is my Mac behaving funny?

[jkaz]

I've been trying for a few weeks to pinpoint what issue I might be having.

Here's my best try yet in describing it:

My hard drive seems to be dominating my computing.

Frequently, when trying to perform simple functions, I can hear my hard drive spinning often accompanied by a spinning beach ball. It makes my computing sluggish for a good handful of moments, then it is back to being smooth.

I can only compare it to times when i've worked on a machine that doesn't have enough RAM for everything I'm trying to do.

The most recent occurrence- a few moments ago- was when I simply had a browser window open and my system profiler- there is 8 gigs of RAM in here.

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks,

Jeff

 

[JediMeister]

What does running Disk Utility report when verifying the hard disk? Does it suggest you need to repair the drive while booted to the OS disc? Verify/repair permissions?