to run C:\ > Explore > Properties > Tools > Defragment, but this isn't a Windows machine.

I'm getting the SBBOD more and more and at some odd times; like launching FireFox or Photoshop on a newly started machine. One of the Heavy Systems Operators at work said they would bring in their Daddy Tech Tools that will defrag the drive, but I'm wondering if I missed anything.

Part B. I regularly make an Image of this machine's whole drive. If I erase the drive and then put the image back, does that do the same thing as defragment, or do the img clusters go back just exactly where they were originally? "Image" is subject to interpretation.

Koz

Hey, Koz, nice to see your shining face again.

I don't have a lot of help to offer, but I've noticed the same effect of getting "older and slower" in lower end Macs, like a couple of half-basketball iMacs I used to have. A Mini probably qualifies for this category. Restarting would usually improve performance somewhat, but not for long and not as much as I wanted. I could never be sure whether it was heightened expectations through using faster computers that made me think my iMac was getting slower, or that it really was. You seem to have empirical evidence of the decreased performance.

However, I can think of one factor you didn't mention, maybe because it's utterly irrelevant, but are you networked to anything else? Is there a chance that network thrashing is ruining performance? Have you checked with Activity Monitor to see what's using up RAM or CPU? Any recent software updates that otherwise seemed benign but might be interacting strangely? As you see, I'm looking at "soft" sources rather than the "hard" ones you've been investigating.

At the very least, my shotgun suggestions get your topic back to the top of the list.

Scott

KOZ, do you own a copy of Diskwarrior? I like to run that every few months or when my machines start acting up; does more than just blow off the cobwebs. Sometimes you just need to rebuild your disk structure.

Other than that, I second the running of Activity Monitor, just to see if any rogue processes are hogging the RAM.

JK

_______________________________________
SCQT! Self-contained QuickTime ? pass it on!

<<<You seem to have empirical evidence of the decreased performance. >>>

It was pretty clear. I have to get certain edits and tasks done in one hour and last week they didn't fit -- and I didn't do anything stupid or out of the ordinary. Every complex filter application and import/export just seemed to take too long. I looked up at the clock and backtiming it in my head, realized I was going to have to work on two different computers to get it all done on time.

I don't remember ever seeing the SBBOD during relatively benign operations before. That was another clear sign.

<<<KOZ, do you own a copy of Diskwarrior?>>>

I do. I bought it and then found out by what process it worked and decided I wasn't that interested after all and I had no failures. Is there a defrag tool? Or better yet, a defrag map?

One of the Genius's at work (for real -- we have two) suggested Cocktail to reset and clean what must be billions of caches and temp files by now. I may try that.

<<<it started working like the day I bought it.>>>

The Mini is due for a blow-out. I may pop for the flex blade spatulas and try to lift the case off. The last time we did that, it didn't have any significant dust.

<<<are you networked to anything else?>>>

Yes, but I have a little network switch within sight and I can tell from the lights when there is network activity. I don't need to run any analysis software -- except for the disk and CPU. I can start a videoconference session and watch the lights go nut-house, so I know what excessive activity looks like. This isn't it.

Koz

Macs are auto-defragmenting. Manually defragmenting a Mac OS X system is not necessary, and in fact only results in the operating system immediately setting to work putting everything back where it's supposed to go on the disk.

Koz, why don't you try this: download a new and different sound editing program to your Mini and see if it will work better. That might tell you if it's definitely your computer or your old editing program that isn't working right.

>Macs are auto-defragmenting.

I'm not entirely sure about that. Apple has been playing a bit of dodgeball with the issue.

Quote
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1375
If your disks are almost full, and you often modify or create large files (such as editing video, but see the Tip below if you use iMovie and Mac OS X 10.3), there's a chance the disks could be fragmented. In this case, you might benefit from defragmentation, which can be performed with some third-party disk utilities.

That being said, HFS+ is a whole lot more intelligent that FAT32, and in most cases you won't suffer from having a fragmented drive unless your drive is extremely loaded. There are some 3rd party defrag utilities, such as idefrag, etc..

As for diskwarrior, you won't be able to rebuild the system drive unless you are hooked up to another mac on target disk mode.



www.strypesinpost.com

> As for diskwarrior, you won't be able to rebuild the system drive unless you are hooked up to
> another mac on target disk mode.

Actually, the DiskWarrior CD can be used to start up the computer, which allows you to run DiskWarrior on your normal system drive. The bootup is slooooow, though...grab a coffee and a donut.


www.derekmok.com

> download a new and different sound editing program to your Mini and see if it will work better

That makes no sense. If your computer fails to run Final Cut Pro but runs iPhoto just fine, do you conclude that the computer's okay? Yeah, Pro Tools and SoundSoap -- same amount of system strain?


www.derekmok.com

I had a similar experience, back with an old powerbook G4, and a dual 2.0 G5. Probably not much help but the first time happened after a software update to the OS, QT, security update. A biggie overall, and it magically slowed down beyond slow. I wasn't even using it to cut. Strictly for internet, mail and sometimes after effects. I had lots of programs on this one though. This was back with 10.2.x. Panther was released a few months prior, so I jumped to the new OS, and lo and behold back to normal.

The second time I had this happen on a dual 2.0 G5 running an early version of tiger. The only thing that fixed it here was a brand new drive with a clean install. Could of been a failing hard drive, or just a system so full of junk from years of installs and uninstalls.

Koz, have you backed up everything on your system drive? Because while it's not the only cause, one reason a computer starts slowing down is a dying system drive. Might be a good idea to back it all up just in case. Also, if the system drive is moribund, additional troubleshooting steps can actually send it over the edge -- happened to me once when I ran TechTool. Instead of fixing or ameliorating the problem, it dealt the coup de grâce on the system drive.


www.derekmok.com

Check your Console utility for "I/O Error" messages. They're a sure sign of a hardware problem somewhere in the storage subsystem.

I routinely image the Mini's whole hard drive to an external FireWire drive (I also have a very nice MacBook Pro-15". So destroying the internal drive doesn't bother me very much, but it doesn't feel like that. I've been using UNIX based systems long enough to know when the machine becomes schizophrenic. This one is just slow. It always completes its tasks correctly, but with the additional entertainment of the SBBOD. I don't hear the repetitive buzz you get when there's damage on the drive.

Auto Defragging only happens on data files below a certain size. Above that, you're on your own, which in a UNIX-based system is not terrible.

There is one very good video out there about how to slide the case from a Mini, so I did and vacuumed and then blew it out. Not much dust, but I did get a little. I didn't know there was a 3V watch battery inside a Mini. Did you?

So that and reducing the work on the hard drive to slightly over half capacity seems to have done very nice things to the speed. It wasn't immediate, but over a couple of days, it got over being constipated.

I still need to address the caches. I've never cleared them.

Given I have an image of the whole system drive and can easily make another one, is there any benefit to making a fresh image, erasing the system drive, and then reinstall the image? Copy is reputed to be the poor man's defrag, but does restoring an image do the same thing as cp?

I had to restore an Image on my old PowerBook when I accidentally laid a powerful magnet down on the lower-left side of the case. The magnet, lest you think I'm terminally addlepated, came as part of a standard iSight camera. Y'all be careful out there.

The MacBook Pro has an SSD. I learn by doing.

Koz