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Constant Beachballing on Mac Pro 4,1

S

SimonUK5

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 26, 2010
476
7
Hi all,

I'm getting almost constant Beachballing on my Mac Pro, specs are -

3.2 Quad
12GB
128Gb SSD

I've also got a few other hard drives, an Apple RAID card, a GT120 and a USB3 card in the machine.

Litteral constant beach balling, including whilst typing this message. Opening Finder, making folders, everything pulls the machine down to a holt. Using approx 6gb of RAM as i type this. I constant also clear the ram using the purge command from a terminal window.

Unbelievably frustrating, the machine is almost unusable.

I'm running a brand new CLEAN install of Mavericks.

Any ideas?
 
SimonUK5 said:
Hi all,

I'm getting almost constant Beachballing on my Mac Pro, specs are -

3.2 Quad
12GB
128Gb SSD

I've also got a few other hard drives, an Apple RAID card, a GT120 and a USB3 card in the machine.

Litteral constant beach balling, including whilst typing this message. Opening Finder, making folders, everything pulls the machine down to a holt. Using approx 6gb of RAM as i type this. I constant also clear the ram using the purge command from a terminal window.

Unbelievably frustrating, the machine is almost unusable.

I'm running a brand new CLEAN install of Mavericks.

Any ideas?
Click to expand...

here...i believe those two bold words will help...upgrade them...i'm not an expert...but 12gb ram is good....but i believe it's SSD drive...get eve samsung...700gb..
 
maclove4life said:
here...i believe those two bold words will help...upgrade them...i'm not an expert...but 12gb ram is good....but i believe it's SSD drive...get eve samsung...700gb..
Click to expand...

Hmm, not convinced, the SSD is pretty new, and i didn't really have any problems with it when it was in my Mac Mini.
 
SimonUK5 said:
Hmm, not convinced, the SSD is pretty new, and i didn't really have any problems with it when it was in my Mac Mini.
Click to expand...

yeah..but if I'm not mistaken...having more space will increase speed. 128gb? pretty you won't be able to install lot of apps. For example I have 8gb ram with 700gb of SSD EVO..and i'm rarely seeing beach ball...i do see some...but not often.

----------
SimonUK5 said:
Hmm, not convinced, the SSD is pretty new, and i didn't really have any problems with it when it was in my Mac Mini.
Click to expand...

by the way ..i have same model 4,1 quad. 2.66.
 
I'm going to pull everything out apart from the GPU and 1 stick of RAM, and see how that goes. Hoping its just the USB card or something.
 
The other poster said more space more speed on an ssd. That is not true. A SSD will not slow down siginificantly when full like a hard drive does.
The GT120 wont be the reason either.

There is a couple things you can try.

Try testing your ram for faults. Install memtest. Its a program that runs in your terminal and tests your ram for any issues. If it finds some then remove all but one ramstick. Boot up, run the test again. Continue adding one stick every test to find which sticks are faulty.

Open disk utility and verify your boot disk and repair permissions. If the verification comes up with a error like there is a problem them boot from the restore partition and repair the disk

remove the USB 3 card and RAID card and try without. Its just a trial and error case here.

it is also possible that your finder is still indexing as you are running a clean install. click on the spotlight icon and see if it says "indexing ....." and shows a progress bar.

disconnect all external HDDs.
If you open folders that are located on the SSD does it still beachball?

the most likely reason is faulty ram or faulty SSD or a corrupt install of mavericks.
 
The-Pro said:
The other poster said more space more speed on an ssd. That is not true. A SSD will not slow down siginificantly when full like a hard drive does.
The GT120 wont be the reason either.

There is a couple things you can try.

Try testing your ram for faults. Install memtest. Its a program that runs in your terminal and tests your ram for any issues. If it finds some then remove all but one ramstick. Boot up, run the test again. Continue adding one stick every test to find which sticks are faulty.

Open disk utility and verify your boot disk and repair permissions. If the verification comes up with a error like there is a problem them boot from the restore partition and repair the disk

remove the USB 3 card and RAID card and try without. Its just a trial and error case here.

it is also possible that your finder is still indexing as you are running a clean install. click on the spotlight icon and see if it says "indexing ....." and shows a progress bar.

disconnect all external HDDs.
If you open folders that are located on the SSD does it still beachball?

the most likely reason is faulty ram or faulty SSD or a corrupt install of mavericks.
Click to expand...

Ripped everything out, just the SSD, RAM and a GPU in there now.

Just wiped and re-installed Mav's too.

Going to let MEM test run 10 times through, and see how we go then. Still beach balling now, even after Indexing has finished.
 
SimonUK5 said:
Ripped everything out, just the SSD, RAM and a GPU in there now.

Just wiped and re-installed Mav's too.

Going to let MEM test run 10 times through, and see how we go then. Still beach balling now, even after Indexing has finished.
Click to expand...

did you verify and/or repair your disk in disk utility?

you can also try using the SSD from a different SATA slot inside your machine.
 
Gav Mack said:
What make and model of SSD?
Click to expand...

Its a Sandisk, not sure of the model. Its not a super highend one though.

Haven't moved the SSD into a different slot in the machine, if that causes the issue i will lol, but yeah it could be.

Disk checks out fine, both in Disk Utility and in DiskDX.

Still having the beachball issue though. Going to run Apple Hardware Test, and let mem test go over night.

I have work to do, and i'm having to work on my macbook Air, which isn't ideal :(
 
SimonUK5 said:
Its a Sandisk, not sure of the model. Its not a super highend one though.

Haven't moved the SSD into a different slot in the machine, if that causes the issue i will lol, but yeah it could be.

Disk checks out fine, both in Disk Utility and in DiskDX.

Still having the beachball issue though. Going to run Apple Hardware Test, and let mem test go over night.

I have work to do, and i'm having to work on my macbook Air, which isn't ideal :(
Click to expand...

Would be handy knowing which so I can find out which controller the drive has onboard? Did you run it with trim enabler to get trim going for garbage collection? If not over time the drive gets slower and slower when pretty bad even enabling trim doesn't help that much; you have to zero (wipe) the entire drive completely using disk utility with a single pass, then restore back.

If you had another SSD to throw in you could eliminate the drive from being the culprit..
 
Gav Mack said:
Would be handy knowing which so I can find out which controller the drive has onboard? Did you run it with trim enabler to get trim going for garbage collection? If not over time the drive gets slower and slower when pretty bad even enabling trim doesn't help that much; you have to zero (wipe) the entire drive completely using disk utility with a single pass, then restore back.

If you had another SSD to throw in you could eliminate the drive from being the culprit..
Click to expand...

I stuck the SSD Drive into a USB caddy and ran Blackmagic Disk Test on it.

Not even reaching 20mb/s read speed. Pretty sure the drive is toast.. :(
 
SimonUK5 said:
I stuck the SSD Drive into a USB caddy and ran Blackmagic Disk Test on it.

Not even reaching 20mb/s read speed. Pretty sure the drive is toast.. :(
Click to expand...

Damn, you could try doing a total wipe and then reinstalling.

Is there still warranty on the drive?
 
SimonUK5 said:
I stuck the SSD Drive into a USB caddy and ran Blackmagic Disk Test on it.

Not even reaching 20mb/s read speed. Pretty sure the drive is toast.. :(
Click to expand...

Not USB 2.0 but 3.0? Bus speeds on 2.0 are typically about 25/27 tops sustained. If you have a backup image on time machine that is definitely good zero the drive completely with one pass to flush any garbage there is totally away. I have to do this on some PATA SSD units running Ubuntu every 2-3 years as trim only exists on SATA AHCI and not IDE.

If it's still slow after just buy another one, they are cheap as chips and getting cheaper weekly. I've only used crucial and Samsung for the past couple of years.
 
Gav Mack said:
Not USB 2.0 but 3.0? Bus speeds on 2.0 are typically about 25/27 tops sustained. If you have a backup image on time machine that is definitely good zero the drive completely with one pass to flush any garbage there is totally away. I have to do this on some PATA SSD units running Ubuntu every 2-3 years as trim only exists on SATA AHCI and not IDE.

If it's still slow after just buy another one, they are cheap as chips and getting cheaper weekly. I've only used crucial and Samsung for the past couple of years.
Click to expand...

yeah it was USB3.

I'm going to get another one, i'm getting significantly faster speeds off an Old Sata spinning drive, so i'm going to use that until i get a new one. Will be sticking with samsung, had them before, but a deal showed up on this Sandisk so i got that instead. But, Samsungs were great.
 
SimonUK5 said:
yeah it was USB3.

I'm going to get another one, i'm getting significantly faster speeds off an Old Sata spinning drive, so i'm going to use that until i get a new one. Will be sticking with samsung, had them before, but a deal showed up on this Sandisk so i got that instead. But, Samsungs were great.
Click to expand...

Cream crackered then. Grab another one then try the erase trick after it may revive it. But as a boot drive, no way. Get a glitch its time to go.

Other question is what sled adaptor do you stick the SSD in? I had nothing but grief with the cheap plastic icybox types including some inexplicable slowdowns - the NWT Adaptadrive is a bit more expensive and works beautifully in any PC, server or array never mind perfectly in all Macs including every Mac Pro.
 
Gav Mack said:
Cream crackered then. Grab another one then try the erase trick after it may revive it. But as a boot drive, no way. Get a glitch its time to go.

Other question is what sled adaptor do you stick the SSD in? I had nothing but grief with the cheap plastic icybox types including some inexplicable slowdowns - the NWT Adaptadrive is a bit more expensive and works beautifully in any PC, server or array never mind perfectly in all Macs including every Mac Pro.
Click to expand...

Put my time Machine back, onto an old 500gb spinning drive, way way quicker than the SSD haha.


Was just a random adaptor, no idea, works fine with all my other drives though.
 
The-Pro said:
The other poster said more space more speed on an ssd. That is not true. A SSD will not slow down siginificantly when full like a hard drive does.
The GT120 wont be the reason either.

There is a couple things you can try.

Try testing your ram for faults. Install memtest. Its a program that runs in your terminal and tests your ram for any issues. If it finds some then remove all but one ramstick. Boot up, run the test again. Continue adding one stick every test to find which sticks are faulty.

Open disk utility and verify your boot disk and repair permissions. If the verification comes up with a error like there is a problem them boot from the restore partition and repair the disk

remove the USB 3 card and RAID card and try without. Its just a trial and error case here.

it is also possible that your finder is still indexing as you are running a clean install. click on the spotlight icon and see if it says "indexing ....." and shows a progress bar.

disconnect all external HDDs.
If you open folders that are located on the SSD does it still beachball?

the most likely reason is faulty ram or faulty SSD or a corrupt install of mavericks.
Click to expand...
i won't deny that i'm wrong..but i looked at some websites about it...so...i dunno.
 
I had a Crucial SSD that had known issue.

Olook up make & model, may still be under a warranty.

I had both SSDs that started being that slow get replaced for free. (256GB)
 
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