You misunderstood me - I wasn't suggesting you install an indexer, but that the default indexer was likely the problem. Maybe ask on the Manjaro forum how to disable it.

I completely understood what you were saying! All I meant was there was no opportunity an indexer would be installed by me!! Installing even the tiny iotop took more than half an hour!!!

Still, if there exists an indexer installed, it won't be too hard to un-install it. Still, I don't really think there is one...

Perhaps there is none, but SOMETHING is leveraging kwoerker to do a TON of I/O behind the scenes, and that is exactly what a KDE indexer acts like. He was not suggesting a firm diagnosis, but something that fits the symptoms to consider.

I avoided Gnome and KDE for the longest time because they were "heavy" and I prefer lighter options. Recent KDE seems faster, lighter, and feature rich. I have learned to like it very much. That said, if it ALWAYS indexed like that I would find another desktop option. This may be some option or default that the maintainers chose that is horribly inappropriate for your platform. It costs little to ask where they discuss, as they would know better than anyone.

Yes, but this is XFCE. I don't know how Manjaro configures XFCE, but what indexer can be at work there? Tumbler? I doubt it could thwart the system performance like this.

I haven't seen anything this bad, but had similar if less exaggerated that evaded diagnosis for over a year. Even persisted after I swapped out the disk. Eventually only found it by setting kernel traces on the i/O queues themselves. Tracker in my case.

But, if indexer of some kind is doing this, shouldn't it be spotted in top?! Wouldn't it be traced in the journal?! I'll check the packages installed for anything fishy.

Perhaps, or perhaps not.
I have found things by examining top and other process reporting.
Some things hide, either by design or by accident. If they trigger bursts of requests through a service the requester is idle most of the time, but the service SERVICING those requests goes CRAZY! You then can identify the servicing process using top, but you have not identified the PROBLEM.
As we migrate to more systemd focused services we see more and more of this, though I am not convinced that the nature of systemd is the cause. The ways we code and the things we take for granted on modern system may be the more significant factor.

In any case, the question here is "what is triggering the behavior?" and more to the point "how do we FIX this?"!

I might consider iotop for additional investigation.

I juist found a thread that might help. I suggest you look through the issue and comments at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...-of-my-disk-io for some interesting reading. Some of this may apply directly to your investigation.

Examining the installed packages just a moment ago, I found "Tumbler" mentioned in one the comments above. Should I uninstall it?!

You may try and see if it helps. I doubt Tumbler is the culprit by itself though. It's just a thumbnail service. But one of Tumbler plugins is a possibility. Like e.g. cover thumbnailer that queries online services. You can just disable suspicious plugins in /etc/xdg/tumbler/tumbler.rc

As a workaround, ArchWiki suggests running this script at system startup.

I've also found "tracker3", but trying to uninstall it pamac told me it would remove more than a hundred packages as well!!!!!

I did post iotop output above (comment #11).

Sorry HosAdeeb to learn about your struggle. I would try to breakdown the problem into smaller chunks.

It is possible that on that partition you installed Manjaro, there is a bad block

1. Smartctl, badblock -v, Smartmontools: if used as sudo in the terminal could help check your hard disk health status for badblocks etc. eg then check the outcome

2. Check your drivers' safety

3. Check the installation integrity

4. Delete the partition and try a fresh install

5. Use a different version of Manjaro (later, or earlier)

6. Use another distro!!!

I'll certainly do that, though I really doubt it's a bad block:

• This is indeed the third time I re-partition the hard drive, and the behaviour is the same.
• I can access Manjaro's partition from the other distro with no difficulties.

I could, of course, try an older version (since the one I'm struggling with is the latest...), but then it would, as expected, try to upgrade itself...

Oh, yes, I'm using other distroes!!! I have other machines with other Linux distroes. I've been since the mid-90's. It's just that I wanted to try Manjaro...