Today's assignment is a lab where we are to look into what Disk Thrashing is and what to do about it. The class that I am in studies the similarities and differences with WinXP and Fedora Core 4. Below, I have my write-up but I am missing some important information to finish.
I need to know three techniques that can be used to solve the problem and also what the walk-through would be in Core 4 (I have it at work, but wanted to do this today).
For the techniques, I assume one would get more memory, increase Virtual memory (page filing) and/or end those processes that are hogs. Those don't sound like "techniques" but is there more to it than that? Anyway, let me know what you think.
Disk Thrashing
According to the website
www.computerhope.com/jargon/t/thrash.htm”, thrashing or disk thrashing is the popular term given to the result of a hard drive being overworked as virtual memory is read and wrote excessively. This occurs primarily when the computer’s physical memory modules are not enough to handle the work load. However, if the user has not established proper settings in the system properties/advanced/system performance area, then problems could come from that as well. The two indicators that a user would first notice would be system performance issues as well as the red led on the front of the computer excessively flashing or nearly staying on.
According to
http://www.watchingthenet.com/identi...n-windows.html, if the user is on a Windows OS, then he or she can open the Task Manager (CTRL+ALT+DEL) and click the Processes tab. Under “View”, choose “Select Columns”. Then find the options I/O Reads, I/O Writes, I/O Read Bytes and I/O Write Bytes. You can then view the work load that the hard drive is being put through and which processes are the culprits. From there, one can make the determination on what needs to be done.