Disk Thrashing

Problem

Running extremely slowly
not enough memory for MacNail construction management software. Disk thrashing, takes forever to do anything-- Macintosh or Windows

NOTE-- MacNail has been retired since 2001, and this information is extremely outdated. Here's a link to the hardware requirements for our Goldenseal accounting software.

Diagnosis

Takes many seconds or even minutes to do things
if it only happens after running lengthy operations-- MEMORY FRAGMENTED
if all the time-- probably SHORT OF RAM and therefore disk thrashing (see comments)

Solution

MEMORY FRAGMENTED-- quit from Excel and restart computer. That will clear up any fragmentation and speed things up enormously
SHORT OF RAM, MAC-- give XL more memory (see item 134)
SHORT OF RAM, WINDOWS-- Add more RAM. 4 megabytes is too small with Win 3.1/XL 4 or 5. 8 megs of RAM is plenty, 16 is generous. May be able to free up RAM by removing TSR's, reduce size of swap file, etc.

Comments

Disk thrashing is when the program runs low on RAM memory and starts using the hard disk as if it were RAM. Because hard disk access is 100's times slower than RAM access, it slows things down drastically.
Hint: A sure sign of disk thrashing-- hard disk makes a constant quiet 'chugchugchugchug' sound. This is harder to hear on newer drives, since they are so quiet.

Entered 2/14/95 by Dennis. Updated 11/25/2010.