Australian Politics Forum - Firefox using 100% Hard Disk HDD

Welcome, Guest. Please Login or Register

Forum rules, Recent posts (with text), RSS, Search options, Browse all uploaded images
Home, Articles, Green Tax Shift, Evolution,

Australian Politics Forum › General Discussion › Technically Speaking › Firefox using 100% Hard Disk HDD

‹ Previous Topic | Next Topic ›

Pages: 1

Firefox using 100% Hard Disk HDD (Read 1243 times)

Bobby.

Gold Member

Offline

Australian Politics

Posts: 95270
Melbourne
Gender: male

Firefox using 100% Hard Disk HDD
Mar 19^th, 2017 at 7:24am

I think I've fixed a problem with my Mozilla Firefox browser.
I have version 52.0.1

My Advanced System care was giving warnings of 100% disk usage by Firefox.
Firefox was hammering my Hard Disk.
It was writing Gigabytes to the hard disk all the time.

After some internet searches I came up with a solution:
http://lifehacker.com/5687850/speed-up-firefox-by-moving-your-cache-to-ram-no-ra...

https://www.servethehome.com/firefox-is-eating-your-ssd-here-is-how-to-fix-it/

Basically in Firefox - you go to tools, options, general &
change the address bar from
about:preferences#general
to
about:config

It will come up with a screen saying
"this might void your warranty" ( only a joke )

click - I accept the risk.

browser.cache.disk.enable and set it to false

by double clicking on it.
then set

browser.cache.memory.enable to true

then change:

browser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash to FALSE

I am no longer getting constant 100% usage of the HDD.
The way it was going it would have trashed my HDD eventually.

Another solution would be to ditch Firefox & use Google Chrome.

IP Logged

Bobby.

Gold Member

Offline

Australian Politics

Posts: 95270
Melbourne
Gender: male

Re: Firefox using 100% Hard Disk HDD
Reply #1 - Apr 1^st, 2017 at 8:15pm

As my HDD has been hammered I decided I had to get a backup of all my data.

I bought a USB HDD 1 Terra-byte for only $79 from Office works.
It has USB3 but my motherboard has only USB2.
They are also at Harvey Norman for the same price:

http://www.harveynorman.com.au/computers-tablets/networking-hard-drives/usb-hard...

I know 3 other people who had their hard disk fail & lost all their data:
pictures, videos, documents, downloads etc.
I had less than 200 G Bytes of data.

I never knew that you could get so much capacity for such little money.
Of course - with a USB2 connection it took hours to save but it's worth it.

cheers
Bobby.

IP Logged

Bobby.

Gold Member

Offline

Australian Politics

Posts: 95270
Melbourne
Gender: male

Re: Firefox using 100% Hard Disk HDD
Reply #2 - Sep 14^th, 2018 at 3:57pm

I have had the same problem again -
it's been going on for a while actually.

Firefox is hammering my hard disk for 10 minutes at a time at 100%.

I just checked the above settings & they remain the same
so it shouldn't be doing it.

Does anyone have a clue how to stop that
& why on earth does Firefox use so much hard disk time?

I still haven't changed to Google Chrome -
maybe that's the answer?

Note: I have 16 G Bytes of RAM - why can't it use that?

IP Logged

lee Gold Member Offline Australian Politics Posts: 16400 Gender:	Re: Firefox using 100% Hard Disk HDD Reply #3 - Sep 14^th, 2018 at 4:12pm Bobby. wrote on Sep 14^th, 2018 at 3:57pm: Note: I have 16 G Bytes of RAM - why can't it use that? How does Windows sort it out? What about Virtual Memory? https://www.tomshardware.com/news/how-to-manage-virtual-memory-pagefile-windows-...
Back to top	IP Logged

Bobby.

Gold Member

Offline

Australian Politics

Posts: 95270
Melbourne
Gender: male

Re: Firefox using 100% Hard Disk HDD
Reply #4 - Sep 14^th, 2018 at 4:15pm

lee wrote on Sep 14^th, 2018 at 4:12pm:

Bobby. wrote on Sep 14^th, 2018 at 3:57pm:

Note: I have 16 G Bytes of RAM - why can't it use that?

How does Windows sort it out?

What about Virtual Memory?

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/how-to-manage-virtual-memory-pagefile-windows-...

No - I want to do the opposite of that - I want to use my RAM instead of my hard disk.
What I don't understand is why Firefox wants to write Gigabytes of data after visiting a few pages -
what on earth does it do that for?

I have version 62.0 running on Win7.

IP Logged

lee

Gold Member

Offline

Australian Politics

Posts: 16400
Gender: male

Re: Firefox using 100% Hard Disk HDD
Reply #5 - Sep 14^th, 2018 at 4:36pm

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1207724

https://smallbusiness.chron.com/clamp-virtual-memory-firefox-62812.html

"Here are tips to analyze the issue in Firefox

The first thing you should do is run Firefox without add-ons and customizations. Each add-on or extension you install may add to the browser's memory usage. Some add-ons, like Adblock Plus for example, may use more memory than the browser itself.

The easiest way to start Firefox in Safe Mode is to hold down the Shift-key on the computer keyboard before starting the browser.

Select Start in Safe Mode from the prompt that opens up. Safe Mode is a special mode in which add-ons and customizations are not loaded.

Check the memory use of the browser -- you may need to browse like you usually do for some time -- to see if it gets as high as before."

https://www.ghacks.net/2015/04/08/what-you-do-when-firefox-uses-too-much-memory/

or try this -
https://superuser.com/questions/399473/firefox-writes-megabytes-of-data-per-minu...

IP Logged

juliar

Gold Member

Offline

Australian Politics

Posts: 22966

Re: Firefox using 100% Hard Disk HDD
Reply #6 - Sep 14^th, 2018 at 5:33pm

Bobby,

I would be looking for either a virus or spyware sending Firefox off its head.

I had some rouge site take over Firefox and I had to reboot and delete Firefox and its data area and then download and install a new copy and now it works no problem.

If you have a half decent spyware/virus scanner run it and see what comes up.

Bear in mind some spyware can disable common virus/spyware scanners.

Only download a new copy of Firefox from the official Firefox site and NEVER from some other site as it will very likely contain spyware.

Some virus/spyware can be quite hard to get rid of unless you have an above average spyware scanner like Webroot SecureAnywhere.

I speak from actual practical experience.

IP Logged

Bobby. Gold Member Offline Australian Politics Posts: 95270 Melbourne Gender:	Re: Firefox using 100% Hard Disk HDD Reply #7 - Sep 14^th, 2018 at 6:48pm Thanks Juliar & Lee, I'll perhaps have a look on the weekend - I am mentally exhausted after a week of hard work. I have a paid version of Norton Internet Security & I don't believe I've ever had a virus or malware.
Back to top	IP Logged

Pages: 1

‹ Previous Topic | Next Topic ›

« Forum

‹ Board

Top of this page