HD Activity

[Steve Giannoni]

P-IV running Widows XP Home and Norton Anti Virus. Every few seconds
(varies) there is very brief Hard Drive activity, which doesn't seem
right. What's the best way to determine what's going on, etc. PS -
doesn't happen while running in the Safe Mode ...

 

[John McGaw]

P-IV running Widows XP Home and Norton Anti Virus. Every few seconds
(varies) there is very brief Hard Drive activity, which doesn't seem
right. What's the best way to determine what's going on, etc. PS -
doesn't happen while running in the Safe Mode ...

What you describe sounds perfectly normal -- such is the way of
multi-tasking multi-threaded operations. Try turning on the columns for I/O
read/write/other in Windows Task Manager and then watch to see if any of
the numbers are jumping in sync with the accesses. If you find one it will
tell you which task(s) are doing the accessing.

 

[John McGaw]

On Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:06:39 -0400, John McGaw snip...

While the I/O /other will show some activity, it is
important to remember it will also show memory activity -
not necessarily hard drive access. For example a simple
taskbar tray app I have on one system is showing over 1TB of
activity (since last reboot, system has been up for awhile
obviously) and all it does is monitor whether a remote
control receiver for a TV tuner/capture card has any
activity.

True. And I hadn't thought about that aspect. What I find useful is to
watch the I/O counters and listen to the drive accesses. The simultaneous
activities seem to "click" with my alleged brain and makes things much more
clear.

 

[Steve Giannoni]

How do I access the Windows Task Manager ?

What you describe sounds perfectly normal -- such is the way of
multi-tasking multi-threaded operations. Try turning on the columns for I/O
read/write/other in Windows Task Manager and then watch to see if any of
the numbers are jumping in sync with the accesses. If you find one it will
tell you which task(s) are doing the accessing.

 

[John McGaw]

How do I access the Windows Task Manager ?

Right-click in the task bar (normally at the bottom of your screen) then
click on Task Manager.

 

[Steve Giannoni]

thanks ...

Right-click in the task bar (normally at the bottom of your screen) then
click on Task Manager.

 

[~misfit~]

Somewhere on teh intarweb "John McGaw" typed:

Right-click in the task bar (normally at the bottom of your screen)
then click on Task Manager.

Wow! Neat. All this time I've been using the three-fingered salute to access
it.

Cheers,
--
Shaun.

DISCLAIMER: If you find a posting or message from me
offensive, inappropriate, or disruptive, please ignore it.
If you don't know how to ignore a posting, complain to
me and I will be only too happy to demonstrate... ;-)

 

[Steve Giannoni]

My concern is for the extra wear-'n-tear on my Hard Drive, which I
estimate is 5 to 15 % of real time (it averages about 3 of these
activities every 20 seconds, each being some fraction of a second).

Not having much luck with the task manager. I stare at the numbers
while listening to the Hard Drive, but no luck so far.

Any further suggestions / comments, most welcome, & thanks ! ...