[X4U] ceasles spinning disk

[Stroller]

On 25 Jul 2007, at 17:15, Jan Melichar wrote:

> In the last month or so both my computer at home and at work have  
> taken to spinning the disk an inordinate amount slowing everything  
> down.
> ...
> I have 1GB of memory but this is used up with just a few  
> application. For example  If I open Word, and Safari then Acrobat  
> free memory is reduced to 25MB; if I then quit all application free  
> memory grows to 130MB which is considerably less that the 429MB  
> when newly launched.
>
> Yes I have ordered another 1GB of memory but I now wonder if that  
> is the solution.

How much disk space do you have free?
Highlight the system disk, top-right on the desktop, and press Apple-i.

I have found - not wanting to kick off any flamewars, but this is my  
experience - that disk fragmentaton can make a HUGE difference on  
systems which are running low on drive space. You can get a version  
of iDefrag which boots from CD and I have in the past found the  
results to be very noticeable.

I can't comment directly on your memory usage as I have rarely  
monitored it closely on systems which are short of RAM. However  
Safari (in particular) seems to be a big resource hog and I would  
expect quitting it not to free up as much space as opening it  
consumed. I can't explain why this is, but it just seems to be the  
way. My G5 PowerMac is only put to sleep when I'm not at the keyboard  
and might often not be properly rebooted for 2 to 6 weeks at a time;  
its glitchy behaviour - especially the spinning beachball, is often  
observable and Safari is a real pig at times - OS X just doesn't seem  
to automatically free memory as well as a hard reboot.

Whatever the cause of your problems I'm sure you will notice the  
difference that the extra RAM makes. RAM seems to be a panacea for  
all kinds of ills. Actually, looking up that word in the dictionary,  
RAM seems to be just a panacea, without additional redundant verbage,  
but I always was a wordy bugger.

Stroller.