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lots of disk activity

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  • 9 have this problem
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  • Last reply by cor-el

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I run Mac OS 10.8.2 and Firefox 16.0.2

I run into situations where Firefox is writing huge quantities of data to my hard drive. The CPU utilization isn't significant (25% or less), but the Disk Activity is maxed for quite some time (up to a minute), which results in non-responsiveness of all applications.

I run Mac OS 10.8.2 and Firefox 16.0.2 I run into situations where Firefox is writing huge quantities of data to my hard drive. The CPU utilization isn't significant (25% or less), but the Disk Activity is maxed for quite some time (up to a minute), which results in non-responsiveness of all applications.

All Replies (2)

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Try clearing your Firefox cache:


  1. Go to Firefox > History > Clear recent history or (if no Firefox button is shown) go to Tools > Clear recent history.
  2. Under "Time range to clear", select "Everything".
  3. Now, click the arrow next to Details to toggle the Details list active.
  4. From the details list, check Cache and Cookies and uncheck everything else.
  5. Now click the Clear now button.

Further information can be found in the Clear your cache, history and other personal information in Firefox article.

Did this fix your problems? Please report back to us!

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You can also check for problems with the places.sqlite database file in the Firefox Profile Folder.


Try to create a new profile as a test to check if your current profile is causing the problems.

See "Creating a profile":

If the new profile works then you can transfer some files from the old profile to that new profile, but be careful not to copy corrupted files.