Firefox 4.0 beta 3 & disk activity

[Darken]

Hi,

Since I installed the beta 3 of Firefox 4, when I open a web page, my hard drive sounds like a machine gun. It looks like it is related to sqlite files being written, with "synchronized" and "non-cached" IO.

I tried v3.6 back and my hard drive behaved correctly. I could not find any specific related bug in the bugzilla. Are you experimenting such a problem aswell with the new beta ?

[sciguyryan]

It could be optimizing the database - disk IO has actually been improved for Firefox 4.0 so it must be an intermediate for that. Did you let it finish?

[mat--]

This might be related: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=556631

[KWierso]

Let Firefox run overnight, if possible. It should have a chance to work out any database issues on its own if it's idle long enough.

[Darken]

Thank you for your replies.

Actually, the heavy disk activity is triggered every time I open a new web page, lasts several seconds then calms down. Otherwise the disk activity is near to none.

I found this bug that landed in beta 3: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=572223

Maybe the fix caused some bad side effect on my computer ?

[KWierso]

Thank you for your replies.

Actually, the heavy disk activity is triggered every time I open a new web page, lasts several seconds then calms down. Otherwise the disk activity is near to none.

I found this bug that landed in beta 3: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=572223

Maybe the fix caused some bad side effect on my computer ?

One thing maybe for you to try:
Go in to your Firefox profile folder (Menubar, Help, Troubleshooting Information, "Open Containing Folder" button).
Close Firefox completely.
Back in the profile folder, move the "cookies.sqlite" file out of the folder to somewhere else (documents or desktop).
Start up Firefox.
See if starting fresh fixes the problem.


You won't have any of your autologin settings in there, so you'd have to re-login to websites yourself, but it should rebuild the cookies file.

If it helps with your problem, I'd say just go with the newly rebuild cookies file, re-saving all of your login information.

If it doesn't help, you could follow those same steps, but put the original cookies.sqlite file back in to your profile folder instead of moving it out. That should restore all of your old login info, since that apparently isn't the problem.

[nemm]

I'm also having this problem. It started as of 20100812/20100813 nightly. On some web sites hard disk will be silent, but on some web sites like Twitter, Lifehacker.com, io9.com, ImageShack, etc. it will go crazy. As Darken said, it sounds like a machine gun. It's really annoying.

[neonkevo]

Hate to bump this up but i'm having the same exact issue as everyone else in this thread. Happened in beta 3. Has there been any known solution to this problem yet? This is making the current betas completely un-usable.

[KWierso]

Does it still happen if you start Firefox in safe mode?

What about if you create a new profile?

[Terepin]

I have this issue too. The funny thing is when I run SS benchmark, every test is using my HDD, so my LED is acting this: blink-blink-blink-light-blink-blink-blink-light... and so on. The moment I run something else that is using HDD, the result gets worst. A LOT worse (near 600ms instead of near 500ms). It sucks, desn't it?

[_Alexander]

I get massive HD usage when cold booting. It takes forever to start FF because of that. Otherwise, I think the speed at loading new pages is HD dependent...

[IDEVFH]

Hi,

The disk activity you're seeing is due to the following files being updated or touched:

1. places.sqlite-journal
2. cookies.sqlite-journal

periodically updated or touched when Firefox is idle

3. sessionstore.js
4. sessionstore-8.js

Regards,
IDEVFH

[solidslash]

Same here, I can hear HD work louder on loading web pages.

[neonkevo]

Does it still happen if you start Firefox in safe mode?

What about if you create a new profile?

sorry for not getting back to you sooner. yes, same thing.

Hi,

The disk activity you're seeing is due to the following files being updated or touched:

1. places.sqlite-journal
2. cookies.sqlite-journal

periodically updated or touched when Firefox is idle

3. sessionstore.js
4. sessionstore-8.js

Regards,
IDEVFH

any way of stopping the constant hard drive thrashing?

[Operation]

Every time I click a link or use the back/forward button in Firefox 4, firefox.exe writes to cookies.sqlite-journal, cookies.sqlite, places.sqlite-journal and places.sqlite. I tested this with a clean profile and Process Monitor.

Firefox 3 doesn't behave like that.

Thanks