Slow Mac to Mac file transfers

G

geistc

Registered
We have a Mac server running 10.5.8 in our data center as a file server. It is running Samba and we have about 9 Intel Mac Pros running 10.5.8. We also have a couple Windows machines that connect to the SMB shares as well. The problem we are having is that from the Windows machines, we can download files from the Mac server a lot faster than we can from the Intel Mac Pros.

From a Winodws XP SP3 machine, browse to the server and copy down a 311.7MB folder to my desktop in 21 seconds. From the Mac machine, I connect to the server with SMB and copy the same folder down and it takes 11 minutes and 25 seconds.

I have disabled the Anti-Virus real time scanner and it does not make any difference. When I look in activity monitor, the network/disk are not getting hit hard or anything. I am new to Mac so not sure where to go from here.
 
Got the same machine but mine is running slow seemingly since my update to Snow Leopard. However, part of the problem may be related to two things:

1. A 7200RPM hard drive. This is a known issue. I know I sent mine back to Apple (within the 1-year warranty) and they replaced it because it was failing. Now I have a Toshiba brand hard drive. Another ''however'' is that there seems to be some consensus that the SATA firmware/driver is in conflict with the configuration in general and while I don't know the 10.5.8 solution, I have heard that the upcoming update (10.6.2 Snow Leopard) is supposed to address this issue. It also makes for occasional stop-and-start video.

2. Permissions and disk repair. This is the easier of the issues and with you still running Leopard it is even better. Get AppleJack (totally free at VersionTracker.com). Install it and run it to fix all the important maintenance and repair tasks at boot-up. I cannot stress just how much of a savior AppleJack has been over the years from Tiger to Leopard. It is totally free and if I were to make a list of the most useful and best utilities ever created for Mac, this would be it. I'm just hoping the developer(s) hurry up and make a Snow Leopard-compatible version....soon. Also, check your fonts for corruption. Use the Font Book utility in the Utilities folder. All of these can make for ''slowness'' on an expensive laptop that should really just plain work. MacBook Pro owners paid a premium for a ''pro'' level machine and it should perform to this level.

Oh, forgot to mention that there was apparently a graphics card issue that is also well known. Apple has already said that it will, warranty or not, replace faulty graphics cards. I haven't had to replace mine (yet if ever), but others have not been so lucky. Check into that too just FYI. Apparently this syndrome can manifest itself anytime during the life of the machine.

Good luck.
 
I will check the hard drives to see what speed they are. As far as AppleJack, we are a government contractor so we are not able to install freeware/shareware due to the security guidelines we are required to follow. :-(

One note, I don't have any slowness on the Mac's themselves, it is just transferring files from the Mac server to another Mac. No problem going from the Mac server to a Windows machine.

Thanks for your response.
 
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