Arch Linux

soylent_green_is_hamster

Member

Registered: 2006-11-15

Posts: 109

Constant hard drive access

Just built a new pc, and installed Arch on it. All sems fine except the hard drive seems to be constantly accessed. Ever few seconds the light comes on, and it chugs away.

It's maddening! I can't figure out what's causing it, Can't seen any processes which would be causing this.
I also have another strange problem which maybe related. Conky's network graph shows that I am constantly downloading ffrom the internet at 1-5 k/s

Some process must be causing this. Can anyone suggest how I would find it out?

Maybe something is writing to a log file somewhere. Does anyone know how to use find to report any files written to in the last few seconds?

cheers

dav7

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2008-02-08

Posts: 674

Re: Constant hard drive access

You could try iotop to see what's using your disk and iftop or ss (in the iproute package) to see what's happening with your network.

-dav7

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Windows was made for looking at success from a distance through a wall of oversimplicity. Linux removes the wall, so you can just walk up to success and make it your own.
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Reinventing the wheel is fun. You get to redefine pi.

soylent_green_is_hamster

Member

Registered: 2006-11-15

Posts: 109

Re: Constant hard drive access

iotop was useful - cheers
It showed that the only process hitting the hard drives was kjournald. I added noatime to my mount options in my fstab, and it seems to have helped. But i can still sometimes hear the drive chug, even though nothing appears in iotop. Is this normal?

moljac024

Member

From: Serbia

Registered: 2008-01-29

Posts: 2,676

Re: Constant hard drive access

Are we talking about a laptop here ? In which case it might be advanced power management. It's so advanced that you need to disable it as quickly as possible!

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The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck, is the day they make a vacuum cleaner.
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But if they tell you that I've lost my mind, maybe it's not gone just a little hard to find...

soylent_green_is_hamster

Member

Registered: 2006-11-15

Posts: 109

Re: Constant hard drive access

heh heh, no - it's not a laptop.

also found the following process running:
root      6344  6296  0 14:43 ?        00:00:01 hald-addon-storage: polling /dev/sr0 (every 2 sec)

my dvd drive is device sr0, killing that stops the hard drive light blinking constantly (although now my cds/dvds obviously won't automount). That's really annoying, but I guess there's nothing I can do about that if I'm going to use a SATA dvd drive?

moljac024

Member

From: Serbia

Registered: 2008-01-29

Posts: 2,676

Re: Constant hard drive access

heh heh, no - it's not a laptop.

also found the following process running:
root      6344  6296  0 14:43 ?        00:00:01 hald-addon-storage: polling /dev/sr0 (every 2 sec)

my dvd drive is device sr0, killing that stops the hard drive light blinking constantly (although now my cds/dvds obviously won't automount). That's really annoying, but I guess there's nothing I can do about that if I'm going to use a SATA dvd drive?

No, no don't kill it like that. Use:

hal-enable-polling --disable-polling /dev/sr0

I know it's silly

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The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck, is the day they make a vacuum cleaner.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But if they tell you that I've lost my mind, maybe it's not gone just a little hard to find...

soylent_green_is_hamster

Member

Registered: 2006-11-15

Posts: 109

Re: Constant hard drive access

ok - cheers