Mac mini M2 - Bridge Slow Performance Issue

[Anton]

Hello,

I'm looking for some insight into why my new Mac system, that I bought in March, and Bridge are not performing as well as they where, when I first starting using them together about 6 weeks or so ago. Scrolling through previews is sluggish. 

Results from "Details about your computer health".

I have a Mac desktop running Ventura 13.2.1 and Photoshop 24.4.1. It is under 6 months old, and has 32GB of RAM. Its hard drive has 533GB free out of 1000GB. The last time I shut down was earlier today. I have never run a cleanup program.

 

Specs:

 

Storage:

 

Many thanks,

 

Anton.

[Brian]

Are you accessing your images on your NTFS External Drive? Or the internal HD? 

If you are working off of your external, that's where the problem lies. Ventura gets really funny (and slow) with NTFS Drives. It doesn't like NTFS at all, and there is around a 30%+ performance drop if you use a NTFS Drive.

If the images are on the internal drive, I'd eject your NTFS Drive, remove it from your system and see if you get your performance back. I've read that if a NTFS Drive, even though it's not being used, just having it mounted can lead to performance issues with Ventura.

[Anton]

I'm editing from my internal hard drive, but usually have the NTFSs mounted.

I dismounted the drives this morning, and Bridge is more responsive. I'll keep my eye on it to see if there are any drastic changes, while editing without the externals mounted, otherwise this could be the answer. 

I bought the Mac with 1TB of storage, so that I could hold and edit current projects from the internal drive; storing them on externals, after I have wrapped everything up. My plan is to hold 20 jobs, with an average data size of 4-5GB, which will leave plenty of space for the system to do its thing. Providing I don't had any unnecessary apps etc to the internal HD

Thanks Brian.

[Brian]

If you really want to get an amazing HD, get a Thunderbolt 3 G-Drive. They have a 18TB model and the data transfer speed is 25MB per second, or 25Gbps. If you were to buy a NAS unit, you are limited to 1Gbps.  Unless you also spent the extra $100 to get the Mini to 10Gbps, AND have a 10Gbps Switch AND get a NAS with 2.5Gbps or 10Gbps Adapter, you will be better off going with Thunderbolt 3 or 4. I have such a drive and I work directly off of it, because of the data transfer speeds. SATA is usually around 5-6Gbps or so, though the M2 Chip is faster.

But seriously, instead of blowing thousands on a NAS unit, I'd get a TB3 G-Drive.

NTFS is the culprit. Ventura really slows down with foreign partition types, NTFS, ExFAT, even FAT32. (but I'm not sure about the last one, though it wouldn't surprise me.) Ventura is built for APFS or Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Any other partition types and performance takes a hit. You don't see this with older Mac Operating Systems; it's a Ventura thing.

[Anton]

That looks quite attractive. I definitely need a more space, and something for back up. Perhaps using my old drives for this purpose, after changing the partition types, would be my best practice.  

Going back to my initial problem with Bridge, and I’ve actually realised that it’s still under performing. Scrolling through multiple previews at the same time is laggy (essentials window (see image), however, hitting space bar and using the arrow keys to scroll is still pretty responsive.

 

[Brian]

This might be your normal until Adobe fixes things with patches and such. Even though a M2 Mac is supposed to be fast, it’s only the software that takes advantage of the things that make it so fast really give good performance. 
 

Have you disconnected the external HD that’s NTFS? 

[Anton]

Yes I have them disconnected, unless I want to transfer some files from them, onto my Mac. Funny thing is, there wasn't an issue when I first started using them together. 

I found this on Adobe's site:

 

 

 https://community.adobe.com/t5/bridge-discussions/latest-bridge-13-03-693-misbehaving-on-mac-ventura/td-p/13714271

 

I applied the recommendations. Seems to have improved it slightly. Let's see if anything changes.