07-25-2004, 09:44 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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What Process is Thrashing My Hard Drive?
Have you ever watched your hard drive light come on, and stay on, and wonder what's causing it? Well, I wonder the same thing and I'm putting out a call to the DMT community: does anyone know of an application, freeware or otherwise, that actively scans the processes that are accessing the hard drive and would tell me what's going on? I know I can look at the process tree, but CPU usage and hard drive access aren't always linked. I'm looking specifically for a program that would tell me what process or application is reading/writing data to the hard drive, and perhaps even how much data and where it's going. Anyone heard of an application like this?
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07-25-2004, 09:53 PM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 2,968
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First - it is really funny you use the word trashing and not thrashing.  Because trashing is really what thrashing ends up doing.
Anyways, you can always go to your Task Manger and turn on more stat columns and some of the columns I like are the I/O writes and I/O reads which really tells you a lot about the applications you run and how much they talk with the disk.
Finally, do you run Picasa? I have found that if you turn on the always scan/seek mode, sometimes (though this is rare) it will refresh its search.
Suhit
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07-25-2004, 10:10 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Suhit Gupta
First - it is really funny you use the word trashing and not thrashing. Because trashing is really what thrashing ends up doing. |
Heh heh...that was actually a glitch on my part - I meant to write trashing. ;-)
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Originally Posted by Suhit Gupta
Anyways, you can always go to your Task Manger and turn on more stat columns...
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Well I'll be damned! I never knew that was an option - look at all that juicy data! :-) Thanks Suhit!
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07-25-2004, 11:51 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 49
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Page Faults is the one most closely linked to HD usage. IO read/write also covers network and maybe ram.
EDIT:
If it only happens once and a while it may be XP optimizing your drive
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07-26-2004, 12:07 AM
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Theorist
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 301
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So, what was it?
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07-26-2004, 12:22 AM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by backpackerx
So, what was it?
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Oh, this wasn't one thing in particular, it's just something I've always wondered about with difference machines and programs. :-)
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07-26-2004, 12:43 AM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
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I XP will do this when optimizing for the prefetch cache.
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07-26-2004, 08:08 AM
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Thinker
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 402
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I often click on the CPU column in Task manager to see which task is eating cereals (read: accessing the hard drive like mad  ). This sorts the most active processes to the top at every refresh, so you might want to change the refresh intervals to something else than realtime. (Otherwise you won't be able to see which processes are active)
Sometimes, I even run freeware Process Explorer -- a very feature-rich task manager -- to examine the processes a bit closer and look at which files they are opening and closing. It might be worth a look into on your side.
__________________
Filip Norrg�rd:: My blog @ filips.net |
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07-26-2004, 08:53 AM
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Thinker
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 430
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by manywhere
I often click on the CPU column in Task manager to see which task is eating cereals (read: accessing the hard drive like mad ). This sorts the most active processes to the top at every refresh, so you might want to change the refresh intervals to something else than realtime. (Otherwise you won't be able to see which processes are active)
Sometimes, I even run freeware Process Explorer -- a very feature-rich task manager -- to examine the processes a bit closer and look at which files they are opening and closing. It might be worth a look into on your side. |
Process Explorer is a very good application - Jason, I also suggest you take a look at this. You may also want to try FileMon from the same website ( www.sysinternals.com). It can tell you exactly which files are being accessed by which application at any given time.
Both of these apps are real eye openers to use. 
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07-26-2004, 01:54 PM
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Mystic
Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 1,887
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If you have MS Office installed, the indexing system can eat up a ton of idle CPU cycles as it searches your drive and indexes your documents.
XP has built-in auto-defrag that also cause otherwise idle systems to run the HD. After all you don't really want it doing it when you are busy, right?
So it could be just XP cleaning up after you.
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