Internet radio causes extensive disk activity

I run mpd on my desktop as daemon and the drive LED is reasonable quiet, has a identical harddrive.

Tried different audio device (also null), turned off swap, nada difference on the Atom system.

 

Must be something in the way the processor caches or processes data. Maybe it's memory bandwidth or such. Perhaps the kernel is not optimized for atom? Not sure how Debian treats atom ...
Mrk

 

Oh man, how embarrassing this is...

Now that it turns out system specific and since I couldn't find relevant information regarding Atom optimization, I took the manual of the system to see if that would give me a clue. It turns out that on the front this system has a lan LED next to the hdd LED, so I got really close to the system and played the internet radio...

And then I learned that the excessive flashing wasn't the hard drive.
Unlike on a router, where you see a row of LED's, even when not blinking, this system has black LED's that blend nice in the black front. Only when they blink you notice a LED. And if you don't get really close or read the manual, you won't know how many LED's there are.

I apologize for this misguidance.

 

It's cool. At least I know I'm not insane
Mrk