Weird slowdown
 

I''ve noticed that when I do anything that involves disk access (copying files, compiling, running anything that writes to the disk...) there is a slowdown in my system.

I'm running Gentoo, so I get to do lots of compiling. When the compling is finished, I notice that the clock is always wrong. It slows down quite a bit. I've also noticed, when I'm not compiling, that KDE seems kinda jerky especially when copying or writing is going on.
I'm running a AMD Duron @ 1015mhz w/ 256 MB of ram. This is a brand new computer. My old computer a Celeron 500 w/ 192 mb of ram, did not have these problems. Even with gentoo. In fact, I could run X with the old one while compiling and not have nearly the same amount of slow down as I do now. And the clock didn't slow down either.

Does anyone know why this might be happening or what I might do about it.

Well if it's specific to disk access speeds then usually 9 out of 10 times it has to do with dma being enabled. Have you enabled your harddisks to switch to enable dma mode automatically in the kernel options (taking into account that it isn't always safe to do). You might want to check the output of hdparm. There are lots of threads about how to use hdparm so search around.

i would format your computer to have more swap space. That might be the problem

I found the problem. DMA was turned off for some reason. I enabled it and things are better. The clock is still in sync, even after 4 hours of compiling. Woo hoo!