flashdrives taking forever to load

How come now when students put in a flashdrive into one of our updated laptops, it takes forever for OSX to recognize and open it?

usingmac said:

How come now when students put in a flashdrive into one of our updated laptops, it takes forever for OSX to recognize and open it?

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There is so much information missing from this post that I don't even know where to start!

- What do you mean "How come now??"
- What do you mean by "updated"...what was updated?
- What model laptops are we talking about?
- How much ram in them?
- How much free space on the internal storage?
- What sort of maintenance is done on these computers?
- What OS version are they running?
- Are we talking one laptop or many laptops?
- Are you sure there isn't a problem with the laptops or the flash drives?
- etc. etc.

* Nick

.................

pigoo3 said:

There is so much information missing from this post that I don't even know where to start!

- What do you mean "How come now??"

Before osx when I ran 10.6 there were no problems.

- What do you mean by "updated"...what was updated?

laptops to osx

- What model laptops are we talking about?
White macs from 4-5 yrs ago

- How much ram in them?
idk
- How much free space on the internal storage?
idk
- What sort of maintenance is done on these computers?
almost none. no i.t. guy at my school.
- What OS version are they running?
osx
- Are we talking one laptop or many laptops?
many. happens on all of them

- Are you sure there isn't a problem with the laptops or the flash drives?
flash drives fine

- etc. etc.

* Nick

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Sorry. The info provided is too general. Need more specific details to help properly.

For example. We are talking Apple Macintosh computers. It is assumed that they are running Mac OS X. If someone asks…"What OS version are they running?"…the answer should be the VERSION…not "OS X".

The crux of this thread is that that these laptops were "upgraded" (and now the flash drives seem slow). WHAT WAS UPGRADED?? Be specific.

It would also be good to know how much ram these computers have.

- Nick

Sorry- not a techy.

They have been upgraded to Yosemite. Isn't that osx?
2gb memory. Is that RAM?

usingmac said:

They have been upgraded to Yosemite. Isn't that osx?

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Yes Yosemite is OS X. But OS X is on it's 11th version. These are all OS X:

- 10.0: "Cheetah"
- 10.1: "Puma"
- 10.2: "Jaguar"
- 10.3: "Panther"
- 10.4: "Tiger"
- 10.5: "Leopard"
- 10.6: "Snow Leopard"
- 10.7: "Lion"
- 10.8: "Mountain Lion"
- 10.9: "Mavericks"
- 10.10: "Yosemite"

Get the idea. You can't just say…my "Mac's are running OS X."…when there are 11 different versions of OS X!

You said that these computers were running OS 10.6. They could have been upgraded to 10.7, 10.8, 10.9, or 10.10. That's why I needed you to be specific which OS X version they were upgraded to.

usingmac said:

2gb memory. Is that RAM?

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Yes that is ram.

If these computers were running OS X version 10.6 previously…and are now running Mac OS X 10.10 (Yosemite)…Yosemite is FOUR VERSIONS NEWER. That's a lot of extra "overhead" for an older computer to deal with.

And with only 2gig of ram…this will not help. 4gig of ram would be a lot better. And many folks say that 8gig of ram for Yosemite is best. And yes I know. These older computers may not be able to have their ram upgraded that far. And of course there's the expense of upgrading them too.

As you may see…a free OS upgrade to Yosemite is not as "free" as it appears. Upgrading a computer to an OS version that is 4 versions newer is a lot to ask…plus having a small amount of ram.

This is almost like having a Ford Focus automobile..and asking it to pull the same load as a 18-wheel tractor-trailer.

It really would have been a great idea to have posted a question here first..asking if upgrading these computers to Yosemite was a good idea (before doing the actual upgrade).

- Nick

Check my older threads- been all thru that. Forced to upgrade though I knew it was asking for trouble.

That's why I didn't do it on my own mac!

But there's still my ques.

usingmac said:

But there's still my ques.

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I partially answered your question.

- These computers could be overloaded trying to run Yosemite.
- The hard drives could be too full.
- Maybe they need to be rebooted more often. I'm not going to go into too much detail regarding this. But suffice it to say…2 gig of ram could be part of the problem (not enough).
- Could run the maintenance app "Onyx".
- The flash drives may be too large…and contain too much info/too many files…and it's taking the computer a while to import all this info via the USB port.

* Nick

Nick has bravely & kindly taken on the responsibility for all the advice. I would only reiterate: Yosemite and 2GB RAM are virtually incompatible. 4GB might do, but 8GB (or more) is recommended. If your Macs can't take any more RAM, then I see no immediate solution.

Ian