Taking long time to open large directories

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Taking long time to open large directories

Recently bought a new MBP M1 16". I have a 3 external drives. One is a 1TB SSD USB 3.1 which contains my current photo library with about 12,000 files. Prior to updating to Ventura, when I would open the SSD's photo library in Finder the first time after booting, it was so fast it appeared to be immediate. Now it takes a about a minute. Once it is opened it again appears immediate until I reboot. My Photo backup drive which is a hard drive behaves identically. The strange thing is that if I reboot and instead of using Finder, I use a photo browser to access the same SSD photo library, it lists and displays the photos immediately. No delay at all. Yet after opening with the Photo Browser program, the first time Finder is used, Finder will take the same amount of time as it does when it's first application to access that SSD directory.

Seems like there is a problem with Ventura's Finder, but not sure?

Thanks,

Bob

MacBook Pro Apple Silicon

Posted on Dec 20, 2022 7:48 AM

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Answer 1

VikingOSX

Level 10

122,310 points

Dec 20, 2022 8:59 AM in response to BobThePhotoGuy

Finder is not your friend when accessing folders with thousands of files in them — regardless of which macOS you are using. Ventura is optimized for APFS filesystems on SSD and if your external drives, SSD or rotational are not formatted in APFS, filesystem access will be slower than your expectations.

It is a paradox, as you may want to see the photo image thumbnails in Finder on that external drive, yet Finder's taking the time to generate them upon accessing the drive slows things down multiplied by the file count. You could suppress those icon previews (select the mounted drive and press cmd+J) for some improved response time, but if it is not an APFS drive, the gains may be negligable.

Your photo browser is purpose built for that task and would explain why it is faster than Finder.

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Answer 2

etresoft

Level 9

55,530 points

Dec 21, 2022 6:29 AM in response to BobThePhotoGuy

BobThePhotoGuy wrote:

I discovered that shutting down or restarting without "Ejecting" the external drives first seems to be related to the issue!

Yes. That will corrupt the drive.

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Answer 3

Dec 20, 2022 2:07 PM in response to VikingOSX

It appears that Disk Utility does not support formatting external drives APFS, at least the drives that I am using. The SSD drive is a Kingston SSD and disk utility Information dropdown on it indicates that it is not a solid state type drive, yet that is exactly what it is. The Kingston drive was originally formatted as EXFAT. I reformatted it Mac OS Extended Journal using my previous MBP 15" which was stuck at MAC OS 10 due to its age, that was before I upgraded to this MBP. So my comparison of how it worked before and now is actually between the old MBP (intel) and the new MBP (m1 pro). On the old MBP, the SSD drive would displayed the files in the window immediately, Now it may have been that it was actually generating the screen on the fly and I never noticed it because I never paged down the window. But this MBP with Ventura waits until it has the complete list of files compiled and then displays them at one time, which takes minutes!

I did as you suggested and used the Command J and as you indicated it made no difference. But thank you for the suggestion.

Thank Your for your help! I would be interested in any insight you can offer into the situation.

Best Regards,

Bob

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Answer 4

Dec 21, 2022 6:22 AM in response to BobThePhotoGuy

Found more information related to this issue. I discovered that shutting down or restarting without "Ejecting" the external drives first seems to be related to the issue! If before shutting down or requesting a restart, I reject the external drives, then the issue mostly goes away. I say mostly because it still takes a moment to display the files, where before it was immediate. But it is now very quick, seconds and not minutes on end!

Like I pointed out, this issue became troublesome after installing Ventura.

Regards,

Bob

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Taking long time to open large directories

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