macbook hard drive continuously thrashes

[foxxlet]

Has anyone got any idea why my macbook's (white 2.0Ghz, last gen) hard drive stays on and really thrashes about almost continuously? It sounds like it's doing a lot of work. It's driving me mad with the noise plus it can't be good for the drive.

It was doing it before my Leopard upgrade and still does. (clean install) I've tried disabling spotlight and that wasn't it.

I have 2 gigs of ram and it happens even when no programs are running, so it can't be memory.

Oh and it only started suddenly, it was fine for the first few months I owned the machine.

Any help appreciated!

 

[Eidorian]

I'd take a look at the processes that are running with Activity Monitor when you hear disk thrashing.

 

[Nugget]

Even more useful is to open up a terminal and run the command "sudo fs_usage" which will show you exactly what disk activity is going on and which application or service is responsible for it. If the details seem confusing, just watch the right-hand column for the program name.

 

[foxxlet]

strangely there's nothing taking up huge amounts of cpu

also just remembered that if you close the lid and open it again, it takes about 10 to 15 minutes before it starts to thrash again.

 

[Eidorian]

fs_usage is another good idea but you might want to have it dump the contents to a text file while it's running.

 

[tyr2]

Or as an alternative to fs_usage you could try using DTrace. Download bitesize.d from here. It's for Solaris but works fine on Leopard.

Run it like this 'sudo dtrace -s bitesize.d' from the terminal, enter your password when prompted. Let it run for a while then ctrl+c to quit. You'll get output like this

baldur:~ gordonj$ sudo dtrace -s bitesize.d 
Sampling... Hit Ctrl-C to end.
^C

     PID  CMD
     335  vmware-vmx

           value  ------------- Distribution ------------- count    
            2048 |                                         0        
            4096 |@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ 2        
            8192 |                                         0        

       0  kernel_task

           value  ------------- Distribution ------------- count    
            2048 |                                         0        
            4096 |@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ 5        
            8192 |                                         0        

     283  Mail

           value  ------------- Distribution ------------- count    
            2048 |                                         0        
            4096 |@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@  58       
            8192 |@                                        1        
           16384 |                                         0        

      33  update

           value  ------------- Distribution ------------- count    
            2048 |                                         0        
            4096 |@@@@                                     7        
            8192 |@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@     66       
           16384 |                                         0        
           32768 |@                                        1        
           65536 |                                         0        

     282  Safari

           value  ------------- Distribution ------------- count    
            2048 |                                         0        
            4096 |@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@        168      
            8192 |@@@@                                     21       
           16384 |@@                                       8        
           32768 |@                                        3        
           65536 |                                         1        
          131072 |                                         2        
          262144 |                                         0

It's the 'count' column you're really interested it, in the above you can see Safari has made about 200 disk events, mostly of 4096 bytes.

 

[Eidorian]

Safari saves that as a "bitesize.d.sh" file.

Just a heads up.

 

[foxxlet]

thanks heaps for all the replies. I'm going to try them tonight.

Does anyone think it could it be the hard drive is failing? rather than a software issue I mean.

 

[misterredman]

thanks heaps for all the replies. I'm going to try them tonight.

Does anyone think it could it be the hard drive is failing? rather than a software issue I mean.

Have you checked the SMART status in disk utility?

 

[TuckBodi]

I'd make sure you don't have one of those Seagate drives people are having problems with. My sister had one in her MacBook and it died.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/382571/

From the Computerworld article:

The problem is found on the Seagate 2.5-in. SATA drives that are made in China and are loaded with firmware Version 7.01. Model numbers affected include ST96812AS and ST98823AS.