[X4U] ceasles spinning disk

[Jan Melichar]

On 25 Jul 2007, at 19:21, Stroller wrote:

>
> 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.

A while back a number of people commented on my problem and I think  
that I have traced it to iCal. I now have 2GB of memory on the G5 so  
the spinning disk and slowing down is less of a problem but on the  
office G4 with 1GB memory the problem starts the moment I launch iCal  
and goes on for a good 15 mins. According to the Activity Monitor  
SynchServer goes into overdrive. In the case of the G5 it swallows  
up  95% of the CPU (in the top pane) or 45% user (in the lower pane).  
As you can guess I don't really know what that means.

So on the G5 with the extra memory the problem has gone away but not  
on the G4 where this did not used to be a problem. I would be good to  
find a solution to this irritating issue.

Jan