Constant Accessing of Hard Drive

[Judge Dee]

On a brand new Asus G73 notebook, and Windows 7 64 bit, my hard drive light is steadily flashing, even when the computer is idle. I've scanned with 2 AVs, with no result.
Does Windows 7 constantly access the drive?

[J_L]

Check using Resource Monitor > Disk > Total (B/sec).

Alternatively, you can use a third party software.

[Judge Dee]

Thanks J_L.
Really nice resource.
It shows master file table, NTFS Volume log, and pagefile.sys constantly reading/writing (with very low usage).
I assume that's normal?

[J_L]

I guess that's normal, as long as the usage is very low. What are the numbers?

[Sully]

It is probably a service, either an OS default one, or a tool that was included with your computer. I think I remember something like that when I first started using w7. I believe I got rid of it by disabling a service, but I honestly can't remember now. I would do some searching on the services you have running and see what you might find.

Sul.

[Judge Dee]

J_L, last night the numbers were around 200-300 b/sec. This morning they're higher.
Sully, thanks for the tip. I had already disabled some services, but I'll search some more. Asus does seem to have more services running than the computers I'm used to.
The clicking of the drive drives me nuts (even though it's soft).

[Sully]

-{ Quote: "
The clicking of the drive drives me nuts (even though it's soft)." }-
Personally, I would not rest until I found what was causing it. You might try process monitor, to see what is accessing the hdd. That tool will bog your machine down usually as it logs, but it should tell you what is accessing what.

As an example, I was using Cyberhawk when they changed to Threatfire. I started using threatfire, but thought that it did more activity at idle than cyberhawk. I used (I think) filemon and regmon and diskmon (older tools) and with them could see what areas each program was accessing, and how often the access happened. Threatfire and Cyberhawk both would do some action that I could "hear", much like you do. It turned out that every X seconds or minutes those programs checked a bunch of registry keys and file/directories. So, maybe you can use a similar approach?

Sul.

[Judge Dee]

Well the Resource Monitor showed svchost.exe (LocalSystemNetworkRestricted) doing most of the reading/writing.
I've spent the day disabling everything I could.
Then I downloaded (after reading your post Sully) Process Monitor. Whooo! It listed svchost until I thought my eyes would bug out.
I'm tired. Tomorrow is another day.
Many heartfelt thanks!

[J_L]

I would disable the Windows Search Service (only disables indexing) unless you need it, and disable WinSAT (Microsoft > Windows > Maintenance) from Task Scheduler.

[mantra]

-{ Quote: "Well the Resource Monitor showed svchost.exe (LocalSystemNetworkRestricted) doing most of the reading/writing.
I've spent the day disabling everything I could.
Then I downloaded (after reading your post Sully) Process Monitor. Whooo! It listed svchost until I thought my eyes would bug out.
I'm tired. Tomorrow is another day.
Many heartfelt thanks!" }-
i have the same problem
but i can't find the service that makes this
for example my antivirus avira , scan lots of file ,without starting programs:wacko: :wacko:

[Sully]

svchost is synonymous with service host -- meaning each instance of svchost is the parent of other services. In XP I would use tasklist /svc to view the svchost children. This let me see what each svchost was responsible for. You can then find the PID of the svchost that is doing the most accessing, then determine what that svchost is the parent of, then figure out if there is anything you can tweak. Windows 7 might offer an easier way than using tasklist, I haven't tried that though.

Sul.

[Sadeghi85]

Prio (http://prnwatch.com/prio.html) makes that easy. I sort processes by CPU usage in Task Manager because usually the one that constantly reads and writes uses more CPU too.

[mantra]

-{ Quote: "Prio (http://prnwatch.com/prio.html) makes that easy. I sort processes by CPU usage in Task Manager because usually the one that constantly reads and writes uses more CPU too." }-
i tried with process hacker , i was not lucky

[Judge Dee]

-{ Quote: "I would disable the Windows Search Service (only disables indexing) unless you need it, and disable WinSAT " }-
Thanks J_L, did that.
Just about every asus and windows service I disabled.
I installed a linux to see if it is connected with hardware, but it didn't occur.
-{ Quote: "You might try process monitor, to see what is accessing the hdd" }-
Sully, after an image restore I installed System Explorer, and it showed several svchost processes alternately running.
I've got to be honest - I've lost patience. :'(
I'm just going to live with it.
I really do appreciate the help, I'm just too old. My brain is mush.

[pajenn]

You could try svchost viewer (http://majorgeeks.com/svchost_viewer_d6040.html); a free "program to see what all those svchost.exe are running." Another tool I like is Anvir Task Manager because it shows you the "disk load" imposed by each process (that is separate from CPU usage). Also if you single click its tray icon, it creates a small window that shows the basic stats and which processes are exerting significant CPU use and/or disk load.

Process Monitor is awesome but tough to use imo. It gives so much info that it's hard to make sense of any of it so you need to filter some of it out, but that in turn takes effort and expertise.

The usual suspects for heavy disk usage are defraggers that have a "background optimization" component (e.g. Diskeeper) and search engines that index files (e.g. Copernic Desktop Search). I disable Windows and other automatic updates too. Real-time AV and firewall normally cause some amount of semi-constant disk usage that I think we just have to put up with to be semi-safe.

[mantra]

-{ Quote: "Thanks J_L, did that.
Just about every asus and windows service I disabled.
I installed a linux to see if it is connected with hardware, but it didn't occur.

Sully, after an image restore I installed System Explorer, and it showed several svchost processes alternately running.
I've got to be honest - I've lost patience. :'(
I'm just going to live with it.
I really do appreciate the help, I'm just too old. My brain is mush." }-
me too i bored
in idle mode soon as the boot , i see avira that scans many files 1400:wacko: :wacko:
can't understand why?

[Cvette]

I had this same problem too with Windows Vista x64. I eventually narrowed down the source, superfetch.

[Warlockz]

Is Volume Shadow Copy running? and

This is from the AxCrypt Blog (http://www.axantum.com/Blog/default.html?page=2)

-{ Quote: "A little known, and even less used, feature of all Windows versions from XP and forward is that they support a property called 'Last Access' on all files. On the surface, this seems neat, if not so useful. You can see whenever a file was last accessed using this property.

But think about it. What does this mean? It means that every time you open a file for reading, Windows needs to write something somewhere on the disk! If you're in the process of enumerating, lets say 500 000 files, this is equal to slow! Does anyone ever use that property? Not that I know of.

I'm working with file based persistent storage in my solutions, not with a database, so file access is pretty important to me. By disabling this 'feature', I speeded up enumerating the file system by about a factor of 10! Generally speaking, you'll speed up any system with many file accesses by turning this feature off.

It's really simple too. At a DOS-prompt write:

fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1

When you're at it, you might also want to do:

fsutil behavior set disable8dot3 1

This last command disables generation of 8-dot-3 legacy file names, effectively halfing the size of directories in NTFS, which must be a good thing. Beware that there might be 16-bit software out there which actually need those 8-dot-3 names to find your files..." }-

so its like a double wammy Shadow copy and NTFS Last access both writing at the same time :thumbd:

I dont use any of these features...

[J_L]

Last Access should be 1 by default for Vista and above. It's 1 on my clean Windows 7 64-bit virtual machine.

[mantra]

-{ Quote: "I had this same problem too with Windows Vista x64. I eventually narrowed down the source, superfetch." }-
can you tell me how fix it?
should i edit the registry?

thanks

[mantra]

-{ Quote: "Is Volume Shadow Copy running? and

This is from the AxCrypt Blog (http://www.axantum.com/Blog/default.html?page=2)



so its like a double wammy Shadow copy and NTFS Last access both writing at the same time :thumbd:

I dont use any of these features..." }-

but i guess ntfs last access is useful to optimaze the program load up

about shadow copy i guess i have on , never seen in xp
how could i know if it's on ?
is a service?
thanks

[J_L]

Shadow Copy is necessary for most disk imaging programs and system restore.

It's manual, not automatic, anyways. There's no point of disabling it.

[mantra]

-{ Quote: "I had this same problem too with Windows Vista x64. I eventually narrowed down the source, superfetch." }-
right! bingo
it's this service sysmain in english superfetch

but i don't know if it's a good idea to disable i mean for w7 performance

[Cvette]

You may notice a slight performance drop by disabling superfetch (see block-quote below), but it shouldn't be major.

I do remember reading about a way to adjust what superfetch 'fetches' by changing a registry key. If your result of disabling superfetch is a noticeable performance drop, I'll look into it for you.

Via Wikipedia:

-{ Quote: "SuperFetch is a technology that pre-loads commonly used applications into memory to reduce their load times. It is based on the "prefetcher" function in Windows XP.

The purpose is to improve performance in situations where running an anti-virus scan or back-up utility would result in otherwise recently-used information being paged out to disk, or disposed from in-memory caches, resulting in lengthy delays when a user comes back to their computer after a period of non-use.

SuperFetch also keeps track of what times of day those applications are used, which allows it to intelligently pre-load information that is expected to be used in the near future.

By default the necessary files are loaded into main memory, but using a feature called ReadyBoost, Windows Vista and Windows 7 can use alternate storage such as USB flash drives, thereby freeing up main memory. Although hard disks usually have higher data transfer rates, flash drives can be faster for small files or non-sequential I/O because of their short random seek times." }-

-EDIT- Off to bed for now. It's 2:49 AM :wacko: but I'll check in with you tomorrow, and dig up that registry fix if need be. Good luck!

[Bambo]

Not sure who has which problem but to the OP with Asus go to this forum http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/ Clean it off the Asus crap. Install latest bios, drivers - and don't use a crappy AV. You will need to look but there will be a mile long thread about your model as well. Chances you have been unlucky with a std. Windows are zero, bundle crap is a more real danger. "Brand new" is probably the problem. No point in experimenting with Windows until computer is cleaned for Asus stuff, updated too. That forum has a "Asus utility and bloatware guide" for good reasons. If you really are unlucky it will be because models page on Asus site does not have latest drivers for whatever unit and without that nothing works properly. Asus can be bad with this. A few drivers will be Asus specific but most are 3rd. party and can be installed from other sources in newer versions. Use forum for getting correct info.

Superfetch on 7 should not cause problems after it has settled in. Give it a few days. Is not dumb and aggressive as on Vista and there are real speed benefits on both laptop and desktop.

[mantra]

-{ Quote: "You may notice a slight performance drop by disabling superfetch (see block-quote below), but it shouldn't be major.

I do remember reading about a way to adjust what superfetch 'fetches' by changing a registry key. If your result of disabling superfetch is a noticeable performance drop, I'll look into it for you.

Via Wikipedia:



-EDIT- Off to bed for now. It's 2:49 AM :wacko: but I'll check in with you tomorrow, and dig up that registry fix if need be. Good luck!" }-
thanks a lot
may i ask a question ?
how did you narrow and narrowed down the source, superfetch?
i mean did you use some tools,software?

[mantra]

-{ Quote: "
Superfetch on 7 should not cause problems after it has settled in. Give it a few days. Is not dumb and aggressive as on Vista and there are real speed benefits on both laptop and desktop." }-

but i found on my desktop and laptop (without all the ausus cra..) but only the
necessary drivers ,ati and audio the same behavior


which version do you use of w7?

thanks

[Judge Dee]

-{ Quote: "
...Superfetch on 7 should not cause problems after it has settled in..." }-

You're right about this, at least on my machine. I had disabled superfetch at the very beginning of the problems. It was not causing the problem.
Thanks for the link. I had earlier found a similar one about Asus junk. I uninstalled all of it to no avail.
I removed the AV.
My computer was now more like an Apple IIe.
I really liked Windows 7 a lot, but this stinking Asus of mine can't deal with it, so I just put on Linux for good.
Many thanks.

[Bambo]

Just a Home Premium on Asus ul80vt. Actually in some ways it is faster than my desktop with 16gb ram - and Vista! Numbers don't necessarily mean a thing. Fire up that Process Monitor after you have disabled search indexing. And Avira for that matter. How is Windows Defender today? Can turn off even more, exclude away but monitor program will tell you regardless of how many processes. You should not really tweak 7 that much. If in doubt check this site http://www.howtogeek.com/tag/windows-7/ avoids the worst nonsense and of course there are many annoyances and such.

If you have Asus you should still run through that forum and guides. Some things you might want to keep, other things you just think you have removed. Are you sure all drivers are updated? bios? bios settings are correct? Also possible there is an idiotic conflict with bios whatever and a driver whatever. Weird things happen with laptops but rule of using latest versions fixes most problems. What you can do. Weird stuff is hard to figure out by your self so check forums dealing with same brand/model. Avoid Google and magic tricks.

Superfetch on my laptop runs smooth. Benefits easily outweighs a bit of extra initial hd activity. More than I can say for Vista where it is turned off. Does work but is stupid like hammering huge video files. Not all the time but eventually superfetch will go in to a loop of stupidity. Brilliant idea that works fine on 7. All is scheduled and calculated so you cannot and should not change anything. Unless you can point to documentation from MS there are no registry tweaks, 0 as in zero, null. If you turn it off Windows still use all or most of all ram for caching, just without thinking too much about content. Hitrate will be lower and then you waste ram. On Vista even with 16gb of ram I sometimes notice that Vista has to start from scratch, like when opening control panel. Superfetch would have known that was a common task and made sure it was ready. I don't believe turning super fetch off is a solution that make sense, not on 7.

I have used 7 Ultimate on same computer that now runs Vista and though I am sure there are 100s of fixes and tweaks making 7 faster one of the the big ones is definitely better superfetch. Right before I downgraded to Vista I did a disk benchmark with Crystaldiskmark. With new updated Vista I did same test and it was 15% slower :) About the difference over all I think. 7 is smoother out of the box so don't break it because of irrelevant problems. Most likely that is the case.

Well Judge Dee there are a lot of noise on that forum but they also have all answers to problems. I spend most of an afternoon cleaning up my Asus of Asus crap - really not that straight forward. I was close to download a "free" iso. I would also use Linux or Ubuntu which is almost compatible. Almost being the keyword. When I have do go in to sudo mode to adjust brightness I know something is wrong ;) Worse because this model has 2 video cards so 2 problems! You have to be dedicated to go through that and 7 does work with no effort. For most at least.

[Cvette]

-{ Quote: "thanks a lot
may i ask a question ?
how did you narrow and narrowed down the source, superfetch?
i mean did you use some tools,software?" }-

I opened up Task Manager and observed activity from 'svchost' for a few minutes, allowing it ample time to finish any start-up duties. A few minutes passed, and I started to notice a lot of disk activity via the LED on my desktop tower. I opened up Performance Monitor and saw that 'LocalSystemNetworkRestricted' was the source of the activity.

After some Googling I found out that Superfetch was the likely culprit in my situation, which it was.

I can't say much about the performance now, as I run 'Ubuntu' instead of Windows. But while I was using Windows I didn't notice a difference with Superfetch on/off. Although it may vary from computer-to-computer.

Hope that helps! :)

[mantra]

-{ Quote: "I opened up Task Manager and observed activity from 'svchost' for a few minutes, allowing it ample time to finish any start-up duties. A few minutes passed, and I started to notice a lot of disk activity via the LED on my desktop tower. I opened up Performance Monitor and saw that 'LocalSystemNetworkRestricted' was the source of the activity.

After some Googling I found out that Superfetch was the likely culprit in my situation, which it was.

I can't say much about the performance now, as I run 'Ubuntu' instead of Windows. But while I was using Windows I didn't notice a difference with Superfetch on/off. Although it may vary from computer-to-computer.

Hope that helps! :)" }-

never used Performance Monitor , do you mean the built in utility in w7

ubuntu really rocks!
sadly i can not run photoshop , i'm bought the cs2 years ago , and i upgrade
it's the only reason that keep me stuck on windowze:wacko:

thanks a lot

[Cvette]

-{ Quote: "never used Performance Monitor , do you mean the built in utility in w7

ubuntu really rocks!
sadly i can not run photoshop , i'm bought the cs2 years ago , and i upgrade
it's the only reason that keep me stuck on windowze:wacko:

thanks a lot" }-

Yes, the one included in W7.

Ubuntu does rock, and I'm in the same boat as you with Photoshop, only reason I hang on to Windows.

Glad everything is workin' better for you!