Optimising an External Hard Drive (Slow Transfer Speed)

z6vm1dobfnca3x

Hi,

I couldn't find an answer for my last post, so hopefully this sub category is the appropriate place.

Essentially I'm trying to backup a 35GB Photos library to either iCloud or to my 320GB external hard drive that I just bought off Amazon.

I've have attempted both options numerous times now and the transfer is incredibly slow either way. It will literally take a week at the rate it's going. (The laptop had transferred 1MB, not 1GB to the external hard drive after about 90 seconds...)

Am I doing something wrong? I've never done this before, so I'm not entirely sure what I'm at.

Is there some way to optimise the external hard drive to increase the data transfer speed?

Any advice is much appreciated!

Thanks,
Hugo

*I have a Mid-2010 MacBook Pro with a 250GB hard drive, 245GB of which is full.

5uspect

How are you copying to the external drive?

z6vm1dobfnca3x

5uspect wrote: »

How are you copying to the external drive?

I went into finder and just right-clicked on the photo library, copied and pasted it into the new external hard drive.

Is there a better way of doing it?

5uspect

That doesn't sound right. Transfers over USB2 should be around 30 MB/s realistically.
How is the external drive formatted?

Also, are you copying the library to iCloud Drive or using iCloud Photos?

z6vm1dobfnca3x

5uspect wrote: »

That doesn't sound right. Transfers over USB2 should be around 30 MB/s realistically.
How is the external drive formatted?

Also, are you copying the library to iCloud Drive or using iCloud Photos?

Yeah, I'm getting quite worried now. I hope the internal hard drive isn't fried altogether.

The external is formatted to FAT32.

I've tried to copy to iCloud Drive and also through iCloud Photos. Both are worrying slow.

Could it be that there's only 5GB of free space on my internal hard drive? i.e. could the lack of free space on the internal hard drive interfere with the laptops ability to actually process the transfer?

Many thanks

5uspect

So FAT32 only supports up to 4GB files.
The Photos Library isn't really a file just a special folder but crusty old FAT32 might not know that.

Format it in exFAT or HFS+.

Also, do you have a Time Machine backup? Because you really should.

z6vm1dobfnca3x

5uspect wrote: »

So FAT32 only supports up to 4GB files.
The Photos Library isn't really a file just a special folder but crusty old FAT32 might not know that.

Format it in exFAT or HFS+.

Also, do you have a Time Machine backup? Because you really should.

Nice one! I'll try that when I get home and let you know how I get on.

I tried to make a Time Machine backup, but at the rate it's going, I'd be lucky if it was ready by Christmas! That's why I've resorted now to just backing up the iPhoto library as I can do without the rest of the files.

Cheers,
Hugo

5uspect

If you had tried to setup Time Machine it would have formatted the drive itself. Have you another machine (or drive) to test the external disk (or Mac)?

z6vm1dobfnca3x

5uspect wrote: »

If you had tried to setup Time Machine it would have formatted the drive itself. Have you another machine (or drive) to test the external disk (or Mac)?

When I formatted the disk, I set it to ac OS Extended (Journaled). Is this correct?

My brother has the same laptop, so I might test the drive on his one later.

But as I'm having trouble transferring data to iCloud as well as the external hard drive, would this not mean that there must be an issue with the laptops internal hard drive?

5uspect

Or it could be a software issue, it's hard to say. It seems you've got issues with writing files to a disk and uploading files to iCloud. The former could be a bad drive and the latter could just be your upload speed. Have you tried uploading files elsewhere or copying to another volume? You could even try Airdropping the Photos Library to your brothers Mac for safe keeping.

Does the Mac take a long time to boot? If your Mac's drive is on the way out then it would also be super slow to boot.

You could try using the cp command in the terminal to copy the data. How comfortable are you with the command line?

How technology savvy are you? This will determine how we proceed.

z6vm1dobfnca3x

5uspect wrote: »

Or it could be a software issue, it's hard to say. It seems you've got issues with writing files to a disk and uploading files to iCloud. The former could be a bad drive and the latter could just be your upload speed. Have you tried uploading files elsewhere or copying to another volume? You could even try Airdropping the Photos Library to your brothers Mac for safe keeping.

Does the Mac take a long time to boot? If your Mac's drive is on the way out then it would also be super slow to boot.

You could try using the cp command in the terminal to copy the data. How comfortable are you with the command line?

How technology savvy are you? This will determine how we proceed.

Hi,

I haven't tried copying the files to another volume. When I get hold of my older sibling, I will try Airdropping to his Mac!

Yes, my Mac takes a long time to boot... It can take up to 10 minutes before I can even enter my password to login!

Using Safari to reply to your post has taken about 4 minutes (spinning wheel is appearing and disappearing in 20 second~ intervals), and it seems to be getting slower by the day.

I would consider myself to be more technology savvy than most, so if I am given an instruction of what to do, I can do so easily.

I have not tried the cp command in the terminal, and I only have an idea about how that works. But I'm sure I can google that method and follow the instructions.

I don't expect you to take the time to explain the cp command process to me, but if you think that it will work, let me know and I will go about doing that now.

Again, thank you for taking the time to help me with this. It's much appreciated!

Hugo

whiterebel

Sorry for the obvious, but have you run Disk First Aid, repaired permissions etc?

z6vm1dobfnca3x

whiterebel wrote: »

Sorry for the obvious, but have you run Disk First Aid, repaired permissions etc?

Hi,

I've ran first aid on the external and no errors were detected.

But I didn't even think to run first aid on the internal so I will try that now!

Thanks,
Hugo

5uspect

As a priority you should be getting your data safely backed up. Sorry to labour the point but you should ALWAYS have a backup. Once you've got a Time Machine backup its incredibly easy to fix these kinds of issues. It also makes upgrading to an SSD easy - something you should consider for this machine.

A ten minute boot time is not excessively long for a 2010 machine which doesn't appear to have been given much care and is running a recent version of OS X. However the slow transfer speed with Finder is worrying. How fast can you view the images in Photos? Or is that also very sluggish?
I mention the command line as an alternative means to copy data which may work better if you've some some software issue. Commands likes cp and rsync can be very useful.

So you have a couple of options.

AirDrop/share the Photos library to another machine.
Pull the drive and put it into an enclosure and back up your documents.
Try the command line.

Which version of OS X are you running? Repairing File Permissions is no longer part of 10.11 and above due to System Integrity Protection.

Have you done anything to remove unnecessary files from clogging up your system? Simple things like emptying the Downloads directory and Trash to more advanced like clearing caches?

z6vm1dobfnca3x

5uspect wrote: »

As a priority you should be getting your data safely backed up. Sorry to labour the point but you should ALWAYS have a backup. Once you've got a Time Machine backup its incredibly easy to fix these kinds of issues. It also makes upgrading to an SSD easy - something you should consider for this machine.

A ten minute boot time is not excessively long for a 2010 machine which doesn't appear to have been given much care and is running a recent version of OS X. However the slow transfer speed with Finder is worrying. How fast can you view the images in Photos? Or is that also very sluggish?
I mention the command line as an alternative means to copy data which may work better if you've some some software issue. Commands likes cp and rsync can be very useful.

So you have a couple of options.

AirDrop/share the Photos library to another machine.
Pull the drive and put it into an enclosure and back up your documents.
Try the command line.

Which version of OS X are you running? Repairing File Permissions is no longer part of 10.11 and above due to System Integrity Protection.

Have you done anything to remove unnecessary files from clogging up your system? Simple things like emptying the Downloads directory and Trash to more advanced like clearing caches?

Photos takes a couple minutes to get going, but once I'm in there, viewing the photos is quick enough.

AirDrop was not successful.

I'm running El Capitan so I download OnyX to repair my permissions. There seemed to be quite a few issues there but all have been repaired by OnyX.

I have now freed up 50+ GB of space by clearing the downloads directory, trash, system cache and also deleted my iTunes library (redundant as I have Spotify).

While writing this post, I've done a simple copy and paste to the external and it's already 15GB in of 40GB. Estimated time remaining is 45 minutes!

So, it looks like you've solved this problem for me.

I'll be forever grateful

Many thanks,
Hugo

5uspect

Good to hear, now make a bloody backup!!!
(Then make regular backups all the time)

Also an SSD is an extremely worthwhile upgrade that will significantly speed up your Mac. You can get a 500GB SSD that'll saturate the SATA II bus in your 2010 model for decent value. Especially worth considering if you're going with a clean install.

Oh and make a backup.

z6vm1dobfnca3x

I'll make a backup and then backup the backup of the backup, don't worry!!

Have a good one,
Hugo