Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Wondering why my external storage was slow in Mavericks

Updated 20 April 2014: Added update of firmware

I had recently upgraded by Mac Mini which I bought in 2010 to Mavericks and somehow, my 2TB firewire external storage became slow and I couldn't really write anything into it. After much trial and error, I finally found out what's the issue with it. Spotlight and the firmware.

Apparently, spotlight was trying to index my 2TB external storage which is already half-filled. As my Mac mini is not on 24 hours, it is forever trying to index it, causing any read/write to the storage to slow down.

My solution? To go into spotlight and stop the indexing for my external storage. I didn't really need it because I use it mainly for my Elgato TV tuner. To stop the indexing, just do the following:

  1. Click on System Preferences
  2. Click on Spotlight
  3. Click on the Privacy tab on top
  4. Click on the + and select the external storage (Note: Do not click the folders within or it will just exclude those specific folders)

In addition to that, I've found out that apparently, there is an issue with Mavericks working with Western Digital External storage drives. There is a need to update the firmware for the external storage in order for certain file copying to occur.

To do this, look at the back of your external storage and you should find your P/N no. Use that no to find the firmware update software for your storage. Just follow the instructions and remember to use the USB cable instead of firewire cable to connect to your drive.

That's it. After that, my external storage functioned as per normal.

Hope this helps...

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