What causes my HDD to be busy?

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DaveDS
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What causes my HDD to be busy?

Post by DaveDS »

Hi, I have Linux Mint 18.2 installed on a SDD. Also mounted is a HDD which is only used for storage. It contains some pictures, movies and music, but no applications.
Quite often I can hear that the HDD spins up and is being used, much more frequently than I would expect. I would like to find out what causes that.

The two things I can think of are:
- Rhythmbox (although not playing while the HDD spins up)
- the drive is shared via NFS to a LibreElec device with Kodi

Is there any way to track which application/process really causes it?
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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jimallyn
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Re: What causes my HDD to be busy?

Post by jimallyn »

iotop might do what you're after.
“If the government were coming for your TVs and cars, then you'd be upset. But, as it is, they're only coming for your sons.” - Daniel Berrigan
Mute Ant

Re: What causes my HDD to be busy?

Post by Mute Ant »

A magnetic drive with SMART switched on will test itself occasionally, although there's some discussion about whether that's because the drive has a built-in interval timer or something in Ubuntu is set to check...
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1573929
WharfRat

Re: What causes my HDD to be busy?

Post by WharfRat »

DaveDS wrote:Is there any way to track which application/process really causes it?
Install iotop withsudo apt-get install iotop then in the terminal sudo iotop -oPa -d 2 to monitor I/O activity.
DaveDS
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Re: What causes my HDD to be busy?

Post by DaveDS »

Great, thanks, I will give it a try.
DaveDS
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Re: What causes my HDD to be busy?

Post by DaveDS »

It turned out to be the application Timeshift, a backup tool, that was appearently configured to make system backups on a daily basis and at boot.
WharfRat

Re: What causes my HDD to be busy?

Post by WharfRat »

DaveDS wrote:It turned out to be the application Timeshift, a backup tool, that was appearently configured to make system backups on a daily basis and at boot.
Did iotop help out with identifying the disk hog :?:
DaveDS
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Re: What causes my HDD to be busy?

Post by DaveDS »

Absolutely!
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