Reduce spinning beach ball delays on network drives

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Mon, Mar 12 2007 at 7:30AM PDT • Contributed by: jehrler

Having finally suffered one too many Spinning Beach Balls of Death, I have switched to using SFTP to move, rename and delete files on remote drives.

Rather than mounting the networked drive to the Finder, I simply use SSH and SFTP functionality that is built into OS X (enable in System Preferences' Sharing tab; check Remote Login) along with an FTP client (Interarchy, Panic, CyberDuck) to deal with remote file management.

Obviously, if you need to open the file from the Network Drive then you are stuck using the Finder, but, at least in my case, the vast majority of the time I am just looking to move, rename and delete files across the Network and SFTP does the trick.

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Reduce spinning beach ball delays on network drives
Authored by: andya on Mon, Mar 12 2007 at 8:32AM PDT

i have ssh open on a remote machine and use macfuse/sshfs to mount it in the finder. works really well. you could also create a ssh public key so you won't have to give your password.

Reduce spinning beach ball delays on network drives
Authored by: jeremyp on Mon, Mar 12 2007 at 9:38AM PDT

Surely that negates the point of the hint. The idea is to avoid using the Finder for file transfers.

Reduce spinning beach ball delays on network drives
Authored by: jeremyp on Mon, Mar 12 2007 at 9:48AM PDT

It should be pointed out that SFTP is not FTP. SFTP is an FTP like client that really uses ssh to communicate to the remote machine. This is important when choosing a GUI client because there is another protocol called FTP/S which *is* FTP but over an SSL or TLS connection. The three clients mentioned in the OP all support SFTP.

Reduce spinning beach ball delays on network drives
Authored by: jehrler on Mon, Mar 12 2007 at 11:50AM PDT

Good point about sftp not being ftp. I should have mentioned that in the hint, but, as you note, I did list 3 ftp clients that all support sftp.

Actually, I wonder what are the ftp clients that don't support sftp?

Reduce spinning beach ball delays on network drives
Authored by: abobrow on Mon, Mar 12 2007 at 1:20PM PDT

Why do you have to enable remote login on your machine? Aren't you just using your machine as a client? What am I missing?

Reduce spinning beach ball delays on network drives
Authored by: jehrler on Mon, Mar 12 2007 at 7:02PM PDT

The remote login needs to be enabled on the remote machine.

Reduce spinning beach ball delays on network drives
Authored by: boredzo on Mon, Mar 12 2007 at 7:07PM PDT

ftp(1).

Reduce spinning beach ball delays on network drives
Authored by: agallisa on Tue, Mar 13 2007 at 10:00AM PDT

I've always wondered as to why a shaky connection of networked volumes can bring OS X to its knees. It seems that the way OSX treats volumes is in need of some help. DVDs shouldn't spin up every time I open a finder dialog, and network mounts shouldn't cause the entire OS to screech to a halt if they happen to lose their connection (unless you happen to be working on a file on the mount). Its really my only naggin problem with the OS and I have never been able to find a good answer on this topic. I use Transmit to overcome most of this as the tip suggests, but still I'd like to use the Finder for most things especially if I want to stream video over an SMB share.

Reduce spinning beach ball delays on network drives
Authored by: belgarion26 on Thu, Mar 15 2007 at 10:45AM PDT

Having 250 mixed windows and mac machines on the same network accessing the same drives, its not too bad, but the macs did drop off randomly. We use Extreme Z-IP on our Windows 2003 box, and the new version polls the mount keeping it alive on OS X, and will even reconnect it if it is dropped for whatever reasons. e.g pull the cable out, plug it in again and it stays connected/mounted. It is possible to fix this issue, it just takes a 3rd party to cash in on it..

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