How can I monitor MacBook USB bandwidth? I have a late 2017 MacBook with the latest Catalina. Using two Anker USB extenders, I have devices in pretty much every port, including six large external hard drives, a webcam and an external SD card. I suspect that somehow I have maxed out my i/o on this machine which slows to a crawl 5 times a day.
What I need to know is whether there is some equivalent to lsblk or some utility I can use to monitor USB bandwidth in real time. How do I know whether or not I am maxing out my i/o and whether or not that is impacting other things?
It’s highly unlikely USB can slow down your mac since it has a minimum of 2x Thunderbolt 3 ports and likely 4 of them. The bandwidth there is way more than USB could saturate. It’s much more likely you need to look at the OS and apps running and rule out interference or USB cable / hub issues with some troubleshooting to note exactly what’s connected and do some timed measurements of whatever you care about when the response is normal and then when the response is slow.
A quick check of System Information should show you the USB speeds for each device and as long as they are the same when it’s fast and when it’s slow, you can know to look for things that change - and not worry USB is somehow intermittently slowing down.