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Do new desktops continuously access the hard disk?
Motherboard: GA-H61M-S1
Hard disk: Model Number: ST500DM002-1BD142 Serial Number: W2AKBY71 Firmware Revision: KC45 Transport: Serial, SATA Rev 3.0 Kernel 3.2.29, Slackware 14.0 Hi: What I observe is that the hard disk LED turns on every 1 or 2 secs. Without having started X. The output of 'iotop -o' is Code:
Total DISK READ: 0.00 B/s | Total DISK WRITE: 0.00 B/sI have looked for sync_supers and flush-8 with locate but could not find them. Anyways, is this, that the disk be continuously accessed normal behavior? |
Yes they do.
A very simple linux might not do it too much but newer kernels and base installs may have a lot going on. Run top and you'd see stuff moving up and down all the time. |
Then what is the use of 'hdparm -S240 /dev/<the_hard_disk>'? It supposedly puts the disk in stand-by after 20 minutes of disk inactivity. But with processes accessing the disk all the time, the disk will never have an occasion to spin down!
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Disks (especially for laptops) are often rated by the number of times they can spin up and down. Thus, it wears out the disk, and quite quickly. I make sure to turn it off on all my laptops.
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Additionally these built in power management functions are not standardized, meaning that hdparm cannot turn them off. Even on more "normal" drives hdparm values are not standardized, so hdparm -B 254 doesnt always turn off power management. |
If you have a new desktop than for few days of its run new desktops does access hard disks..so as to ensure everything is running smoothly and after sometimes it stops doing that so don't worry..the issue will be solved within a matter of days.
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OK. But does anyone know what these programs or processes do?:
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Total DISK READ: 0.00 B/s | Total DISK WRITE: 0.00 B/s |
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In my experience, that could be accumulating system messages in the system log.
Some device could be spewing system messages. Usually happens with a failing drive and read errors. Check that possibility first. See /var/log I think flush is the disk cache flush facility. My home-brew Linux sits quietly, but an older HP machine will not. It could be BIOS disk security checking sector 0, or some such. |
updatedb runs after an install and populates the slocate database. It doesn't usually take that long to complete after a new install, but if you connected one or more drives with many files, it could.
If you are using KDE and you leave the Nepomuk file indexer active, it could also run for a long while if you have a lot of data to be indexed. |
I ask a simple question: if I leave the computer turned on and do not use it for several hours (days if you like), what is the use of the CPU being continuously working? I think the CPU should halt or be put in a low power mode. But it does not seem to do that in my machine.
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Amazon builds images that work like that.
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Both are kernel processes in that they are part of the kernel, but given a user mode contingent to permit them to participate in the normal scheduler operation. You will notice that they don't do that much I/O when the system is idle. |
Thanks. The thing is that my system is never idle. The hard disk LED is always blinking. Also, I quote myself:
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Anyway... My :twocents: Play Bonny! :hattip: |
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