On my Linux daily driver, I have noticed that disk I/O impacts system performance beyond expected: when running many file copies and other disk activities, even things I didn't expect to slow down did: the mouse would stutter and freeze, audio would stop after a while while the disk was busy. Running top showed no obvious CPU hog. After the operations were finished, the system would come back to normal. Why does disk I/O influence the system so much as to stutter the mouse and lag? Is there a way to alleviate this?
Why does disk I/O slows the system so much?
linux kernel;hard disk;io;scheduling