Safari churning my hard drive like hell

lnoelstorr · #1 May 17th, 2004, 04:22 AM

A couple of days ago Safari started to churn away at my hard drive every time I loaded a new page or opened a new tab.

It's starting to drive me crazy, it takes ages for any page to load with the drive being chugging away like crazy.

I have about 1GB free on the drive, and have tried deleting and clearing the cache.

I don't think I've made any changes recently. I have Panther with all the latest updates (unless there were any in the last couple of days).

Any idea what it could be?

azrad · #2 May 17th, 2004, 04:58 AM

im not sure about this. most probably it had to do with your HD. im using iBook 366MHz with an extra 1GB of HD. Had no problem surfing the websites and it loads web pages much faster than running IE.

but if your HD churning ONLY when you're runnning Safari, then it must be the Safari problems.

edX · #3 May 17th, 2004, 05:12 AM

not neccesarily. safari needs lots of space for caching and temp story files. it's constantly writing and rewriting, something not every program does. 1 gb of free space is not enough to properly run osx on any size HD. 15% free space is the reccomended amount. you may just need more free space. or you may need a new drive. i started having that kind of problem with the original 10 gb HD that came with my imac. eventually it just plain died. i replaced it with a new 40 gb HD and it works great.

i would suggest you consider upgrading your HD before it dies - even if the only problem with it now is an issue of free space.

lnoelstorr · #4 May 17th, 2004, 06:19 AM

I've had less free space in the past and not had a problem.

I'm not actually sure if it is other apps too, as I've generally just been using it for Safari and Mail lately, and Mail has been fine (except when switching to it from Safari).

perfessor101 · #5 May 17th, 2004, 10:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lnoelstorr

I have about 1GB free on the drive, and have tried deleting and clearing the cache.

Unless your HD is less than 7 GB in size you are in trouble whether you know it or not. With Mac OS (Extended), a.k.a. HFS+, anytime the free space on a drive falls below 15% you are in serious danger of irreparable file system damage. If the drive is severely fragmented, and it sounds as if your drive is, that increases the risk still further. You need to free up at least 15% of your drive and defragment. The automatic file defragmentation in Panther is all well and good, but it only effects a relative few files and it actually increases drive fragmentation. The churning you are experiencing can easily be caused by OS X trying to find places to put all the Safari cache files on a badly fragmented volume with very limited free space to work with.

The only two OS X defragmentation utilities I know of are Micromat's Drive 10 1.1.5 and TechTool Pro 4.0.2. DiskWarrior will optimize the directory structure but it does not defragment the drive.

lnoelstorr · #6 May 17th, 2004, 11:18 AM

In that case I'll probably try backing up my files and re-installing - this seems to be Apples recommended solution to defragging (as defrag tools can apparently decrease performance).

Would it be possible to upgrade the hard-drive on my iBook? I think it's only 8GB at the moment I think.

Randman · #7 May 17th, 2004, 01:15 PM

Well my backup Mac is a clamshell iBook, 6-gig hard drive and it's running Panther just fine. I probably have a couple of gig of space of space on it. I run regular maintenance on it.
I think a lot of people have lots of space these days and do forget that perfectly good Macs are out there running just fine with small hard drives.

perfessor101 · #8 May 17th, 2004, 03:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lnoelstorr

In that case I'll probably try backing up my files and re-installing - this seems to be Apples recommended solution to defragging (as defrag tools can apparently decrease performance).

Would it be possible to upgrade the hard-drive on my iBook? I think it's only 8GB at the moment I think.

As far as I can tell there is no penalty to defragmenting a hard drive. I do it periodically on all the Macs here and all the Macs I support. Unless the drive is at or near the 85% fill limit and/or is badly fragmented I usually don't see any noticeable change in performance either way. It the drive is getting full and is badly fragmented you may see a noticeable improvement in performance. One reason I defrag occasionally is it takes so much longer to defragment a drive once it becomes extremely fragmented.

Apple's recommended defrag solution will certainly defragment a drive. The reason they recommend that method is not because of any penalty from using defrag tools such as Drive 10 or TechTool, rather it is because their method does not require the use of any third party tools. However, Apple's methodology can and often does result in ownership and permission problems unless you use a tool such as Carbon Copy Cloner to make the backup copy and then to copy back. That means you will need a second bootable drive. Not only that, but if you reinstall OS X and then restore your files you are starting from a drive that will already be fragmented! Have you even looked at the volume fragmentation following an erase and install? I have and it is ugly!

There is also a backup and restore capability in Panther's Disk Utility, but I have not tried it and I have seen several reports of problems trying to restore from that backup. Check the forums before going that route.

It is possible to upgrade the HD in an iBook. The last time I checked there are 80 GB drives with the correct form factor available. But -- upgrading the HD will void and remaining Applecare warranty on the machine and is not a task for the amateur or faint of heart. Probably a task best left to a professional because of the number of small, easily stripped, plastic screws and tight space constrictions within the iBook chassis.