On Apr 20, 2012 2:42 AM, "Lists" <lists at benjamindsmith.com> wrote: > > Problem as follows: > > 1) Plug in an external USB drive. > > 2) Mount it anywhere. Doesn't matter how. > > 3) Copy a few GB of data to the drive from a non-USB disk. > > 4) Watch the load average "climb" to 5.x, sometimes 10.x or more. Why? > This on an otherwise unloaded system. Doesn't matter how many cores, how > much RAM, 32/64 bit, etc. > > Why should copying some files to a USB drive cause load averages to > climb so high? (and network monitors to freak out?) It's just a number. Is the system any slower? Linux adds I/O wait time to the load average calculation. -- Giovanni