Hi all, This is just out of curiosity, but fixing the problem would lessen some irritations too. I have fetchmail --> sendmail --> procmail <spamassassin> (if I understand the order of events correctly. Whenever I download lots of e-mail at a time, I notice my system gets slower and less responsive, sometimes so bad that apps like evolution and mozilla seem to freeze until the mail is delivered. I never noticed the system monitor showning increased cpu activity, and top didn't turn up anything either. Today I realised that it's the hard drive that's going bezerk when I'm downloading mail. Why? It's not a slow drive, at least not slow enough that the colletive size of the mail should tax it. Seagate 40gb ATA-100 5400rpm disc (reiserfs) on a ATA-100 controller. Yast2 reports DMA to work in ATA-100 mode. Any clues? Thanks Hans