Excessive Hard Drive Access

Hi,

I noticed when I go to sims that are heavily laden with prims that I get alot of hard drive activity which means intermittent locking up of SL.

The odd thing is that if I then logout of SL the hard drive activity continues for a couple of minutes after the client window has shut down

I've only noticed this since the release before last - is it me? SL? or something else? Maybe there is a setting somewhere

Any ideas anybody?

Mags xx

I think some of that is the memory leaks that plague this grid..

That and how much RAM is on your system. Also the size of your SL cache has an effect. Before I upgraded RAM, SL would take forever to close out, even after the window cleared, the SL would still show as running in task manager. Also search for the Nicholaz viewer. It's an open source viewer and he has pretty much patched up all the memory leaks, and a lot of the other little Linden Gremlins.

"The odd thing is that if I then logout of SL the hard drive activity continues for a couple of minutes after the client window has shut down"

Typically when you have low ram on the pc it will use swap file along with ram, so closing SL will sound like a hailstorm of disk activity you prob ran out of ram and its clearing from swap, 2 gig ram is highly recommened with SL.

SL can easy eat up 700-1200mb ram use

Thanks folks

/me heads off to buy another ram chip

Try also defraging your HD... I do it everyday I use SL, it slows down a lot of HD thrashing whilst it peices together all the highly fragmented files (some 2-3,000 of the blighters). Also use a preset system cache, otherwise windows will only add to the problem.

Is there a recommended percentage to allowcate for system cache based on available RAM. For example, I have 2.5 Gigs of RAM. What should I set my cache at?

I did a defrag analyse & it says I don't need to - I'm not sure what you mean by a "preset system cache" is that a setting somewhere?

Latest update on Ram - Tried unscrewing the back of my laptop with no success - managed with difficulty to get 9 out of 10 screws out but the last one just wont budge. I think it's melted into the casing from all the heat generated by the excessive hard drive access...

Maybe this is a good excuse to buy a new laptop

Good grief,, how many screws do you have to access your memory? My IBM it is two! And POW,, there they are.. simple! Not questioning your ability but you sure you are taking off the right thing to access the memory?

LOL

Actually I'm not 100% sure - there is a hatch with two screws but I can't undo those either... and I was a bit suspicous that the hard drive might be under that which is why I had a go at the other screw.

In this case it's quite the opposite from having a screw loose

Magnus, Start, Settings, Control Panel.. system icon, look in performance tab. Turn off 'let windows set the system cache' and define both minimum and maximum settings to be at least 1.5 times your system, and the drive that you want to allow the cache to reside. Restrict this to a single drive, assuming you have more than one.