All good questions, Tony. And I agree, none of the solutions I've found or tried or even been successful with, feel like I'm fixing the problem. They definitely feel like I'm addressing symptoms. But in all my research I haven't seen anyone even hint as to what that might be.

In most cases, the best I can do is make the changes I've mentioned, and often that still results in more disk activity than I'd like, but easily in the usable range.