[G4] Activity Monitor...update question!

[Thomas J. Fobia]

Thanks Phillip,
    Frank Sudore suggested I do the "repair Permissions" and that seemed 
to take care of the constant Hard Drive action that was very annoying to 
say the least! You have given me very detailed information that 
explained what was happening. Thanks for the quick response.

Tom

Philip J Robar wrote:

> Thomas J. Fobia wrote:
>
>> Something is happening with my disk drive (every 35-40 seconds). The 
>> Activity Monitor shows the process name as "update" and the user as 
>> root. The Monitor indicates "writes" to the disk drive if that info 
>> helps. Does anyone know what this is (I've gone away for an hour and 
>> its still doing it and the only thing active is the activity monitor. 
>> What is root updating? Can I stop it? It seems to interrupt any 
>> Quicktime (MP4 files) videos I want to play.
>> man update
>
>
> NAME
>    update -- flush internal filesystem caches to disk frequently
>
> SYNOPSIS
>    update [normal_interval [save_energy_interval]]
>
> DESCRIPTION
>    The update command helps protect the integrity of disk volumes by
>    flushing volatile cached filesystem data to disk at thirty second
>    intervals. Update uses the sync(2) function call to do the task.
>    The normal_interval and save_energy_interval can be used to set
>    the sync(2) interval in seconds of the normal case and the case
>    where the computer is trying to save energy.
>
>    Update is invoked at startup time by launchd(8) when the system
>    goes multi-user.
>
>
> So, no you shouldn't turn it off. I assume that these are HD videos,
> otherwise I would think that your machine has enough memory and is fast
> enough that you wouldn't notice the updates.
>
> Phil
>
>
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