So I am trying to figure why geth is such heavy disk I/O at startup, even after the chain is fully synced? The problem is that on a normal non-SSD hard drive it doesn't matter how fast the CPU is, Mist always falls out of sync at least initially and takes forever to get on the same page with geth. This affect is amplified on slower machines to the point I can't ever seem to sync up even after 30 / 40 minutes or more of trying. I had hoped the 1.4.x releases would help, but they do the same thing.