Just a note, I've noticed this problem too. I run a RAID1 check once every 24 hours, and while developing the script to do it, noticed that the machine became virtually unusable - mouse was jumpy, typing lagged. I run this check every morning at 4.00am so I'm usually asleep and don't notice it, so it hasn't been a big bother to me. The data may be a bit corse, however here is what sysstat/sar says my machine does during the check. Let me know if you want any more or other sar data. sar ~~~ 00:01:01 CPU %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle . . 03:51:01 all 0.68 0.00 0.33 0.00 0.00 98.99 03:56:01 all 1.03 0.00 0.39 0.00 0.00 98.58 04:01:01 all 0.73 0.01 20.70 0.01 0.00 78.55 04:06:01 all 1.32 0.00 82.81 0.07 0.00 15.80 04:11:01 all 1.26 0.00 67.91 0.20 0.00 30.63 04:16:01 all 1.18 0.00 58.14 0.22 0.00 40.46 04:21:01 all 1.00 0.00 79.94 0.16 0.00 18.89 04:26:01 all 1.09 0.00 94.54 0.28 0.00 4.09 04:31:01 all 1.33 0.00 84.23 0.13 0.00 14.30 04:36:01 all 1.58 0.00 71.76 0.19 0.00 26.47 04:41:01 all 0.68 0.00 0.35 0.00 0.00 98.97 04:46:01 all 0.82 0.00 0.42 0.00 0.00 98.76 . . sar -b (Report I/O and transfer rate statistics) ~~~~~~ 00:01:01 tps rtps wtps bread/s bwrtn/s . . 03:51:01 0.45 0.00 0.45 0.00 4.19 03:56:01 0.98 0.00 0.98 0.00 10.53 04:01:01 294.21 293.21 1.00 37529.57 10.01 04:06:01 1198.39 1197.36 1.03 153262.11 9.22 04:11:01 995.09 994.64 0.45 127314.06 4.11 04:16:01 852.48 852.03 0.45 109060.47 4.19 04:21:01 1161.13 1160.17 0.96 148500.42 9.15 04:26:01 1361.27 1360.51 0.76 174144.93 7.33 04:31:01 1226.02 1225.36 0.66 156846.40 6.13 04:36:01 1052.60 1051.96 0.65 134650.39 6.03 04:41:01 0.73 0.00 0.73 0.00 6.61 04:46:01 0.45 0.00 0.45 0.00 4.19 . . . sar -B (Report paging statistics) ~~~~~~ 00:01:01 pgpgin/s pgpgout/s fault/s majflt/s . . 03:51:01 0.00 1.16 5.05 0.00 03:56:01 0.00 2.47 15.38 0.00 04:01:01 0.01 2.54 21.32 0.00 04:06:01 0.00 2.57 6.94 0.00 04:11:01 0.00 1.15 5.04 0.00 04:16:01 0.00 1.16 5.04 0.00 04:21:01 0.01 2.36 6.24 0.00 04:26:01 0.00 1.88 4.88 0.00 04:31:01 0.00 1.63 8.35 0.00 04:36:01 0.00 1.63 5.04 0.00 04:41:01 0.00 1.81 11.12 0.00 04:46:01 0.00 1.16 5.04 0.00 04:51:01 0.00 1.07 5.05 0.00 04:56:01 0.00 1.16 5.05 0.00 . . sar -q (Report queue length and load averages) ~~~~~~ 00:01:01 runq-sz plist-sz ldavg-1 ldavg-5 ldavg-15 . . 03:51:01 0 106 0.00 0.00 0.00 03:56:01 0 106 0.00 0.00 0.00 04:01:01 3 117 7.14 2.19 0.76 04:06:01 0 113 7.97 6.23 2.95 04:11:01 0 113 7.95 7.29 4.31 04:16:01 0 113 7.56 7.48 5.20 04:21:01 1 110 6.38 7.35 5.81 04:26:01 1 107 2.07 4.33 4.96 04:31:01 0 107 2.16 2.94 4.17 04:36:01 0 106 1.57 2.19 3.50 04:41:01 0 106 0.01 0.79 2.52 04:46:01 0 106 0.00 0.28 1.81 04:51:01 0 106 0.00 0.09 1.30 04:56:01 0 106 0.00 0.03 0.93 . . Regards, Mark. -- "Sheep are slow and tasty, and therefore must remain constantly alert." - Bruce Schneier, "Beyond Fear" - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html