RAM usage during I/O

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tomaz Koritnik
  • Start date Start date
T

Tomaz Koritnik

Hi

I have a problem. When working with files (copying, reading from,...), my
Windows uses all available physical RAM. I have WinXP SP1 and I think that
this is caused by fragmented volume. For example, when recording files to
DVD (files must be big, like >500MB), Windows uses 100% of all physical RAM.
After that, Windows uses PF and swapping a lot and my computer is so slow I
can't do anything. Even if I leave it alone, all that I/O and swapping
operations slow down my computer so much, that Nero's cache for example,
when writing DVD, becomes empty because reading from disk is slower that
writing to DVD (4x). Even if I write with 2x things are the same. How can
reading from disk be so slow if disk can read 40MB/s? And I know that this
is a Windows problem not Nero's because the same happens if I'm copying
files. I have 512MB of memory and usualy 300MB free. When I copy large file,
memory consumption rises to 100% in arround 8 seconds.

I would like to find a solution to this but please don't recommend me to
defragment disk because I already did that and it didn't work for a long
time and my disks are not even heavy fragmented. Is there a way to tell
Windows not to use so much physical RAM?

I hope you understand my questione...

regards
Tomaz
 
What are yr swap file settings, and how much free space on swap file disk?
Is Nero using same disk for temp file?
 
WHy have memory [RAM] and not use it: this is what computer design is all
about. A CPU has huge amounts of capacity to do WORK: however when it has to
move lots of data around the place, then it must use the resources carefully
and in an organised manner.

An operating system manages the use of memory [hopefully in the optimal
manner] to make sure the computer does its work as quickly as possible.

RAM, when fully utilised is complimented by the SWAP file [also known as
pagefile] which is aptly named as it moves segments of data / programme files
off to a mapped area of the hard drive to create a virtual map of the
computer memory and make it larger than its physical constraint [actual size].

A way to esure that DVD copying is successful is to ensure that the copying
process [when doing disc to disc] requires that the application [Nero in your
case] writes a temporay copy to hard drive.

To make things work more efficiently again, ensure that your hard drive
are defragmented, additionally I recommend that you set up your physical
devices as such:

Note: Most Motherboards have 2 x IDE controller interface plugs.
Onto the 1st IDE Interface [Primary] connect your System Disc as Master and
DVD reader as Slave.
Onto the 2nd IDE Interface [Secondary] connect your 2nd Hard Disc as Master
and DVD Burner as Slave.

Make sure that when Burning DVDs you use part of the Primary Master Drive
[or a partition on that drive] as a temporary file area. In this way the
read speed of the Hard Drive will ensure that your DVD bufffer is full and
has enough data to transfer to the DVD Burner.

By spreading the Hard Drive and DVD Drives in this way, you avoid
'contention' at the IDE Controller when one drive is reading and the other
writing, thus casuing one to 'wait' for the other to complete its activity.

When Nero attempts to 'write' data to the DVD it is reading from memory and
writing to a device on the secondary IDE interface.

Hope this is clear enough to follow and that you have more success and
speedier DVD copying.
 
Hi

I have C (80GB, 17GB free) and D(80GB, 20GB free) volumes on two
physical disks. Nero is reading images from D and SF is on C. SF is not even
close to it's capacity (70% free). SF has fixed size of 800MB, extendable to
1500MB.

regards
Tomaz
 
Hi
WHy have memory [RAM] and not use it: this is what computer design is all
about. A CPU has huge amounts of capacity to do WORK: however when it has to
move lots of data around the place, then it must use the resources carefully
and in an organised manner.
True.

RAM, when fully utilised is complimented by the SWAP file [also known as
pagefile] which is aptly named as it moves segments of data / programme files
off to a mapped area of the hard drive to create a virtual map of the
computer memory and make it larger than its physical constraint [actual
Click to expand...
size].

I know all about virtual memory and SF.
A way to esure that DVD copying is successful is to ensure that the copying
process [when doing disc to disc] requires that the application [Nero in your
case] writes a temporay copy to hard drive.
Click to expand...

I wasn't talking about DVD copy but file copy. The part that slows down the
system is reading from a large file. I tryed to copy one 700MB file just now
and by the time Explorer has copied 100MB, Windows uses 350MB of memory.
This is what's bothering me. What is in those 350MB? How to make it use less
memory?
To make things work more efficiently again, ensure that your hard drive
are defragmented, additionally I recommend that you set up your physical
devices as such:
Click to expand...


I defragment them every now and then and reading from files uses only a
little of memory after. But this is not for long as I constantly change the
contents and I don't want to defragment every day. I understand that
fragmentation slows down transfer rate but why does it increases memory
consumption? I use NTFS file systems on all drives. Maybe NTFS driver is
doing some caching or something.
Note: Most Motherboards have 2 x IDE controller interface plugs.
Onto the 1st IDE Interface [Primary] connect your System Disc as Master and
DVD reader as Slave.
Onto the 2nd IDE Interface [Secondary] connect your 2nd Hard Disc as Master
and DVD Burner as Slave.

Make sure that when Burning DVDs you use part of the Primary Master Drive
[or a partition on that drive] as a temporary file area. In this way the
read speed of the Hard Drive will ensure that your DVD bufffer is full and
has enough data to transfer to the DVD Burner.

By spreading the Hard Drive and DVD Drives in this way, you avoid
'contention' at the IDE Controller when one drive is reading and the other
writing, thus casuing one to 'wait' for the other to complete its
Click to expand...
activity.

I already know that. C disk is SATA, D is IDE1-slave, while my CD-RW and my
DVD-RW are on IDE2.
When Nero attempts to 'write' data to the DVD it is reading from memory and
writing to a device on the secondary IDE interface.

Hope this is clear enough to follow and that you have more success and
speedier DVD copying.
Click to expand...

Just now, again, I'm recording a DVD (5 images, 700MB each) and same
problem. Only this time, I have images located on C (SATA) drive. Again,
100% of RAM is used. But the thing is that always, only physical RAM is
comsumed not PF. Therefore this must be a system thing because applications
don't destinguish between RAM and PF (that's what VM is all about).

regards
Tomaz
 
Tomaz Koritnik said:
Hi

I have a problem. When working with files (copying, reading from,...), my
Windows uses all available physical RAM. I have WinXP SP1 and I think that
this is caused by fragmented volume. For example, when recording files to
DVD (files must be big, like >500MB), Windows uses 100% of all physical
RAM.
After that, Windows uses PF and swapping a lot and my computer is so slow
I
can't do anything. Even if I leave it alone, all that I/O and swapping
operations slow down my computer so much, that Nero's cache for example,
when writing DVD, becomes empty because reading from disk is slower that
writing to DVD (4x). Even if I write with 2x things are the same. How can
reading from disk be so slow if disk can read 40MB/s? And I know that this
is a Windows problem not Nero's because the same happens if I'm copying
files. I have 512MB of memory and usualy 300MB free. When I copy large
file,
memory consumption rises to 100% in arround 8 seconds.

I would like to find a solution to this but please don't recommend me to
defragment disk because I already did that and it didn't work for a long
time and my disks are not even heavy fragmented. Is there a way to tell
Windows not to use so much physical RAM?

I hope you understand my questione...

regards
Tomaz
Click to expand...

I also have a problem regarding I/O errors - each time I try to copy any
file from a dvdram disk to my hard drive I get an I/O error before it
completes copying. Any ideas anyone ?
Franko.
 
Not sure whats occuring on yr sys
I've just run a test copy of 633mb, my memory usage barely increased
CPU only went to 100% when AV scan kicked in, prior to that barely ticking
over
2500 barton 512mb, sata mirror + 2*ide, Nero5
A bottleneck on yr mobo/sata drivers?
 
Hi Tomaz,

Thank you for posting here.

First I would like to confirm the following information with you.

1. When the problem occur, how many space left in the virtual memory?

2. Does the problem occur when you copy the large files to same disk or
another hard disk? What is the type of two disks?

3. Does the problem occur if you copy the same large file in Safe Mode?

If the problem still persists in Safe Mode, I would like to recommend that
you use Performance Monitor to trace all the processes on the computer.
Please refer to the following steps:

1. Click Start, choose Run, type in "perfmon" (without quotation mark), and
then click OK.

2. On the left pane, unfold the "Performance Logs and Alerts" item. Right
click Counter Logs and choose New log Settings.

3. Specify a name for the log file and click OK.

4. Click the Add button.

5. In the "Select Counters" window, choose "All Counters" and "All
Instances" option boxes.

6. In the "Performance Object" section, drop the list and choose Process.
Click Add.

7. Also in the "Performance Object" section, drop the list and choose
Memory. Click Add.

8. Also in the "Performance Object" section, drop the list and choose
Paging file. Click Add.

9. Also in the "Performance Object" section, drop the list and choose
Processor. Click Add.

10. Also in the "Performance Object" section, drop the list and choose
PhysicalDisk and LogicalDisk. Click Add and then click Close.

11. On the "Sample data every" section of General table, choose Interval as
15 and Units as seconds.

12. In the Log Files table, please record the Location and file name of the
log file. On the Schedule table, choose Manually in the "Start log" and
"Stop log" sections.

13. Click OK.

14. Now on the right pane of "Performance" window, you can see the log file
you have just created. Right click the file and choose start to record
data.

15. Allow Performance Monitor to run and try to copy files locally to
reproduce this issue.

16. Stop Performance Monitor and go the folder we set in step 12 to see if
the log file has been generated.

17. Compress the file by using WinZip and send the zipped file to me.

Thanks for your time!

Regards,
Bob Qin
Microsoft Online Partner Support

Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security

====================================================
When responding to posts, please "Reply to Group" via your newsreader so
that others may learn and benefit from your issue.
====================================================
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

--------------------
From: "Tomaz Koritnik" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support
Subject: RAM usage during I/O
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 11:57:10 +0200

Hi

I have a problem. When working with files (copying, reading
from,...), my
Windows uses all available physical RAM. I have WinXP SP1 and I think
that
this is caused by fragmented volume. For example, when recording
files to
DVD (files must be big, like >500MB), Windows uses 100% of all
physical RAM.
After that, Windows uses PF and swapping a lot and my computer is so
slow I
can't do anything. Even if I leave it alone, all that I/O and swapping
operations slow down my computer so much, that Nero's cache for
example,
when writing DVD, becomes empty because reading from disk is slower
that
writing to DVD (4x). Even if I write with 2x things are the same. How
can
reading from disk be so slow if disk can read 40MB/s? And I know that
this
is a Windows problem not Nero's because the same happens if I'm
copying
files. I have 512MB of memory and usualy 300MB free. When I copy
large file,
memory consumption rises to 100% in arround 8 seconds.

I would like to find a solution to this but please don't recommend me
to
defragment disk because I already did that and it didn't work for a
long
time and my disks are not even heavy fragmented. Is there a way to
tell
Windows not to use so much physical RAM?

I hope you understand my questione...

regards
Tomaz
 
Bob Qin said:
Hi Tomaz,

Thank you for posting here.

First I would like to confirm the following information with you.

1. When the problem occur, how many space left in the virtual memory?

2. Does the problem occur when you copy the large files to same disk or
another hard disk? What is the type of two disks?

3. Does the problem occur if you copy the same large file in Safe Mode?

If the problem still persists in Safe Mode, I would like to recommend that
you use Performance Monitor to trace all the processes on the computer.
Please refer to the following steps:

1. Click Start, choose Run, type in "perfmon" (without quotation mark), and
then click OK.

2. On the left pane, unfold the "Performance Logs and Alerts" item. Right
click Counter Logs and choose New log Settings.

3. Specify a name for the log file and click OK.

4. Click the Add button.

5. In the "Select Counters" window, choose "All Counters" and "All
Instances" option boxes.

6. In the "Performance Object" section, drop the list and choose Process.
Click Add.

7. Also in the "Performance Object" section, drop the list and choose
Memory. Click Add.

8. Also in the "Performance Object" section, drop the list and choose
Paging file. Click Add.

9. Also in the "Performance Object" section, drop the list and choose
Processor. Click Add.

10. Also in the "Performance Object" section, drop the list and choose
PhysicalDisk and LogicalDisk. Click Add and then click Close.

11. On the "Sample data every" section of General table, choose Interval as
15 and Units as seconds.

12. In the Log Files table, please record the Location and file name of the
log file. On the Schedule table, choose Manually in the "Start log" and
"Stop log" sections.

13. Click OK.

14. Now on the right pane of "Performance" window, you can see the log file
you have just created. Right click the file and choose start to record
data.

15. Allow Performance Monitor to run and try to copy files locally to
reproduce this issue.

16. Stop Performance Monitor and go the folder we set in step 12 to see if
the log file has been generated.

17. Compress the file by using WinZip and send the zipped file to me.

Thanks for your time!

Regards,
Bob Qin
Microsoft Online Partner Support

Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security

====================================================
When responding to posts, please "Reply to Group" via your newsreader so
that others may learn and benefit from your issue.
====================================================
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

--------------------
From: "Tomaz Koritnik" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support
Subject: RAM usage during I/O
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 11:57:10 +0200

Hi

I have a problem. When working with files (copying, reading
from,...), my
Windows uses all available physical RAM. I have WinXP SP1 and I think
that
this is caused by fragmented volume. For example, when recording
files to
DVD (files must be big, like >500MB), Windows uses 100% of all
physical RAM.
After that, Windows uses PF and swapping a lot and my computer is so
slow I
can't do anything. Even if I leave it alone, all that I/O and swapping
operations slow down my computer so much, that Nero's cache for
example,
when writing DVD, becomes empty because reading from disk is slower
that
writing to DVD (4x). Even if I write with 2x things are the same. How
can
reading from disk be so slow if disk can read 40MB/s? And I know that
this
is a Windows problem not Nero's because the same happens if I'm
copying
files. I have 512MB of memory and usualy 300MB free. When I copy
large file,
memory consumption rises to 100% in arround 8 seconds.

I would like to find a solution to this but please don't recommend me
to
defragment disk because I already did that and it didn't work for a
long
time and my disks are not even heavy fragmented. Is there a way to
tell
Windows not to use so much physical RAM?

I hope you understand my questione...

regards
Tomaz
Click to expand...
 
Sorry about changing the subject somewhat but I'm having a problem moving a
large file (over 1GB) from one disk to another. I get an error message 'not
enough space' on the to disk, however there's plenty of room. I'm using
Windows XP Home. Any help would be appreciated.
 
I'm not 100% positive but if i remeber corec tly when you move a file it is
copied to a temp directory and then placed in the location after the copy.
A 1gig file could need as much as 3 gigs space (between memory and drive
space) to copy from one drive to another. 1 gig for the original and one gig
for the copy as well as one gig in the temp directory and unless you have a
gig of ram you will also need swap file space while it is being copied. I'm
not sure how much the swap would be thouhg.

You might try to find a utility to split the file into smaler chunks closer
to the amount of system memory you have. Or manualy increase your pagefile
(swapfile) size to somethign around 2 or 3 times the size of the file for
the copy.
 
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