Thrashing (computer science)
phenomenon that when a computer's virtual memory subsystem is in a constant state of paging, rapidly exchanging data in memory for data on disk, to the exclusion of most application-level processing
Thrashing is when the OS (Operating System) of a computer spends most of its time switching pages between memory and the disk. This seriously hurts the computer's performance.[1] It prevents the computer from performing any useful work. Thrashing can also happen when the hard disk is attempting to retrieve files scattered all over the disk.[2]