On 2009-07-03 16:02, Jerry Geis wrote:
/>/ I have a 3G AM2 quad core CPU... x86_64 centos 5.3 />/ />/ />/ When I am doing backing up to my external USB drive />/ my system becomes sluggish. Clicking on a thunderbird compose />/ takes some time to pop up the window. Typeing doesnt keep up etc... />/ />/ Is there something I can change so this backup doesnt slow my system />/ down so much? I dont see HOW it can be taking so much CPU. />/ top at times shows 0 idle or 11% idle from a USB backup. />/ />/ Thanks for any suggestions. /
I have four gig RAM, I am just doing a "rsync -a /home /mnt/external_usb/backup.XX.YY.2009" My server has RAID-1 SATA 1 TB drives (two of course for raid) and I am doing a straight rsync to an external 1TB usb connected disk. Not doing any compression at this time.
The "renice" did help some mentioned earlier...
"ionice" is very usefull in this case as well.
If possible try to find a solution using eSATA instead of USB, which would work much smoother.