How To Stop Chrome Thrashing to Disk

Submitted by David Grant on Thu, 2008-09-04 12:21

Google Chrome will thrash to disk a lot to disk, at least in version 0.2.149.27, build 1583 (the first publically available beta) in Windows XP. It is so bad that my entire computer locks up a bit and becomes unresponsive. Disabling phishing and malware protection seems to stop the thrashing:

  1. Click on the monkey-wrench icon to the right of the address bar.
  2. Choose "Options" from the menu.
  3. Click the "Under the Hood" tab
  4. Disable the "Enable phishing and malware protection" check-box

[img_assist|nid=321|title=Google Chrome Disable Malware and Phishing Protection|desc=|link=none|align=none|width=418|height=315]

According to procmon it is writing to this filename: <systemdriveletter>:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Safe Browsing. There is only one other site where people are talking about this thrashing problem, at Ars Technica.

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Comments

Anonymous (not verified)

Fri, 2008-09-05 18:58

Yes, chrome is thrashing my harddisk. And Firefox 3 too. Apparently the cause of it is the same in both because the workaround for FF3 is also to disabled phishing protection (http://support.mozilla.com/tiki-view_forum_thread.php?locale=lt&comments...).

They probably share some common open source code (sqlite?) which causes the problem. Hope they will fix it because I don't feel safe switching off phishing and malware protection. For now, it is FF2 for me.

Anonymous (not verified)

Fri, 2008-09-05 23:23

gee this was driving me nuts, thanks for sharing. now it is bliss again! :-)

Don Fuego (not verified)

Thu, 2008-09-11 02:41

Thanks! Was also curious about what's going on. Certainly eats to much CPU power on a older 2 Ghz Pentium M laptop =(

Andrew D (not verified)

Sat, 2008-09-13 13:55

Thanks for this. I like Chrome a lot, like the ideas behind it a lot, but the disk I/O was driving me insane.

Anonymous (not verified)

Mon, 2008-09-15 18:46

Thankyou :) The thrashing only started today after some time of using Chrome.

Mark Esdale (not verified)

Tue, 2008-09-16 13:51

Brilliant! Well done!

Anonymous (not verified)

Mon, 2009-02-16 04:20

Good man. Thanks for sharing. It was driving me crazy.

Warts (not verified)

Thu, 2009-03-19 03:29

No wonder my system is behaving so weird. I recently got Chrome and have been facing various things.
Thanks for sharing this I think I am on of the victims, will try on your instructions.. or delete chrome..

us army shop (not verified)

Tue, 2009-04-28 13:34

Thank your for the settings informations - i will try it.

Beach vacation ... (not verified)

Thu, 2009-05-21 04:49

this is wat i was searching for a long time.. really chrome thought seems to be light weight but it is really occupying my whole process list... thanks for the info.. hope it will work fine for me here after...

Tracey (not verified)

Mon, 2009-12-28 22:21

This has been driving me insane since I started working from home a couple of months ago. It's going to make huge difference to me. Thanks heaps!

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