Hard drive appears busy even with enough memory

[jeenuv]

My laptop runs Mint 17.1 with 2GB RAM and 500 GB HDD. It's mostly smooth and responsive for normal use. But once I've 4 or more tabs open in Chrome, the hard disk start scrapping itself away for no apparent reason. When this happens, I can see that there's about 600MB of RAM still left but it keeps churning away. And once it starts, it's like I've to wait for it to finish to do anything at all - basically it goes unresponsive.

I recently came across configuring 'swappiness'. I brought it down from 60 (I guess the default) to 20, I can't say it has helped much. The HDD still keeps churning away with 'enough' memory left in RAM.

Does anybody have any clues as to why this keep happening? Are there any parameters that I can tweak? How do I know what's being done while it's churning away?

Thanks.

PS: I posted this in the hardware support in the guess that it'd involve tweaking some hardware parameters.

[Pjotr]

Please generate an overview of your system like this:
- launch a terminal window and make it full screen, to avoid chopped lines;
- copy/paste this command into the terminal:

Code: Select all

inxi -Fxz

(if you type: the letter F is a capital letter)

Press Enter.

Copy/paste the output in your next message.

[jeenuv]

Code: Select all

System:    Host: jeenu-laptop Kernel: 3.13.0-37-generic x86_64 (64 bit, gcc: 4.8.2) 
           Desktop: N/A Distro: Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca
Machine:   System: ASUSTeK (portable) product: X55C version: 1.0
           Mobo: ASUSTeK model: X55C version: 1.0 Bios: American Megatrends version: X55C.406 date: 09/19/2012
CPU:       Dual core Intel Pentium CPU B980 (-MCP-) cache: 2048 KB flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3) bmips: 9578.52 
           Clock Speeds: 1: 800.00 MHz 2: 800.00 MHz
Graphics:  Card: Intel 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller bus-ID: 00:02.0 
           X.Org: 1.15.1 drivers: intel (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1366x768@60.0hz 
           GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Sandybridge Mobile GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 10.1.3 Direct Rendering: Yes
Audio:     Card: Intel 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture ver: k3.13.0-37-generic
Network:   Card-1: Qualcomm Atheros AR9485 Wireless Network Adapter driver: ath9k bus-ID: 02:00.0
           IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter>
           Card-2: Qualcomm Atheros AR8161 Gigabit Ethernet driver: alx port: e000 bus-ID: 03:00.0
           IF: eth0 state: down mac: <filter>
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 500.1GB (14.5% used) 1: id: /dev/sda model: Hitachi_HTS54505 size: 500.1GB 
Partition: ID: / size: 92G used: 8.6G (10%) fs: ext4 ID: /home size: 275G used: 60G (23%) fs: ext4 
           ID: swap-1 size: 2.00GB used: 0.32GB (16%) fs: swap 
RAID:      No RAID devices detected - /proc/mdstat and md_mod kernel raid module present
Sensors:   None detected - is lm-sensors installed and configured?
Info:      Processes: 184 Uptime: 1:16 Memory: 1088.6/1819.0MB Runlevel: 2 Gcc sys: 4.8.4 Client: Shell inxi: 1.8.4

(nifty utility - thanks!)

[Laurent85]

See this thread, looks like Chrome might be the culprit http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=198449
Try switching to chromium browser or firefox.

[jeenuv]

Thanks. I've disabled hardware acceleration for now (it was enabled) and see how it goes.

[jeenuv]

Chrome didn't feel any better with hardware acceleration disabled. I'm now trying out Chromium, but there are problems.