[CentOS] slugishness

Fri Jul 3 14:02:58 UTC 2009
Jerry Geis <geisj at pagestation.com>

>
> >/ 
> />/ Hi all,
> />/ 
> />/ 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.
> /
> Define 'backing up to my external USB drive':
>
> Are you:
>
> 	1) Using dump, tar, cpio, or cp?
> 	2) Are you compressing the backup? With gzip or bzip?
> 	3) Are you using zip?
>
> If you are using bzip, bzip is a cpu hog.
>
> How much memory do you have?
>
> What kind of disks do you have? IDE? SATA?  If SATA, is the controller
> in AHCI mode or IDE mode?
>   
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...

Jerry