I think you should try install atop. This tiny little program will tell you witch app makes the bottleneck.

hdparm -t /dev/sda hdparm -t /dev/sdb

> Using Fedora 18, KDE 4.10.2 on x86_64 laptop with kernel 3.8.11-200 > and nvidia proprietary drivers. > > I have two hard disk. One SSD with / and swap and one hybrid with /home. > Recently, I remarked extremely long times (>60 s) to open some > programs like firefox or dolphin, the latter being the most critical. > I suspect disk access to slow down the machine as this happens when > the processor is nearly idle. > What can I check? Can I check the hard disks, how? Could it be something else? I experience this very very slow behaviour again today each time I need to access the disk. However, I ran hdparm as suggested by Roberto and found no difference in hard disk speed compared to normal behaviour. But I have launched libreoffice from command line becase it was to slow to open dolphin and I found some errors in the terminal (see below). Could this be of any help to diagnose the problem? I now run kernel 3.9.4-200 Regards, Frédéric $ LibreOffice(10924)/kdecore (K*TimeZone*): KSystemTimeZones: ktimezoned initialize() D-Bus call failed: "Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken." LibreOffice(10924): couldn't create slave: "Impossible de créer le module d'entrée / sortie : (translation: unable to create the input/output module) klauncher a retourné : Protocole « » inconnu. (translation: unkown " " protocole) " LibreOffice(10924): couldn't create slave: "Impossible de créer le module d'entrée / sortie : klauncher a retourné : Protocole « » inconnu. " LibreOffice(10924): couldn't create slave: "Impossible de créer le module d'entrée / sortie : klauncher a retourné : Protocole « » inconnu. " LibreOffice(10924): couldn't create slave: "Impossible de créer le module d'entrée / sortie : klauncher a retourné : Protocole « » inconnu. " QPainter::begin: Paint device returned engine == 0, type: 3 QPainter::save: Painter not active QPainter::save: Painter not active QPainter::setRenderHint: Painter must be active to set rendering hints QPainter::setPen: Painter not active QPainter::setPen: Painter not active QPainter::restore: Unbalanced save/restore QPainter::restore: Unbalanced save/restore QPainter::begin: Paint device returned engine == 0, type: 3 QPainter::save: Painter not active QPainter::save: Painter not active QPainter::setRenderHint: Painter must be active to set rendering hints QPainter::setPen: Painter not active QPainter::setPen: Painter not active QPainter::restore: Unbalanced save/restore QPainter::restore: Unbalanced save/restore QPainter::begin: Paint device returned engine == 0, type: 3 QPainter::save: Painter not active QPainter::save: Painter not active QPainter::setRenderHint: Painter must be active to set rendering hints QPainter::setPen: Painter not active QPainter::setPen: Painter not active QPainter::restore: Unbalanced save/restore QPainter::restore: Unbalanced save/restore QPainter::begin: Paint device returned engine == 0, type: 3 QPainter::save: Painter not active QPainter::save: Painter not active QPainter::setRenderHint: Painter must be active to set rendering hints QPainter::setPen: Painter not active QPainter::setPen: Painter not active QPainter::restore: Unbalanced save/restore QPainter::restore: Unbalanced save/restore -- users mailing list users(a)lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines Have a question? Ask away: http://ask.fedoraproject.org