[ltp] system unresponsive during disk activity

[Theodore Tso]

On Fri, Dec 28, 2007 at 07:18:14AM +0100, Marcus Better wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> my [R60] laptop becomes unresponsive whenever some process does a
> lot of disk I/O, like when I install or upgrade Debian packages. The
> other applications appear to be starved for periods of ten seconds
> or longer, don't redraw their windows and don't respond to input.

What does "hdparm -tt" show?  It could be that for some reason the
kernel is falling back to using legacy IDE mode, in which case your
system will feel very slow and can have the symptoms which you
describe.

						- Ted