SOLVED Catalina Performance Issues

[37Shannon]

It's me again. Having successfully built a clean Catalina install on an external disk, I today attempted to clone the OS to my internal hard drive as follows:

1) booted up Catalina on the external drive "NewOS"
2) repartitioned the internal hard drive (henceforth IHD) to be APFS.
3) Used SuperDuper to backup the version of Catalina from NewOS to the IHD and make it bootable.
4) Selected the IHD as the Startup disk, and restarted.

The new system took AGES to boot up from the IHD. When it finally did come up, every app I tried took AGES to open.

Worse, Mail is now not showing the content of all my emails in the inbox.

You wouldn't think that the IHD is a clone of NewOS the way the system is running. I finally did a hard shutdown and rebooted back from NewOS, and performance is back to normal.

I simply don't understand the poor performance booting off the IHD, or why Mail is now acting goofy. Any ideas?

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello,

I would guess that you were experiencing initial slowness due to Spotlight indexing the freshly cloned drive. The Mail issue may be Spotlight related, or it is rebuilding the mailboxes and syncing with the server(s) upon first launch. This could be even slower if you have hundreds or thousands of emails in your inbox and folders on the server.

I would leave the Mail app open for a whiile, and see if the mail appears.

C

 

[37Shannon]

Hello,

I would guess that you were experiencing initial slowness due to Spotlight indexing the freshly cloned drive. The Mail issue may be Spotlight related, or it is rebuilding the mailboxes and syncing with the server(s) upon first launch. This could be even slower if you have hundreds or thousands of emails in your inbox and folders on the server.

I would leave the Mail app open for a whiile, and see if the mail appears.

C

Well, OK - Shirt-Pocket said essentially the same thing. The problem is, I can't tell if it's actually doing anything. I'd open Activity Monitor to see if I can spot where the bottleneck is, but I don't want to spend the time waiting for the app to open.

The thing is, this is a CLONED system. It was ALREADY working correctly on the USB external drive, so I just don't understand what all the activity is about on the internal hard drive. If anything, I would have expected better performance on the internal drive even if Spotlight does need to index all the free world.

So, I guess I'll just boot it up and let it sit?

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hi,

Activity Monitor: make sure you click View > All Processes. You should see a process, or multiple versions of it, called mdwoker - that is Spotlight running.

Yes, I would startup and let it sit for a hour or two to let everything index and settle.

C

 

[37Shannon]

Well, sorry to say, it didn't help. I let it sit overnight, and then rebooted first thing the next morning. From the time my login prompt appeared until the desktop was fully populated was nearly 10 minutes, apps still take ages to open, and mail does not display content of any email that I open.

So I restarted and came up on NewOs - on the USB-connected external drive - and I was up and at it in less than a minute.

I am flummoxed by this behavior. When I first tried to install Catalina, I booted up into my El Cap partition on the external drive, wiped the hard disk clean, pointed the Catalina install to the hard disk, and when it came to the first reboot, it hung - I let it sit there for almost 15 minutes, and finally abandoned that install, restored El Cap to the hard disk, and came back up as normally. I subsequently installed Catalina to the external hard disk without incident.

Every OS that I restore to the hard disk boots up properly - except Catalina. Is there maybe something about the internal hard disk that is not compatible with Catalina? Here is the output from System Information about the hard disk taken from the operational Catalina system:

(from SATA/SATA Express)

APPLE HDD ST1000LM024:

Capacity: 1 TB (1,000,204,886,016 bytes)
Model: APPLE HDD ST1000LM024
Revision: 2BA30007
Serial Number: S35RJ9AG827500
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Rotational Rate: 5400
Medium Type: Rotational
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
Volumes:
EFI:
Capacity: 209.7 MB (209,715,200 bytes)
File System: MS-DOS FAT32
BSD Name: disk0s1
Content: EFI
Volume UUID: 0E239BC6-F960-3107-89CF-1C97F78BB46B
disk0s2:
Capacity: 1 TB (999,995,129,856 bytes)
BSD Name: disk0s2
Content: Apple_APFS

(from Storage)
Macintosh HD:
Free: 722.72 GB (722,724,433,920 bytes)
Capacity: 1 TB (999,995,129,856 bytes)
Mount Point: /Volumes/Macintosh HD
File System: APFS
Writable: Yes
Ignore Ownership: No
BSD Name: disk1s5
Volume UUID: A39BC231-501D-43DC-97ED-E0FDC38FA98E
Physical Drive:
Device Name: APPLE HDD ST1000LM024
Media Name: AppleAPFSMedia
Medium Type: Rotational
Protocol: SATA
Internal: Yes
Partition Map Type: Unknown
S.M.A.R.T. Status: Verified

I'm curious as to why it says, just above, that the partition map type is "Unknown" when up in the SATA/SATA Express section, it says the partition map type is "GPT (GUID Partition Table)". I had previously formatted the hard disk from the external disk version of Catalina using its Disk Utility software.

 

[Cory Cooper]

OK, thanks for the update.

Overnight would have given it enough time to completely Spotlight index and sync all mail accounts.

From your System Information post, one issue may be related to the drive. It lists it as an APPLE HDD ST1000LM024, which is an Apple OEM version of a Seagate/Samsung Spinpoint M8 ST1000LM024. It is a 1 TB 5400-rpm 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s notebook-class HDD, which Apple used from 2014-2017. Those drives have been known to be very slow running, especially as they age. In addition, formatting rotational HDDs as APFS makes them even slower: USING APFS ON HDDS … AND WHY YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO.

The Partition Map Type: Unknown issue is normal. It is the same on all Macs I have seen using APFS.

Catalina and Big Sur require APFS. It may be best to either install and use Catalina on an external drive - 7200-rpm HDD or SSD in an enclosure, and limit the internal 5400-rpm drive to High Sierra or earlier.

C

 

[37Shannon]

So - I'm still confused. Apple states that Catalina will work on my Mac mini Late 2014 model - which did not offer an SSD as far as I know. And, the external drive is a spinning platter drive, not an SSD - and its performance is light-years better than trying to run off the hard disk. The external disk is a G-Tech 2GB drive, and is older than the Mac mini (but not by much).

And none of this explains why Mail doesn't work off the hard disk, which it works fine on the external disk OS (from which the hard disk image was supposedly cloned).

How easy is it to replace a hard disk in a Mini? Should I be looking at a 7200rpm device?

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hi,

Your Mac mini is definitely compatible with Catalina. It was available with: 500 GB or 1 TB (5400-rpm) hard drive, configurable to 256, 512 GB or 1 TB flash storage or 1 or 2 TB Fusion Drive.

I would guess that the G-Tech external 2 TB drive is a 3.5" desktop-class 7200-rpm drive, which is much faster than the internal 5400-rpm drive, and is why it runs better. Which model is it?

If you wanted to replace the Mac mini internal, I would go with an SSD. But, it is a fairly involved procedure: Mac mini Late 2014 Hard Drive Replacement. Honestly, it would probably be easier to use an external for running Catalina, as you can use the internal for just storage.

C

 

[37Shannon]

I can't see a model number on the G-Tech unit, at least not anything identifying something as a model number. There is a marking on the bottom that says "GD4 2000", but it is not identified as a model number. System Information reports the following:

G-DRIVE:
Product ID: 0x8009
Vendor ID: 0x4971
Version: 1.00
Serial Number: FA01220002A4
Speed: Up to 480 Mb/s
Manufacturer: G-TECH
Location ID: 0x14100000 / 4
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 2
Extra Operating Current (mA): 0
Media:
HDS723020BLA642:
Capacity: 2 TB (2,000,398,925,824 bytes)
Removable Media: No
BSD Name: disk2
Logical Unit: 0
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
USB Interface: 0
Volumes:
--- etc. ---

It looks to me like this is a Hitachi disk drive. I understand that G-Tech is a brand of Western Digital, so it surprises me that they would use a Hitachi disk instead of one of their own. SysInfo doesn't report a rotational speed; I'm guessing that this is due to the USB connection.

Shirt-Pocket got back to me and suggested I try reinstalling Catalina directly on the internal hard disk. What's your take on that?

 

[Cory Cooper]

Yes, that is a Hitachi GST Deskstar 7K3000 HDS723020BLA642 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" HDD. Desktop class.

Yes, you could wipe it and install Catalina directly. Create a user with a different name than the one in your external, then see how the speed is. If better, you could run Migration Assistant to move your user files and applications.

C

 

[37Shannon]

Why a different user name? I don't have a problem with that, just wondering why it makes a difference.

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hi,

Because it will conflict if you use the same name then try to use Migration Assistant. Make sense?

C

 

[37Shannon]

Gotcha. Will let you know what happens.

One thing that's sobering about all this is the realization that nothing I have is new, or even recent. Time for some upgrades, I think.

 

[37Shannon]

Well, the clean install to the internal hard disk went pretty smoothly this time. At this point I'm running from the hard drive in a pristine environment, logged on as "User". I only customized Mail to see if it would work, and it does. I've touched nothing else. Response is pretty decent, too.

Any tips to offer using Migration Assistant? I'm concerned about apps that I just recently installed on NewOS like Office 2019.

 

[37Shannon]

So: the operation was a success but the patient died. I ran the Migration Assistant from the most recent Time Machine backup on the external disk, and when all was completed, the overall response is still too slow (although it is better than it was). Mail at least works now, s l o w l y; I think the Migration Assistant did a step involving importing mailboxes that may have made the difference between not seeing and seeing the content of the emails.

But now, some apps don't open at all, such as Full Deck Solitaire and MSOffice Word 2019. The icons just bounce around in the dock and then stop. The little black dot to the left of the icon is not there, but if you right-click on the icon, "Force Quit" is in the list, which tells me it tried to start but something broke.

So, I'm done. I'll run off my external drive from this point forward. I think the performance improvements I notice when running off the external are due to the 64MB cache and the 7200rpm properties of that drive, even to the point of overcoming the slow USB2 connection (which is the drive's issue; it only has a USB2 port, whereas all the USB ports on the Mac mini are USB3). By comparison, the internal hard disk only has 8MB cache and spins at 5400 rpm (or less).

I think the lesson I learned here is that, yeah, Catalina will run on a Mac mini Late 2014 IF it has 8G of memory (which mine does) and IF it has an SSD for its internal drive (which mine does not). Otherwise, either don't waste your time or get a newer machine.

I got a quote to get an SSD installed in place of the internal hard drive, because after reading the procedure on how to replace the Mini's internal hard drive, I chickened out. I mean, if there's a way to screw it up, I'll find it. But, the quote is coming in at around $390 parts and labor, and I think I might better spend my money getting a decent size external SSD that connects over USB3.

I trust this thread has been entertaining and informative reading for our readers ...

 

[37Shannon]

Well (sheepish grin) things actually aren't as bad as I'd thought. I remembered at night that I did not allow Spotlight to finish indexing the drive when I began playing around with the system and reported problems with apps not opening, etc. So the next morning, I booted up off the hard disk and let it set until after lunch (about 4 hours) and ...

... gee, stuff is working now. Response is just a little slower than running off the external drive, but not so slow that it's unacceptable.

I'm still going to go get another Tech drive, because I can get a 4TB drive for around $140, and my existing GTech drive is probably at least 10 years old. I've never had a problem with this device, but nothing lasts forever, and as I noted earlier, I'm probably overdue for some upgrades.

So, I'm good; no more problems; case closed.