Very slow disk access on a fresh daily install - Inspiron 8200 DELLLaptop.

[Chip]

I've had the same experience on my Inspiron8200 on both Ubuntu and
RedHat9. What we figured out on RH9 was that we were I/O limited by the
system polling the CD drive to see if a disc had been inserted. You can
see that the CPU usage is almost non-existent but you only get a HD
access on a periodic but slow basis. On RH9 I was able to turn off
automount for the CD in preferences and the problem went away. I tried
turning off automounting on removable media under desktop programs but
apparently the underlying polling of the CD drive is still going.

You can see if this is the same thing you're experiencing by just
putting a CDROM in the drive. Once the media is detected (whether
mounted or not) the polling stops and your hard disk and system will
start running much faster.

I think the polling is going on in hal somewhere because I saw
somewhere that the media insertion is a hal event that gets passed to
Gnome. However, I don't know enough about how that works to know how I
might change hal configuration to either shut the CD detection off or
at least slow it down by a significnat factor.. Any ideas?


-- 
Chip