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

[Jason Richardson]

>> 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.

the system has 512 meg of ram, and never seems to go over about 50%
usage so i sure hope its not swapping :)
thanks for the tips on utils to run, i will try all of this tonight.