[mythtv-users] Unusual hard drive activity w/ livetv

[Ross Campbell]

On 1/17/06, Jason Richardson <merkur2k at gmail.com> wrote:
> whenever I watch live tv, the hard drive goes
> nuts, and continues doing so until live tv is stopped. it plays/pauses
> etc and works just fine, but the noise that the drive makes is quite
> annoying.
> Yes i know a ringbuffer is used, but I have configured myth to put
> that on a different hard drive (one that isnt nearly as loud!) so I
> dont understand why it is still hammering on that particular drive.

Is your machine swapping to disk? Look at top data. I like the curses
util htop -- look on freshmeat. If so, buy more ram, a quieter disk,
or a soundproof case ;)

Start gathering more data for your system. I recommend enabling sar
data collection at 30 minute intervals (even hourly may be good
enough).  sysstat includes a cool tk sar data visualizer called isag -
look for it and check it out.

Gather data with iostat. Example: "iostat -d 1 20" show per-device
read/write stats every 1 second for 20 seconds.

-Ross