Slowdown the process

Here is what is happening. I have FTP process from an external source dropping PDFs into a local server folder. This FTP drop process can be a bit slow depending on network traffic at the time. I have another machine watching over this server's drop folder. What I am trying to do is when the PDF is completely done writing, copy the PDF locally and process it. But what is happening is that the PDF is being copied over before done being written.

I am currently using if all conditions are true for Kind is PDF, Date Last Modified is not in the last 5 minutes, and Size is greater than 16KBs copy the PDF locally. When I am watching the process, I see the PDF drop into the server. Hazel ignores the 5 minute timer and starts to process the file immediately. A lot of times Hazel is successful because the file was written quickly. Other times I am sending corrupt PDFs down the line because of incomplete writes.

How can I slow the Hazel process down to make sure files are really done being written? Each file size can be different. Some could be a few hundred KBs, while others could be 20MBs. I've tried other timing conditions too. Like date created is not in the last five minutes.

The server I am using is a Mac Mini running 10.10.3 with server 4.1. The script Mac where Hazel is running is 10.9.5 using Hazel 3.3.5.

You might want to double-check the date modified on those files. It might be that the original date modified of the file at the source is being preserved. If that is the case, you can try something like "Date Added" instead.

I tried the date added feature too. I'm getting the exact same issue. Just a few files are being moved before they are done being copied. Is there anything else I can try to help slow down the copy process?

Have you checked the actual dates? Use Hazel's preview function (the "eye" button). Select one of the files not being processed, click on the "i" button for it. That will show all the file's attributes. Make sure the dates are what you expect. If they aren't, then you may need to choose a different date or look into why the date's aren't accurate.