Why does Wubi slow down or freeze when there is heavy disk activity?

Solution 1:

I noticed the same freezes. While I can't tell why this happens, I know a way to get rid of that. Here's how:

In a terminal, type

echo "deadline" | sudo tee /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler

Try moving or copying larger ammounts of files again. You should notice a huge difference. If so, make the change permanent by typing in a terminal:

gksudo gedit /etc/default/grub

In the line beginning with GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="", add the following string in between the ""s:

elevator=deadline

Save and exit. After that, type in a terminal

sudo update-grub

Reboot.

FYI: This changes the so-called scheduler to 'deadline'.

Source: http://techtitbits.com/2010/04/get-rid-of-freeze-ups-during-disk-io-activity-in-ubuntu/

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Another Possibility would be to lower dirty_ratio settings. To test it, type in a terminal:

sudo bash -c "echo 10 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_ratio"

sudo bash -c "echo 5 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_background_ratio"

If this helps, make it permanent by editing your sysctl.conf:

gksudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf

At the end of the file, add the following lines:

vm.dirty_ratio=10

vm.dirty_background_ratio=5

Save, close and reboot. Done.

Solution 2:

You have to remember that Wubi installs Ubuntu in your existing Windows Partition and not in a separate one.

It looks like Ubuntu has no space to work in your existing Windows Partition. It could be trying to use swap but not getting enough which causes the slowing down of the system and the heavy disk activity.

I would either install Ubuntu at a separate partition without Wubi, or expanding your Windows Partition size and the size of your Wubi install.

You can also take a look at this article on how to improve the performance of your hard drive.

Solution 3:

From my experience, Disk I/O is the bane of any sane user experience under Linux.

Things that make it worse:

• Using a laptop(2.5") disk, especially a 5k rpm disk
• Using wubi or LVM/Encryption.
  • This is because normally, reads/writes to disk are quite optimized to your hardware, but having that enabled creates a layer of indirection that mess this up.

Reasons for the slowdown:

• Most things on your linux-system need to touch disk quite often, they write logs, cache-files and sometimes they synchronize things through the file-system.
• When the disk is busy, everything grinds to a halt, waiting for their check on the cache-file etc will complete. This is especially noticeable with gui-applications.

So, in general. Anything you can do to avoid touching disk is good.

You can change your firefox cache-directory to

/run/shm

1. eat your ram
2. be gone after a reboot.

Tutorials for this can be done by using google.