Heavy disk io spasms (2.6.28, ext4)

["Kelly Clowers" <kelly.clowers@gmail.com>]

Since I got my new computer, I have occasionally experienced times
when my HD light would come on and all apps stall for a few seconds.
These seem to come in swarms, with 2-10 happening separated by
1-30 seconds, then nothing for hours or even days. Watching iotop,
it seems to bekjournald2, but is hard to tell, because after iotop unsticks,
 the entries appear only briefly.

The most obvious things I can think of that might be at the root of
this is that I am using a self compiled (but Debianized) 2.6.28
kernel, and ext4.

Overall system is sid/experimental AMD64. Hardware is Core 2,
Intel MB (ICH8), pata system disk, sata data disk.

Has anyone heard/experienced anything related, or does
anyone know how to get better info than from iotop?


Thanks,
Kelly Clowers