compressed news on a 7300 with 512K RAM

[Steven R. Houser]

I just started running compressed news on my 7300, which has only 512K of
RAM.  compress runs really slow on this machine, and slows down other
processes almost to a standstill.

compress and unbatch usually have to run for about 2 hours to get the day's
news ready to read.  For these hours, the hard disk is spinning rapidly,
grinding loudly as if it's overtaxed.  I imagine the disk swap space is
working overtime.

My question: will overworking the disk like this cause it to die an early 
death?  Or isn't it anything to worry about?  Would more RAM help the problem?  


-- 
Steven R. Houser    The Document Workshop | "Man is the only animal who
					  |  laughs--or needs to."
srh at docwrk.UUCP      CompuServe 71401,373 | 
uunet!osu-cis!n8emr!uncle!oink!docwrk!srh |                  Mark Twain