CM21 Posted June 22, 2016 Share Posted June 22, 2016 Hi, SInce ive upgraded to the lastest MAC OS system photoshop is running very slow. I have allocated as much cache, and ram as possible etc but it is still slow. Ive restarted the computer a few times and this hasnt solved it either. I have 100 GB available on the imac and 300 GB on the Lacie which I have ticked for PS to use as well. What else can it be or what can I do? Its driving me nuts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damien Symonds Posted June 22, 2016 Share Posted June 22, 2016 Hi Christy, just so we have all the necessary info, can you fill this out for me? I've also moved your question to Brian's section, because he's the expert with this stuff. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CM21 Posted June 22, 2016 Author Share Posted June 22, 2016 I have a Mac desktop running OX El Capitan and Photoshop CS5. It is over 2 years old, and has 999GB of RAM. Its hard drive has 110GB free out of 999GB. The last time I shut down was earlier today. I run a cleanup program about once a week. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damien Symonds Posted June 22, 2016 Share Posted June 22, 2016 Just now, CM21 said: and has 999GB of RAM. No it doesn't. Check again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CM21 Posted June 22, 2016 Author Share Posted June 22, 2016 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damien Symonds Posted June 22, 2016 Share Posted June 22, 2016 Ok, that's oodles of RAM, so you should have no trouble there. I expect Brian will tell you that the problem is your hard drive. He generally recommends always having at least one-third free space, and you've only got one-ninth free space. I'd get some stuff of there, pronto. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CM21 Posted June 22, 2016 Author Share Posted June 22, 2016 Ive gradually been transferring stuff to the external hard drive. Ill keep going and see it it makes any difference. Its odd though as it used to be fine before i upgraded to the new OS a few days ago. Since then its been taking almost a minute just to do something like flatten an image. :-/ Frustration plus. Thankyou. ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Posted June 22, 2016 Share Posted June 22, 2016 Yep! It's the 100GB free. Plus one more thing: CLEAR OFF YOUR MAC DESKTOP!! Seriously, the more files and folders you have on your Mac Desktop, the slower it runs. So if you have bunches of sessions on the desktop, those items are treated as open files, at least as the OS is concerned. Got 800 photos from the Smith Family Session at the park? Got a few weddings in a folder on the desktop with a few thousand images? That's a few thousand "open" images which will slow things to a crawl. So clear off that desktop in addition to getting stuff off your main drive. Target: Free up 300GB. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CM21 Posted June 22, 2016 Author Share Posted June 22, 2016 Hi Brian - I don't have any folders on my desktop. Learnt that lesson way back in my windows pc days It's weird though - I transferred at the very least 200GB onto my external today and it's still only showing 126GB free on my Hardrive. And yep I restarted it after deleting the trash bin. I should have heaps more space! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Posted June 22, 2016 Share Posted June 22, 2016 I personally use this program weekly and HIGHLY recommend it: CleanMyMac from MacPaw. There is usually a coupon code floating around to give you a discount. That program helps keep things in check. Now, to see what is occupying space, I use a free program called Disk Inventory X. Here is the main webpage: http://www.derlien.com/index.html What that program does is give you a visual representation via color blobs of what is taking up space. The bigger the color blob, the more space is being taken up. The color blobs represent different file types. So it's worth seeing just what is hogging up all the space. In addition, the Mac OS treats external HDs as if they are internal. So if you have an external HD that's 90% full, it will slow things down on your Mac. So after figuring out what files are eating up space, clearing a few hundred more gigs off the HD, running CMM...then eject any external HDs and remove them. Give your Mac a reboot as well and see if things speed up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Posted June 22, 2016 Share Posted June 22, 2016 Oh, I just found this website: http://elcapitanslow.com/ I couldn't have said things better myself. Try things on that list. But unfortunately, it might just be a quirk with El Capitan, which along with Yosemite, I do not recommend upgrading to. I'm still on Mavericks myself, because I refuse to upgrade to El Captian due to all of the quirks with Adobe's products. In addition, are you by chance running a Wacom Tablet? If so, you might need to update the drivers. I've seen a few posts recently that slowness problems / weird behavior were being caused by older Wacom Drivers. So if you are using a Wacom Tablet, be sure to look for the latest-and-greatest driver and install it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CM21 Posted June 23, 2016 Author Share Posted June 23, 2016 Hi Brian, thank you so much. I have clean my Mac :-) it's great. I'll download the other you mentioned. I wish I had seen those points earlier about the OS. I wouldn't have upgraded. I didn't realise that about external hard drives. I always have the LaCie drive on cause I work from there to edit the files I'm working on. Ill try to clear more room of it too. I recently went through and managed to clear quite a bit but it needs more. Cheers, Christy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CM21 Posted June 23, 2016 Author Share Posted June 23, 2016 Hi Brian, may I ask you one more question? I looked up what is taking up most of my space on the iMac and it's the backup files now, not photos. How do I delete these? Christy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CM21 Posted June 23, 2016 Author Share Posted June 23, 2016 so Ive attached the current screenshot. Ive googled and have you ever used detox my mac? There was another youtube video I found also about deleting all the files from smart folder in finder that are more than 1MB. What are all these files and do you need to keep them? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Posted June 23, 2016 Share Posted June 23, 2016 Oh, that's Time Machine creating local snapshots of your Mac's Internal HD. This happens when you don't have a EHD that's dedicated for Time Machine hooked up, Time Machine starts creating a "Safety Net" type of thing and sticks those backups to your local drive, thereby hogging up space. What you need to do is hook up a EHD and run Time Machine. Get a current backup, this might take awhile or not. Then head to System Preferences, find Time Machine and open it. Turn off Time Machine by flipping the switch. Close out all the Windows and Reboot. You should get your space back. Oh, I think this "Safety Net" thing started with Yosemite, but I'm not sure. My Mavericks' Time Machine doesn't do this. If you don't want to permanently disable Time Machine, then have a dedicated TM EHD hooked up at all times, just be sure to exclude any other externals. To do this, head back into Time Machine in your System Preferences, then click options. Have the other EHD (Like you Lacie 3TB) in the exclude list. You really don't want to backup a Internal Mac HD and a large external Mac HD if you don't have a extremely large EHD for Time Machine. That will result in something bad happening. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CM21 Posted June 23, 2016 Author Share Posted June 23, 2016 Thanks Brian, I'm sorry to be picking your brain. I just get a bit lost with the technical side! :-/ just to clarify I need an apple time machine to backup before I delete any of that space. so what exactly is other and backups? Does the iMac backup to the Hardrive automatically? How can I get rid of other? Its just so annoying to be working in Photoshop at a snails pace. :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Posted June 23, 2016 Share Posted June 23, 2016 No. Time Machine is built into the Mac OS. You need a clean (and dedicated EHD) for Time Machine to utilize. Before we continue, do you have a clean external HD for TIme Machine? About 2TB in capacity? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CM21 Posted June 23, 2016 Author Share Posted June 23, 2016 I will get one. I have an older time capsule but it's a few years old now. Can it be any external? I always thought (or led to believe) it had to be a time capsule external from Apple. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Posted June 24, 2016 Share Posted June 24, 2016 2 hours ago, CM21 said: I always thought (or led to believe) it had to be a time capsule external from Apple. IT CAN BE ANY EXTERNAL HD!!! That's just Apple's Marketing trying to sell you a overpriced EHD. In fact, ANY hard drive can be a Mac HD. It just has to be partitioned and formatted for use with the Mac, and that utility is built into the Operating System. Heck, I built my own external. (I used a 1TB HD that was laying around and bought a external case. Took 5 Min to build. It drives me nuts seeing a "Mac Formatted HD" that costs $30 more than the Windows' equivalent. Why do manufacturers do this? Because they know that people are used to paying more for Apple's products and they are banking on the consumers accepting this fact. "Oh...my Mac is so expensive...I guess I have to get the more expensive 'Mac EHD....' NOPE!! Here is the dirty little secret...IT'S THE SAME FRIGGIN' HD IN THE BOX. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS ONE HAS A NTFS PARTITION AND THE OTHER IS A JOURNALED HFS+ PARTITION. All you have to do is re-partition and format the HD with the Disk Utility that is built into the Mac OS. After formatting, (Erase tab in the Disk Utility) the Mac OS will ask you if you want to use the HD for Time Machine. You simply click "Yes" or "OK." Easy-Peasy. Here is a 2TB USB 3.0 HD that is already Mac Formatted. I own and like G-Technology's stuff. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CM21 Posted June 24, 2016 Author Share Posted June 24, 2016 I wish I had your brain :-) thank you so much. So in doing this it will clear all that backups and other off my hardrive? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Posted June 24, 2016 Share Posted June 24, 2016 1. You need to get an External HD dedicated for Time Machine. For your computer a 2TB drive is fine. We can't fix your problem until you get a dedicated EHD. (Well we technically could, but then you would have no backups at all of the Mac HD, which is bad.) 2. Run the Time Machine program so it will create a backup on the new EHD. This process can take a hour or two the 1st time. So I'd run TM with the new HD and go to bed. It will be done when you wake up. 3. Temporarily disable Time Machine, then reboot the computer. This will eliminate the "Backups" and possibly the "Other" files that are hogging up the space. 4. Re-enable Time Machine with the new & dedicated EHD hooked up. Be sure to EXCLUDE and other externals from backing up to the TM EHD. I think it's under the Options button in Time Machine. You do not want your 3TB Lacie Drive being backed up to the TM drive. You only want the internal Mac HD being backed up. 5. Once you get TM setup properly, it just runs in the background and you don't need to worry about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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