Constant Hard Drive Activity?
Hi folks,
Recently got a new 27" iMac (stock Core 2 Duo, 3.06GHz, 256MB Graphics RAM model).
It's great - not experiencing any sluggishness with Flash video or anything like that. But, I am noticing that the hard drive seems to be constantly accessing something. The drive is not "churning" like it would if the Mac didn't have enough RAM to operate efficiently. It's more like a periodic little read and then nothing and then another read - but it happens regardless of what apps, if any, I have running.
I'm thinking it might have to do with the Performance Update 1.0 I just installed via Software Update, which supposedly addresses certain hard drive issues. If I understand correctly, this update is meant to prevent the HD from going to sleep too soon - maybe it's constantly prompting the HD to read small amounts of data to prevent it from sleeping?
It could also be because this model of new iMacs has only 3MB shared L2 cache (the older 24" ones, which I used to have, had 6MB).
Or it could be because the new model is quieter generally, but has a hard drive with louder read/write activity than the older model.
But I really doubt it's that last one. And a look at Activity Monitor definitely shows more "read" activity - almost constant - than I used to see with my previous iMac.
Any ideas? TIA!
Recently got a new 27" iMac (stock Core 2 Duo, 3.06GHz, 256MB Graphics RAM model).
It's great - not experiencing any sluggishness with Flash video or anything like that. But, I am noticing that the hard drive seems to be constantly accessing something. The drive is not "churning" like it would if the Mac didn't have enough RAM to operate efficiently. It's more like a periodic little read and then nothing and then another read - but it happens regardless of what apps, if any, I have running.
I'm thinking it might have to do with the Performance Update 1.0 I just installed via Software Update, which supposedly addresses certain hard drive issues. If I understand correctly, this update is meant to prevent the HD from going to sleep too soon - maybe it's constantly prompting the HD to read small amounts of data to prevent it from sleeping?
It could also be because this model of new iMacs has only 3MB shared L2 cache (the older 24" ones, which I used to have, had 6MB).
Or it could be because the new model is quieter generally, but has a hard drive with louder read/write activity than the older model.
But I really doubt it's that last one. And a look at Activity Monitor definitely shows more "read" activity - almost constant - than I used to see with my previous iMac.
Any ideas? TIA!
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.1), 27", 3.06GHz, 256MB VRAM, 4GM RAM - totally stock
