I'm using a 24" Imac 3.06Ghz, 4mb RAM. 500mb H/D and 2 x 1Tb back ups.

In normal use the unit is superb and very responsive HOWEVER, as a photographer I shoot a large amount of images with file sizes at 13mb each in RAW format. i.e. I've just returned from a shoot with nigh on 13 Gigabytes of images. Each of these files, when opened at 16bit 300 dpi, create a 101 mb file. I allocate 80% of the RAM to CS3. This is the MINIMUM file size for my work.

I notice when processing these files (in photoshop CS3) that after a short while (c. 1 hour) my machine really slows down (almost unusable). A re-boot usually corrects this and I'm back to normal (for 1 hour).

I'm curious to know what causes this slow down (not really a computer techie) and if there is a method to overcome it without buying a new machine. Also, is this "weight" I'm applying to the machine likely to eventually cause a total breakdown.

Thanks for any input.

Hi , I had a similar problem with my iMac 2.8 , with all the application becoming slow and un responsive, so I tried using Disk Utility and did a Disk repair while booting up from the install disk , and this seems to have done the trick . I was told my problem could have been due to having some directory corruption

Here's a link ...

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1417

hope this may help

TL

I can think of two things on top of my head.

Try the following.

1. Open a terminal and check if any processes are taking up a lot of resources with the command 'top'

2. Check if if the system is using all the memory and swap with the command 'free'

I don't know much about the actual operating system, so there might be graphical equivellents to the above.

I can think of two things on top of my head.

Try the following.

1. Open a terminal and check if any processes are taking up a lot of resources with the command 'top'

2. Check if if the system is using all the memory and swap with the command 'free'

I don't know much about the actual operating system, so there might be graphical equivellents to the above.

Thanks for that (both of you)

Looking at the above I had a driver not responding on a graphics tablet I've since aborted. Disabling this seems to have resolved my issues.

Much appreciate your help

I can think of two things on top of my head.

Try the following.

1. Open a terminal and check if any processes are taking up a lot of resources with the command 'top'

2. Check if if the system is using all the memory and swap with the command 'free'

I don't know much about the actual operating system, so there might be graphical equivellents to the above.

Yep - use Activity monitor. Much more civilized. You can check three things (in order):

- Sort processes by CPU and see if there's a stray process using 99% CPU. If so, shut it down. That's almost always a bug, unless you are running some resource intensive process on purpose, like transcoding a DVD

- Sort processes by memory and see if anything got "out of hand". Ignore the virtual size - only physical size counts. Mail.app used to be a frequent offender, as was Safari. Much better in Snow Leopard though.

- Check if you are generally running low on memory, causing the system to swap..

I know the OP has resolved his issues, just wanted to mention.

I am running iPulse constantly on my system - whenever something slows down, I can see at a glance if there's a problem - the iPulse graphical display might seem mysterious (yet cool) in the beginning, but after a while you kind of learn to read it and start to appreciate that it displays the entire system status in a little icon in the dock. I can for example see if there's swapping because swapping causes a bright blue arc on the top - instantly recognizable. I can see if there's too much CPU being used, that the center circle (too big == too much CPU usage). Another arc shows whether I am close to using all my physical memory. And a popup shows which process is causing the issue. It's quite brilliant - I looked long and hard for something like this on Windows, but never found anything.

Edited September 16, 200916 yr by nikster

OSX is Unix.

Buy a big external drive and mount your swap file on that. You could also check for memory leaks in the application software.

HTH