I've set up an old laptop with Linux mint some months ago, and while the laptop's speed is fine when there are no disk write, even a very small write can cause other applications to hang until it is done, and i can also tell because i have an IO led so whenever it is on i know that i can't really interact with stuff whenever it's on.
SMART status doesn't seem to report anything, (tested some weeks ago, but issue was always present), but i'm willing to test again and show screenshots.
I'll show some maybe relevant information, note that my Linux fs is mounted on sda7.
some forums online suggested looking at /etc/fstab:
/etc/fstab
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# / was on /dev/sda7 during installation
UUID=fad802b2-f40c-4a8d-93de-128447fc6cd1 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /boot/efi was on /dev/sda2 during installation
UUID=9A65-70AD /boot/efi vfat umask=0077 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sda6 during installation
UUID=401c4f54-6932-4987-a9e2-9855a88ce52f none swap sw 0 0
the following is an output of sudo hdparm -i /dev/sda7:
sudo hdparm -i /dev/sda7
/dev/sda7:
Model=WDC WD5000LPCX-60VHAT0, FwRev=01.01A01, SerialNo=WD-WX41AA7PDTLZ
Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec SpinMotCtl Fixed DTR>5Mbs FmtGapReq }
RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=0
BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=16384kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=off
(maybe): CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=976773168
IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
AdvancedPM=yes: unknown setting WriteCache=enabled
Drive conforms to: unknown: ATA/ATAPI-1,2,3,4,5,6,7
* signifies the current active mode
here is my system information:
system info
System:
Kernel: 6.8.0-57-generic arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 13.3.0 clocksource: tsc
Desktop: Cinnamon v: 6.4.8 tk: GTK v: 3.24.41 wm: Muffin v: 6.4.1 vt: 7 dm: LightDM v: 1.30.0
Distro: Linux Mint 22.1 Xia base: Ubuntu 24.04 noble
Machine:
Type: Laptop System: Dell product: Latitude E5450 v: N/A serial: <superuser required> Chassis:
type: 9 serial: <superuser required>
Mobo: Dell model: N/A serial: <superuser required> part-nu: 062B uuid: <superuser required>
UEFI: Dell v: A13 date: 05/17/2016
Battery:
ID-1: BAT0 charge: 27.0 Wh (100.0%) condition: 27.0/51.7 Wh (52.2%) volts: 8.6 min: 7.6
model: Samsung SDI DELL 7FR5JD9 type: Li-poly serial: <filter> status: full
CPU:
Info: dual core model: Intel Core i5-5300U bits: 64 type: MT MCP smt: enabled arch: Broadwell
rev: 4 cache: L1: 128 KiB L2: 512 KiB L3: 3 MiB
Speed (MHz): avg: 2694 min/max: 500/2900 cores: 1: 2694 2: 2694 3: 2694 4: 2694 bogomips: 18357
Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
Graphics:
Device-1: Intel HD Graphics 5500 vendor: Dell driver: i915 v: kernel arch: Gen-8 ports:
active: eDP-1 empty: DP-1,HDMI-A-1,HDMI-A-2 bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:1616 class-ID: 0300
Device-2: Sunplus Innovation Integrated_Webcam_HD driver: uvcvideo type: USB rev: 2.0
speed: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 1-1.6:4 chip-ID: 1bcf:2b8d class-ID: 0e02
Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.11 with: Xwayland v: 23.2.6 driver: X: loaded: modesetting
unloaded: fbdev,vesa dri: iris gpu: i915 display-ID: :0 screens: 1
Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1366x768 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 361x203mm (14.21x7.99") s-diag: 414mm (16.31")
Monitor-1: eDP-1 model: ChiMei InnoLux 0x1490 res: 1366x768 hz: 60 dpi: 112
size: 309x173mm (12.17x6.81") diag: 354mm (13.9") modes: 1366x768
API: EGL v: 1.5 hw: drv: intel iris platforms: device: 0 drv: iris device: 1 drv: swrast gbm:
drv: iris surfaceless: drv: iris x11: drv: iris inactive: wayland
API: OpenGL v: 4.6 compat-v: 4.5 vendor: intel mesa v: 24.2.8-1ubuntu1~24.04.1 glx-v: 1.4
direct-render: yes renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics 5500 (BDW GT2) device-ID: 8086:1616
Audio:
Device-1: Intel Broadwell-U Audio vendor: Dell driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 00:03.0
chip-ID: 8086:160c class-ID: 0403
Device-2: Intel Wildcat Point-LP High Definition Audio vendor: Dell driver: snd_hda_intel
v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1b.0 chip-ID: 8086:9ca0 class-ID: 0403
API: ALSA v: k6.8.0-57-generic status: kernel-api
Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.0.5 status: active with: 1: pipewire-pulse status: active
2: wireplumber status: active 3: pipewire-alsa type: plugin
Network:
Device-1: Intel Ethernet I218-LM vendor: Dell driver: e1000e v: kernel port: f080 bus-ID: 00:19.0
chip-ID: 8086:15a2 class-ID: 0200
IF: eno1 state: down mac: <filter>
Device-2: Intel Wireless 7265 driver: iwlwifi v: kernel pcie: speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 1
bus-ID: 02:00.0 chip-ID: 8086:095a class-ID: 0280
IF: wlp2s0 state: up mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
Device-1: Intel Bluetooth wireless interface driver: btusb v: 0.8 type: USB rev: 2.0
speed: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 1-1.3:3 chip-ID: 8087:0a2a class-ID: e001
Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 rfk-id: 43 state: down bt-service: enabled,running rfk-block:
hardware: no software: yes address: <filter>
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 465.76 GiB used: 81.99 GiB (17.6%)
ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Western Digital model: WD5000LPCX-60VHAT0 size: 465.76 GiB
speed: 6.0 Gb/s tech: HDD rpm: 5400 serial: <filter> fw-rev: 1A01 scheme: GPT
Partition:
ID-1: / size: 230.08 GiB used: 81.31 GiB (35.3%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda7
ID-2: /boot/efi size: 96 MiB used: 31.6 MiB (32.9%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/sda2
Swap:
ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 9.31 GiB used: 657.6 MiB (6.9%) priority: -2 dev: /dev/sda6
USB:
Hub-1: 1-0:1 info: full speed or root hub ports: 2 rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1
chip-ID: 1d6b:0002 class-ID: 0900
Hub-2: 1-1:2 info: Intel Integrated Hub ports: 8 rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1
chip-ID: 8087:8001 class-ID: 0900
Device-1: 1-1.3:3 info: Intel Bluetooth wireless interface type: bluetooth driver: btusb
interfaces: 2 rev: 2.0 speed: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1 power: 100mA chip-ID: 8087:0a2a class-ID: e001
Device-2: 1-1.6:4 info: Sunplus Innovation Integrated_Webcam_HD type: video driver: uvcvideo
interfaces: 2 rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1 power: 500mA chip-ID: 1bcf:2b8d class-ID: 0e02
Hub-3: 2-0:1 info: hi-speed hub with single TT ports: 11 rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1
chip-ID: 1d6b:0002 class-ID: 0900
Device-1: 2-2:2 info: MOSART Semi. 2.4G Wireless Mouse type: mouse driver: hid-generic,usbhid
interfaces: 1 rev: 1.1 speed: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1 power: 100mA chip-ID: 3938:1031 class-ID: 0301
Hub-4: 3-0:1 info: super-speed hub ports: 4 rev: 3.0 speed: 5 Gb/s lanes: 1 chip-ID: 1d6b:0003
class-ID: 0900
Sensors:
System Temperatures: cpu: 50.0 C mobo: 39.0 C sodimm: SODIMM C
Fan Speeds (rpm): cpu: 0
Repos:
Packages: 2350 pm: dpkg pkgs: 2341 pm: flatpak pkgs: 9
No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list
Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list
1: deb [arch=amd64] https: //dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main
Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list
1: deb http: //packages.linuxmint.com xia main upstream import backport
2: deb http: //archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble main restricted universe multiverse
3: deb http: //archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble-updates main restricted universe multiverse
4: deb http: //archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble-backports main restricted universe multiverse
5: deb http: //security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ noble-security main restricted universe multiverse
No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/select-editor.list
Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vscode.list
1: deb [arch=amd64,arm64,armhf] https: //packages.microsoft.com/repos/code stable main
Info:
Memory: total: 8 GiB available: 7.63 GiB used: 2.8 GiB (36.7%)
Processes: 248 Power: uptime: 16d 21h 10m states: freeze,mem,disk suspend: deep wakeups: 40
hibernate: platform Init: systemd v: 255 target: graphical (5) default: graphical
Compilers: clang: 18.1.3 gcc: 13.3.0 Client: Cinnamon v: 6.4.8 inxi: 3.3.34
If there is anything else that is relevant, I'd like to know, and thanks for any help.
A 5400rpm drive is pretty slow, especially if you are comparing it to a SSD, and at 17% free you are nearing the point where file fragmentation and seek time become real I/O bottlenecks if you have an application trying to read data while you are doing a write. I haven't willingly used a 5400rpm drive in over 20 years, but I remember violently hating them.
That being said, I'm definitely not an expert here, so I'll be curious what others have to say.
Update: ran e4defrag check, said no defragmentation necessary, all scores were low.
I was told this laptop is about 10 years old, and I've got it from someone who is 23 years old, so i don't doubt what i was told about it.
So it should be very suspicious that it is that slow, and also, i can usually multitask pretty well with it, so it is very surprising that it hangs like that.
I really hope i get help troubleshooting this because i have a feeling it shouldn't be this bad.
I should probably check defragging options on linux regardless, thank you for the time you took answering this :)
Defragging used to be necessary maintenance back in the day but I think ext4 generally handles it well and does defragging in the background automatically. But fragmentation can exist temporarily which is the only reason I brought it up.
Multitasking performance is generally a factor of system memory which at 8GB is pretty reasonable for Linux. Once you exceed that, you'll use that swap file which I would expect would incur the same performance issues.
Actually when my system does slow down when i multitask too hard, it doesn't hang (given there is no write IO), and even running a simple application would hang if i have write IO in the background.
I understand if that's a hard one to solve, I've been facing this for months and been trying to research on it and coming up with nothing. Thank you, still.
Then it sounds very much like what is happening is that once your system starts using the swap file because you are using more memory than you have available RAM, your slow HDD is causing the performance hit.
I would bet your two possible solutions are to increase the RAM (which will just mean you can do more stuff before you start hitting this performance bottleneck) or replace your HDD with an SSD. Give that it's a pretty old laptop, I would bet your options for replacing the HDD are limited. As long as your RAM isn't soldered in, you can probably just buy a compatible 16GB module and swap that right out.