After updating to Kubuntu 11.10, my file I/O performance has slowly just gotten worse and worse. It is to the point where I'm getting 1 MB/s write/read speeds to the drive. If I download something, the whole machine becomes unresponsive for at times up to 30 seconds. This usually causes a timeout in the download and the download then stops.
Even extracting archive files, while extracting the computer is just unusable on top of the terrible read/write speeds. It isn't the drive as I have Windows installed as well and when I boot to it I have no issues with the drive.
I did not have this issue using Kubuntu 11.04 and am thinking of downgrading. However, I'd much rather help out the Ubuntu community by working through these issues. I'm starting to lean towards the new Linux Kernel is just not working well with file handles. During file I/O my system usage does pick up, but it is not 100% CPU usage. My system is as follows.
Samsung 2 TB hard disk drive
AMD Phenom II x6 1055
4 GB RAM (only one in use according to system monitor)
ATI 5850 HD
