Why is synchronize on Entourage 2004 SO SO SLOW ?

C

curtis

I have just upgraded from Euntourage X to Entourage 2004. Same hardware
on client and server. Import of my Entourage database was fairly quick
- but the synchrosie with the server took nearly two days. My database
has increased in size from about 2 GB to about 6 GB in going through
the upgrade. Now every synchronise takes many, many minutes - even if
I just move or delete a couple of emails.

Help - if I can't find a fix I am going to have to revert to Entourage
X - or I'll never get any work done at all..........any hints/pointers
warmly received.
 
W

William Smith

I have just upgraded from Euntourage X to Entourage 2004. Same hardware
on client and server. Import of my Entourage database was fairly quick
- but the synchrosie with the server took nearly two days. My database
has increased in size from about 2 GB to about 6 GB in going through
the upgrade. Now every synchronise takes many, many minutes - even if
I just move or delete a couple of emails.

Help - if I can't find a fix I am going to have to revert to Entourage
X - or I'll never get any work done at all..........any hints/pointers
warmly received.
Click to expand...

What is the speed of the slowest part of your network between you and
your Exchange server? In our organization, most of our users are on
100MB or 1GB networks, but the WAN links back to their email servers are
sometimes just 512k. This would cause a major slowdown in your
synchronization speed if you often receive large size attachments.

To work around this, you can open Entourage and go to Tools menu -->
Accounts --> your Exchange account --> Options and set "Downloading
email" to "Partially receive messages over 50KB". This will at least
give you the beginning of the email message so that you can verify if
you really need to download the rest of the message and its attachments.
Of course, if you do need the entire message, you're still going to wait
while it downloads completely.

Hope this helps! bill
 
C

curtis

Bill

Many thanks for responding. I hear what you are saying - but I am still
slightly mystified. Nothing has changed on the hardware front. I am on
a 100 Mbit link back to our server (100metres). The delay seems to be
due to interminably long disk reads on my G3 laptop as it seems to work
its way through the mail database. Is Entourage 2004 doing something
seriously different to X? eg is additional virus checking going on?
Is"synchronise" doing something seriously different?
I just moved a week's worth of emails - say about 80 - to a different
mailbox (ie out of Inbox) and while it took seconds to happen on my
machine, it is taking about 20 minutes to synchronise with the
server.The progress panel shows continuous activity while this happens
- and Activity Monitor shows Entourage hung every now and then -
presumably waiting on disk or network I/O activity ?

Are there any options on how and what and when to synchronise ?

Or is this just more of 400MHz Powerbook G3's having run out of enough
steam to run ever more clever software !

Thanks in anticipation!

Robin
 
W

William Smith

H Robin!
Are there any options on how and what and when to synchronise ?
Click to expand...

Entourage and Exchange synchronization is not customizable. This would
be a nice feature.
Or is this just more of 400MHz Powerbook G3's having run out of enough
steam to run ever more clever software !
Click to expand...

Constant disk grinding is often a sign of too little memory as it gets
swapped from real RAM to virtual RAM on the hard drive. Also, how full
is your hard drive? It should be at least 10-20% free so that Mac OS X
can have room to breath.

You mentioned earlier that your Entourage database is now 6GB but was
2GB. Is this correct? Not quite sure what the extra overhead is but this
is suspicious. Have you used the Entourage Database Utility to verify
and compact your database? Do this by holding down the Option key when
launching Entourage. Be aware that this may take considerable time on
your system. Don't just go get coffee. Go to dinner and a movie.

I would advise working toward getting newer hardware if you haven't
considered it. While your system is supported for the non-Professional
version of Office 2004, it's meeting the most minimum requirements. Have
a look at this page for more information on the minimum requirements
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/howtobuy.aspx?pid=sysreq>. The extra
overhead of Office 2004 compared to Office X may be considerably more
significant.

Hope this helps! bill
 
C

curtis

Bill

Thanks for all of this. But I am still hunting. I have just discoverd
that for the last six days something has been generating Blck-xxxxxx
(where xxxxxx is numeric) files of anywhere between 200kbytes and 2.5
Mbytes in the Entourage Temp folder. Multiple files - all day everyday.
Probably exaplains why I think empyting my Trash reduces my file space
- as soon as I delete a few files somewhere else, Entourage has created
more files in the Entourage Temp folder. The Blck files are not
straightforward to decode - but are full of email related information.
THey appear to be created during the synchronisation process - and are
not being deleted by anything.

Any further wisdom from you ?

Thanks Robin
 
C

curtis

some extra information.

I have manage to check and compact the Entourage database - its size
dropped to just over 3GB (from 6GB). When I shut Entourage down (to do
the compaction) all of the Blck-xxxxx files in Entourage Temp were
deleted. Which gave me hope.

I have now restarted Entourage on the compacted database. It now
appears to be working through the entire local database, synchronising
every email message with the server - over an hour into this so far and
lots more to go. So far over 100 Blck-xxxxxxx files ave been created
- most of them are 516KB. And they keep coming. Intensse local read
activity - about 5MB/sec, very little write activity, plus network
activity in both directions.

Surely this is not intentional !!???


Robin
 
C

curtis

Just an update - I came back 12 hours later. Having finally finished
its "synchronisation", Entourage 2004 has created 1682 Blck-xxxxxxx
files in the MUD Entourage Temp folder, each 512KB long - and has
consumed the resulting disk space.
 
M

michigan.gull

I found the same files (i spotlighted after reading your experience) i
have five blck-xxxxx files, the largest of which is 2.5mb. they were
all created between jan 14 and jan 15 2006. i've had the latest
entourage since last august.

Rick
 
C

curtis

Rick

I have started a new topic with Blck-xxxxx in the header - so you might
want to watch it as well as this one to see if anyone responds: see
"Blck-xxxxx files in Entourage Temp Folder ?"

Robin
 
S

sheryl

Rick

I have started a new topic with Blck-xxxxx in the header - so you might
want to watch it as well as this one to see if anyone responds: see
"Blck-xxxxx files in Entourage Temp Folder ?"

Robin
Click to expand...

I would like to add that we have 10 users who are set up identically.
Only 1 is experiencing the out of control Blck-xxxx files. She is
generating these files every 2-3 minutes and some are quite large. This
would tell me that this is not hardware related. I will watch the new
topic to see if anyone has a solution.

Sheryl
 
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