I've gone back to Firefox until they do something about the excessive disk activity.

Okay. I see.

At least its hell allot faster

But FF aint light on the resources either. Especially if you plan to use Addons with it. I believe Opera is the lighter option.

@kala

As is usual (by people who decide to drop Chrome) there are no details posted as to what version of Chrome they are on and what OS they are using ...

You never know, there might be a known problem we could help you with or it could simply be your configuration...

Chrome 3.0.195.5

Win XP SP3

Intel quad core with 4Gb memory

SATA-300 750Gb disk

Problem is excessive disk activity on startup, DND pre-fetching and antil malware turned off.

is there an update for your Chrome?

try running Dev Chrome

Not sure which version of Chrome you're on as Beta is currently 3.0.195.6 and Dev is 3.0.197.11, neither of which is what you're saying you have ...

I'm actually curious as to how "excessive" the "excessive disk activity" is.

I'm currently on Win XP sp2, Chrome Dev 3.0.197.11
And my hardware is a pitiful P4 M 1.8GHz, 768MB RAM, ATI Mobility Radeon 16MB

Yet, I use Chrome quite well. With 3 open tabs. Chrome normally eats around 100MB of RAM.

try

about:memory

mine shows 146340k with 7 tabs opened and plugins