Ability to throttle background processes?

[2twisty]

I think one of my big issues with scan time may be database performance.

I set up XBMC on my Mac and mounted the media from the pi to the same structure on the mac. I then used the Mac to scan the media (via SMB from the Pi) and it went pretty fast. At least 10-20 times faster than scanning on the pi directly.

I then copied MyVideos75.db to the Database folder on the Pi and now all my library is there.

So, it gets me wondering... If the slowness in the scan is not the result of NTFS or SMB, I can only assume that it's the performance of the database on the Pi. This is either because the database engine can't do the work at the same time as accessing the file system, or the write speed of the SD card is too slow (I am using a Class 10 card)

I may try either a USB install, or simply putting the .xbmc directory on a faster device (hard drive or USB flash)

But, just to check my understanding, calling the "scan" function a second time will stop an existing scan? Can you think of any way (system flag or something) that we can tell if a scan is already in progress?