Lion: deleting files even slower

[TGeist]

Tis is OS X 10.7.1 and PM 4.6.8

It has been discussed before that deleting files out of PM is slow, not it is even slower and the Finder's "Moving XXXX items to Trash" dialog pops up twice. The first time it's fast, then, after a maybe 1/2 second it pops up and stays there for a long time (last time I deleted 800-something NEFs, 1700 files all in al and it took minutes). Finder is completely blocked with a spinning beach ball.

Bridge 4.x takes about 5 seconds to delete 1600 NEFs with the finder not getting blocked at all.

[Kirk Baker]

Tis is OS X 10.7.1 and PM 4.6.8

It has been discussed before that deleting files out of PM is slow, not it is even slower and the Finder's "Moving XXXX items to Trash" dialog pops up twice. The first time it's fast, then, after a maybe 1/2 second it pops up and stays there for a long time (last time I deleted 800-something NEFs, 1700 files all in al and it took minutes). Finder is completely blocked with a spinning beach ball.

Bridge 4.x takes about 5 seconds to delete 1600 NEFs with the finder not getting blocked at all.

Do they get moved to the Trash, or do they get deleted immediately?

-Kirk

[TGeist]

They go to Trash.

[Kirk Baker]

They go to Trash.

OK, well I guess the Finder in Mac OS X 10.7 doesn't handle AppleScript very well.  Apple has provided more direct APIs to move items to the Trash, but when we tested them they were quite broken so we stuck with the tried and true AppleScript method.  We'll have to test again with the APIs.

In the meantime, I'm sure if you deleted things in smaller batches the problem would be less severe.

-Kirk

[chardinej]

I think I know why this and other slowdowns happen. If you have Time Machine turned on but have not done a backup for a while, Lion "actually caches a local "backup" of documents and system changes on your boot drive, waiting for an opportunity to transfer the backups to you Time Machine drive next time you run a backup (see this web page: http://www.tuaw.com/2011/07/20/lion-and-time-machine-offline-backups-and-document-locks/).

I have noticed slowdowns trashing files and other activities such as untagging a group of images (which took forever).

The solution is simple- turn off Time Machine between Time Machine backups and the intervening changes will not be cached.

[Sven]

Or you can disable local backups completely...

If you want to disable snapshots and local backups completely, fire up Terminal, type the following command and your password and they’re disabled!

Code: [Select]

sudo tmutil disablelocal
If you want the feature back, change disable with enable.
The space consumed so far will be freed up automatically.