My Hard Drive seems to be grinding away at times when I am not running an app. How do I find what i

[R.S.Lynn]

There are utilities such as WinTasks which purport to show CPU usage and
Memory usage. Are there any you know of that might show who is using my
hard drive (C ?

Very often, Task Manager will show no apps in the Applications tab. There
might be 60 processes showing in the Processes tab, with System Idle Process
at 98, taskmgr and svchost at 1 each. If there are changes to these values,
they are so fleeting that I hardly see them.

I have suspected GoogleDesktopCrawl, but the HD RP arm keeps on a-moving
after I have exited from that indexing routine.

So neither WinTasks nor Windows task manager tell me what I am curious
about. Any suggestions?

 

[db]

hard to say...

there are lots of considerations
for the cycling of your harddrive.

it could be doing exactly what
the operating system needs
it to do.

it could be going bad and the
o.s. is having a hard time
managing the files system

it could be spyware or
someother malware looking
for a bank account number, etc...

it could be time for tuning
up a cluttered harddisk,..

as you can see there are
lots of considerations...

have you taken any
actions for the few mentioned
above?

- db
There are utilities such as WinTasks which purport to show CPU usage and
Memory usage. Are there any you know of that might show who is using my
hard drive (C ?

Very often, Task Manager will show no apps in the Applications tab. There
might be 60 processes showing in the Processes tab, with System Idle Process
at 98, taskmgr and svchost at 1 each. If there are changes to these values,
they are so fleeting that I hardly see them.

I have suspected GoogleDesktopCrawl, but the HD RP arm keeps on a-moving
after I have exited from that indexing routine.

So neither WinTasks nor Windows task manager tell me what I am curious
about. Any suggestions?

 

[jim evans]

There are utilities such as WinTasks which purport to show CPU usage and
Memory usage. Are there any you know of that might show who is using my
hard drive (C ?

Very often, Task Manager will show no apps in the Applications tab. There
might be 60 processes showing in the Processes tab, with System Idle Process
at 98, taskmgr and svchost at 1 each. If there are changes to these values,
they are so fleeting that I hardly see them.

I have suspected GoogleDesktopCrawl, but the HD RP arm keeps on a-moving
after I have exited from that indexing routine.

So neither WinTasks nor Windows task manager tell me what I am curious
about. Any suggestions?

In the Processes Tab, click the CPU column heading. This will sort by
the processes using the most CPU. Since it keeps changing you have to
keep clicking it to keep the worst offender on top.

jim

 

[nesredep egrob]

hard to say...

there are lots of considerations
for the cycling of your harddrive.

it could be doing exactly what
the operating system needs
it to do.

it could be going bad and the
o.s. is having a hard time
managing the files system

it could be spyware or
someother malware looking
for a bank account number, etc...

it could be time for tuning
up a cluttered harddisk,..

as you can see there are
lots of considerations...

have you taken any
actions for the few mentioned
above?

- db

DB - Even Outlook express has a facility for making your lines go to 80 chars or so - have
you never noticed how difficult your posting look - takes a lot more reading - I do not
understand that someone has not already informed you of that

Borge in sunny Perth, Australia

 

[Jean Rosenfeld]

You can also add the CPU time column (Task manager, with processes tab in
focus, view menu, select columns) that shows the total time each process has
used CPU since last startup. For hard drive monitoring, you could try the
I/O reads and I/O writes columns These are also cumulative.

 

[R.S.Lynn]

I have sorted on that column. What I would not be able reliably to detect
is if some process took very little (milliseconds) of time.

I could imagine that it takes but very little time to issue a seek for a
given cyl and track, but longer to actually move the arm with the RP head.

I still have no answer to the moving of the HD arm when there is no
indication of who/what is moving it. I was a programmer for nearly a couple
of decades, and wrote disk utilities for (incredibly huge) disk peripherals
connected to "main frame computers." Because these peripherals were so
slow, compared with modern HDs, we systems programmers expended vast energy
"optimizing" the movements of the RP heads. So I can visualize the
movements of arms.

 

[db]

yes, it continues to be
humorous for me to receive superfluous
verbiage from crybabies.

but such postings
are nothing more than
red herrings and provided when
nothing of value can be contributed
to the "subject at hand" for the o.p.
who started the thread with an unresolved
computer issue.

"it is the intent and the content
provided to those in need,
that supersedes the
preferences and pet peeves
of others who are not." - db

"nesredep egrob" <Long. -31,48.21 Lat. 115,47.40> wrote in message

hard to say...

there are lots of considerations
for the cycling of your harddrive.

it could be doing exactly what
the operating system needs
it to do.

it could be going bad and the
o.s. is having a hard time
managing the files system

it could be spyware or
someother malware looking
for a bank account number, etc...

it could be time for tuning
up a cluttered harddisk,..

as you can see there are
lots of considerations...

have you taken any
actions for the few mentioned
above?

- db

DB - Even Outlook express has a facility for making your lines go to 80 chars or so - have
you never noticed how difficult your posting look - takes a lot more reading - I do not
understand that someone has not already informed you of that

Borge in sunny Perth, Australia

 

[John Wunderlich]

There are utilities such as WinTasks which purport to show CPU

I have sorted on that column. What I would not be able reliably
to detect is if some process took very little (milliseconds) of
time.

I could imagine that it takes but very little time to issue a seek
for a given cyl and track, but longer to actually move the arm
with the RP head.

I still have no answer to the moving of the HD arm when there is
no indication of who/what is moving it. I was a programmer for
nearly a couple of decades, and wrote disk utilities for
(incredibly huge) disk peripherals connected to "main frame
computers." Because these peripherals were so slow, compared
with modern HDs, we systems programmers expended vast energy
"optimizing" the movements of the RP heads. So I can visualize
the movements of arms.

Get a copy of freeware "Process Explorer"
<http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/ProcessesAndThreads/ProcessExplorer.mspx>

It has an "I/O" section that displays the top I/O using process.
This should be more helpful.

HTH,
John

 

[R.S.Lynn]

I have downloaded and installed this utility. There seems to be much to
learn about using it. When I have learned enough, I should be well on my
way to discovering what I want to know about who is using my HD arm.

With only 7 or 8 minutes of navigating through this utility, I see that it
is very powerful, and I am grateful that you have suggested it to me and
others who might read these posts. As far as displaying information to us
Windows users, it is imipressively superior to Task Manager.

 

[Zilbandy]

DB - Even Outlook express has a facility for making your lines go to 80 chars or so - have
you never noticed how difficult your posting look - takes a lot more reading - I do not
understand that someone has not already informed you of that

I've already ignored db because of his pissing... oops, posting style.
Sorry about that. Now, in keeping with my curmudgeon status, your
lines seem to be a bit longer than 80 characters. Years of Usenet use
has led me to use a line length of 70 characters. I use 70, you appear
to use 90, while db uses 12, or whatever he does. He probably hits
enter to end each line, too, instead of making use of auto line
wrapping. At least that's how it looks here due to the non uniformity
of his posts. This sure doesn't make me look at him as anyone who
should be giving advice. ROFL.

 

[John Wunderlich]

I have downloaded and installed this utility. There seems to be
much to learn about using it. When I have learned enough, I
should be well on my way to discovering what I want to know about
who is using my HD arm.

With only 7 or 8 minutes of navigating through this utility, I see
that it is very powerful, and I am grateful that you have
suggested it to me and others who might read these posts. As far
as displaying information to us Windows users, it is imipressively
superior to Task Manager.

The "Process Monitor" tool may also help you find out what's
reading/writing to disk:
<http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/FileAndDisk/processmonitor.mspx>

-- John