Catalina has some serious File System problems.

[PinkyMacGodess]

Is this news to anyone?

This is insane.

I have been dealing with some large AV files, and the way that Catalina is behaving is, well, kinda psychotic.

Copying files between drives, occasionally, and actually not so much so, the file(s) being copied will estimate HOURS to copy, and yet I will copy the same file(s), and it copies in seconds/minutes. WTH?

Copying between Screen Shared systems, and sometimes several directories will do the same thing! Say they are going to take HOURS, one said three folders were going to take over 36 hours, and yet I copied the same three folders, together again, and they copied in MINUTES! WTH?

One directory, with 2 gigs of data, said it couldn't be copied. I exited the copy process, recopied the SAME FOLDERS, and *BOOM*, they copied fine. WTH?

I renamed three files. I then copied the directory, it was in the 3 gigabyte range, and the destination folder had the same three files WITH THE OLD FILENAMES after being copied! I checked. The source had DIFFERENT NAMES!

I'm rapidly losing faith in the programming output of Apple.

Anyone else seen this kind of insanity?

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Oh, and it took Catalina 20 minutes to tell me the size of a directory strucure I was browsing in another window. I've never seen such sloth on the part of the OS before. Yikes...

 

[throAU]

Spinning disk or SSD?
APFS?

APFS is optimised for SSD and does some tricks with local file copies (essentially if the copy is to/from the same disk it doesn't copy, just updates a pointer to the same file).

I'm not sure, but if you copy the same files to another disk a SECOND time (different location, but the copied files are already elsewhere on the destination disk) it may be doing checksums to see if the files are the same and just updating a reference to the existing files already on disk.

The way checksums work, if a file has the same 256 bit SHA checksum you can be pretty confident it is an identical file, and thus macOS has no need to copy it until a new copy with different content is saved.


Not saying the above is the cause of your slow-ness, (that could be caused by being on spinning disks) more trying to explain why you are seeing different times for copies of the same content.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Many copies were SSD to SSD, some were SSD to standard hard drive. Everything was either over USB, or gigabit network. Even trying to be generous with network latency, the odd copying issues were incredibly bizarre. I've done work like this with earlier versions of macOS, and never experienced such bizarre stuff. I had three copies going from the same SSD, and it just chugged along, which I thought would definitely cause issues, worked great, and then one file, and it's tripping out again. And some days, no issues, and others, repeated issues. Nothing running in the background.

Weird...

 

[Sedulous]

Sounds like a bug with screen sharing.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Sounds like a bug with screen sharing.

Yes, I would agree, except that it happened while copying from the local SSD to the local USB hard drive.

So is it a way they bastardize their USB, or is there a hidden quota on data per minute. Weird, as I said. But, yes, it happened more often during screen sharing. Sad...

 

[haddy]

Many copies were SSD to SSD, some were SSD to standard hard drive. Everything was either over USB, or gigabit network. Even trying to be generous with network latency, the odd copying issues were incredibly bizarre. I've done work like this with earlier versions of macOS, and never experienced such bizarre stuff. I had three copies going from the same SSD, and it just chugged along, which I thought would definitely cause issues, worked great, and then one file, and it's tripping out again. And some days, no issues, and others, repeated issues. Nothing running in the background.

Weird...

Okay I am on 10.15.6. The startup disk is an external 2TB Samsung SSD. I copy files exactly to the same places you do.
iMac 27" 64GB memory. And I have absolutely none of the problems you are experiencing, thank goodness!!

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Okay I am on 10.15.6. The startup disk is an external 2TB Samsung SSD. I copy files exactly to the same places you do.
iMac 27" 64GB memory. And I have absolutely none of the problems you are experiencing, thank goodness!!

I'm glad for you. It's a pain in the butt. I had copied 7 smallish directories, and a couple went 'freaky', and I had to wait, for some reason, until the whole copy ran its course to recopy the ones that were stuck in 'la-la-land'. What's odd is that, in the beginning, it copied pretty much fine, but as the days crept on, the weirdness seemed to increase and it wasn't consistent. Sometimes, whole huge directories would copy fine, from the SSD to the HD. Then the next copy job would stumble, and go weird. Then the next one might be fine, and then the next one would choke. I thought I had a reason, 'size', but then, as I started taking a closer look at what was being done, and what choked, that pretty much vaporized over time.

I don't have a clue what was going on.

It was just not what I expected. (It's a used iMac Pro. I was expecting better)
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Okay, I repeated myself in that last post. I blame it on the wine. It's Monday. It's hotter than hell. I had a strange day. MORE WINE!!! ?????

 

[haddy]

I'm glad for you. It's a pain in the butt. I had copied 7 smallish directories, and a couple went 'freaky', and I had to wait, for some reason, until the whole copy ran its course to recopy the ones that were stuck in 'la-la-land'. What's odd is that, in the beginning, it copied pretty much fine, but as the days crept on, the weirdness seemed to increase and it wasn't consistent. Sometimes, whole huge directories would copy fine, from the SSD to the HD. Then the next copy job would stumble, and go weird. Then the next one might be fine, and then the next one would choke. I thought I had a reason, 'size', but then, as I started taking a closer look at what was being done, and what choked, that pretty much vaporized over time.

I don't have a clue what was going on.

It was just not what I expected. (It's a used iMac Pro. I was expecting better)
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Okay, I repeated myself in that last post. I blame it on the wine. It's Monday. It's hotter than hell. I had a strange day. MORE WINE!!! ?????

Hey you think you have problems....check this out:

 

[Bandaman]

Found a picture of Catalina:

Seriously though, I miss High Sierra, but I can't go back to it because I need Catalina's features. Hopefully Big Sur is better.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Hey you think you have problems....check this out:

She has a future in politics or something. She tried... So cute. But I HAVE to go to the pub! Dad is ignoring me. Too funny... Wait until shes older. You're going to have your hands full(er)...
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Found a picture of Catalina:

Seriously though, I miss High Sierra, but I can't go back to it because I need Catalina's features. Hopefully Big Sur is better.

Well, it's not quite that bad, but I was surprised to encounter these issues doing the basic thing of copying files around. I'm glad it didn't happen when the files were being created. I'd have blown a gasket if that had happened. Still, it's basic functions of an OS, moving data. Catalina stumbled (choked?). And it wasn't even from one version of OS to another, it was in the same OS! And same OS for the screen sharing copies. Yikes. If I had the time, I should have waited out the copy, and seen if it even completed, and checked the console logs to see what the heck was going on. 'And here, we start snowshoeing in Tibet!' And it did it on one file too, although not so much at multiple files.

Just weird...

NT4 was the real dumpster fire, floating down a tsunami from a water treatment plant. Most people alive now didn't experience that spectacle. It made Vista and Windows 8 look tame.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Wow, so there is another flaw in Catalina!

At certain points during use, the menu bars will stop functioning. It's weird, because the menu bars, and scroll bars will stop being responsive, but the routine that highlights the scroll bar still works. It just can't be selected and moved. And the menu bar at the top will look like it wants to work, and the dock will even popup the item's title, but there is no way to select anything. Heck, I even held the power button down and got the box to restart/shutdown/etc, and even though it highlighted my choice, it would not allow me to select that choice. The happened while using the programs during the Great Copy Files Bug, so I thought it was linked. I had quite a few tabs open in Firefox, and it just did it to me in that program.

There is something wrong deep within Catalina. A buffer overflow, or something that is causing a crash that the OS can't sense. This is ridiculous! The whole menu system crashes, and the damned OS can't tell it happened?

The only way out of it is to hold that button longer...