Vista Excessive Disk Activity

R

rbd

For the past few weeks I have been attempting to create a Vista Home
Premium configuration on a new Core 2 Duo PC. I though that I had
finally created a stable config with all the proper hardware drivers and
many of my apps. I then noticed that the disk activity light was on
solid - and I couldn't figure out why.

I ran a number of process tools, the only one that seemed to provide
useful information being Perfmon. Perfmon showed two distinct types of
disk activity.


The first, was causing the disk activity light to stay on solid, and was
caused by the reading of files on my D: data disk. I found that by
stopping/starting the SysMain Superfetch service I can turn off/turn on
this constant disk read activity. It appears that Superfetch looks
through previously opened user data files - even if they were used only
once, are 4+GB in size, and may never be used again from within VISTA.
It is beyond my comprehension what possible good this type of activity
would do me, or any other VISTA user. After I get to the point where
I've installed Lightroom/Photoshop/Picasa/PaperPort and other apps that
routinely access and/or index GB of user files - will access to my D:
drive ever stop? Why would Superfetch bother with non-executable data
files on a non-system partition? After reading the MS VISTA Kernel
description I know that turning off SuperFetch will impact certain VISTA
features - so what?.


Second issue: I noticed a secondary disk activity that consists of
continuous writes to various files on C: that occur at the rate of a few
each second. Again, I attempted to isolate that IO activity with
Perfmon, including noting the PIDs and then attempting to stop the
Applications with that PID - with no success.

In an attempt to further diagnose the issues, I restored a C: partition
backup for the first OOTB Vista configuration (no updates, drivers, apps
installed). The steady drone of repeated disk writes to C: also occurs
in that base build. The disk writes involves areas such as:

files lastalive0.dat and lastalive1.dat
from svchost LocalSystemNetworkRestricted.

c:\windows\system32\config\SOFTWARE
c:\$Logfile (NTFS Volume Log)
c:\windows\System32\config\DEFAULT
from System

This is my only Vista system, so I have none other to compare it to.

I've turned off Indexing, turned off Defender, uninstalled AVG, turned
off disk defrags, and disabled all items in the Scheduler - the C: disk
activity goes on.

I find all this disk IO activity unwanted, distracting, and possibly
damaging to disk drive health in the long term. I don't understand why
this type of activity should be necessary for a single-user desktop PC
and why it is so darned difficult to determine what is causing it.

I'd appreciate any assistance in explaining what this constant disk C:
write activity might be, what other diagnostic tools I could use to
isolate the causes, and how to stop it (other than to install WINXP or
buy a Mac).
 
M

Mick Murphy

Have you tried right-clicking on the Task Bar, and bringing up Task Manager
to see what is going on?
 
F

Frank G

I am having this exact same issue. I went thru and stopped a bunch of
services that were running and the disk activity stopped, however, it caused
my media center to start acting up and doing funny things. (i use the My
Movies add-in w/it).

anyway else figure this out ?
 
P

Pat M

I have been having exactly the same problem, shutting off internet access
does not affect it at all. I cannot get enough info out of task manager to
determine what is causing the hard drive to run continuously. I have enough
security items running that I am sure there's no bot or virus running on my
computer. One thing I have noticed is that when I allow Windows to update
itself this problem magnifies at least tenfold slowing my system down
immensely. With the issues I've had with this computer and software
manufacturers passing the buck my next system will be a Mac.
 
C

Charlie Tame

rbd said:
For the past few weeks I have been attempting to create a Vista Home
Premium configuration on a new Core 2 Duo PC. I though that I had
finally created a stable config with all the proper hardware drivers and
many of my apps. I then noticed that the disk activity light was on
solid - and I couldn't figure out why.

I ran a number of process tools, the only one that seemed to provide
useful information being Perfmon. Perfmon showed two distinct types of
disk activity.


The first, was causing the disk activity light to stay on solid, and was
caused by the reading of files on my D: data disk. I found that by
stopping/starting the SysMain Superfetch service I can turn off/turn on
this constant disk read activity. It appears that Superfetch looks
through previously opened user data files - even if they were used only
once, are 4+GB in size, and may never be used again from within VISTA.
It is beyond my comprehension what possible good this type of activity
would do me, or any other VISTA user. After I get to the point where
I've installed Lightroom/Photoshop/Picasa/PaperPort and other apps that
routinely access and/or index GB of user files - will access to my D:
drive ever stop? Why would Superfetch bother with non-executable data
files on a non-system partition? After reading the MS VISTA Kernel
description I know that turning off SuperFetch will impact certain VISTA
features - so what?.


Second issue: I noticed a secondary disk activity that consists of
continuous writes to various files on C: that occur at the rate of a few
each second. Again, I attempted to isolate that IO activity with
Perfmon, including noting the PIDs and then attempting to stop the
Applications with that PID - with no success.

In an attempt to further diagnose the issues, I restored a C: partition
backup for the first OOTB Vista configuration (no updates, drivers, apps
installed). The steady drone of repeated disk writes to C: also occurs
in that base build. The disk writes involves areas such as:

files lastalive0.dat and lastalive1.dat
from svchost LocalSystemNetworkRestricted.

c:\windows\system32\config\SOFTWARE
c:\$Logfile (NTFS Volume Log)
c:\windows\System32\config\DEFAULT
from System

This is my only Vista system, so I have none other to compare it to.

I've turned off Indexing, turned off Defender, uninstalled AVG, turned
off disk defrags, and disabled all items in the Scheduler - the C: disk
activity goes on.

I find all this disk IO activity unwanted, distracting, and possibly
damaging to disk drive health in the long term. I don't understand why
this type of activity should be necessary for a single-user desktop PC
and why it is so darned difficult to determine what is causing it.

I'd appreciate any assistance in explaining what this constant disk C:
write activity might be, what other diagnostic tools I could use to
isolate the causes, and how to stop it (other than to install WINXP or
buy a Mac).
Click to expand...


You could try right clicking on the dis drive icon and in properties
turn off "Index this drive..." whatever. Seems like that made a
difference fo me, and since I rarely use "Search" functions the indexing
time is just wasted.
 
R

ronnie

Atleast I am not alone, on this. I also found the virus program, spy
program, etc doesn't matter if they are off. The problem still happens.
Although common sense says this, it can't be left out. The drive can't be
scanned for errors. You get a "drive can't be scanned when in use." Right now
the accessing has been giong on for almost a week. The version used is vista
basic. With posting what they are microsoft may need to look into this. Even
indexing is off.
 
C

Charlie Tame

Well there is one thing a lot of us forget.

Most of us have more than one computer and therefore have a router.
Routers generally have a firewall. If we do nothing it tends to protect us.

If no router is present then you need to look to see if your drive
activity is because the computer is somehow compromised. Yes Vista
(Allegedly) has a "Firewall" but despite MS' best efforts if Vista is
compromised then the Vista firewall also is vulnerable.
 
R

rbd

Rick - thank you for your reply.

Definitely not excessive paging - just read activity to very specific
data files and write activity to very specific VISTA files.

I'll gladly turn Superfetch back on if anyone tell me how to keep it
from reading through every data file that I've ever opened - including
5+GB data and backup files. So far, disabling Superfetch has only made
things much better. (Unless Perfmon and my disk activity light are lying.)
 
K

Kent_Diego

I too am new to Vista and was having the same problems as above. I don't
know exactly what the service "SERVER" is for, but, i can tell you that
when i disabled that service and rebooted, all the excessive disk read
problems i had disappeared and my boot and shutdown times became
lightning fast.
.....
Click to expand...
It looks like service SERVER is important.
http://www.speedyvista.com/services2.html
 
C

clayga

I'm seeing this too. I noticed it after I set Power Options-Advanced
Settings- Hard Disk-Turn Off Hard Disk After to 5 minutes on a new laptop and
found that the hard disk keeps running indefinitely. Reliability and
Performance monitor shows that six files, including C:\$Logfile and C:\$Mft,
get written to every few seconds like a heartbeat, even when the system is
fully idle. I searched the web and found only one forum thread that has
relevant information:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=243342

The last entry by Shyster1 is the most informative, but still doesn't
explain why the "heartbeat" writes are necessary.

This behavior raises some questions:

1) Does forcing the system drive to run constantly make sense from a system
responsiveness/performance point of view? In other words, would the user be
annoyed by having to wait for the system drive to spin up every now and again?

2) Does it make sense to display the "Turn off Hard Disk After" power option
in systems that have only one (system) drive? Does this feature affect
external USB drives for instance? If it only applies to internal hard
drives, then it shouldn't show if a system has only one drive.

3) If the "Turn off Hard Disk After" power option actually worked for the
system drive, would Vista be significantly more energy efficient than it is?
Since hard drives draw a fair amount of power, I'm guessing the answer is
yes. There's an obvious trade off here between energy efficiency and
usability (i.e. #1 above), but perhaps users should be allowed to decide what
is best for them.
 
C

Camper

vosuram said:
Vista made my HP HDX-18 laptop (quad-core, 4GB, 1TB) virtually unusable.
It came to unstoppable disk abuse, making, for instance, impossible to
connect any large external hard drive. The Performance monitor shows
that system is all the time busy with writing to files in the "System
Volume Information" folder. Switching off the "system restore" helps:
"Start menu" -> Right click on "Computer" -> Properties -> Advanced
Settings -> System Protection ... Uncheck all boxes.

I'm wondering with the following: Toyota recall cars and patches them
for free if any production defect is discovered. Vista is mainly made of
defects, but I have to pay for an upgrade to "7".


--
vosuram
------------------------------------------------------------------------
vosuram's Profile: http://forums.techarena.in/members/160032.htm
View this thread:
http://forums.techarena.in/windows-vista-performance/974285.htm

http://forums.techarena.in
Click to expand...

So how have you diagnosed that it is a Vista problem and not a hardware
problem or caused by other software?

Camper.
 
E

EW

vosuram said:
As I said, in the "Performance monitor" I see the "System" continuously
writing to the "System Volume Information" (sub)folder with a long name
{****-****...} typical for system restore points folders. BTW, also
"System" is intensively using the swap although only about half of
memory is in use.
Click to expand...
ETC.................

Your message about intense disk activity in Vista is dead on, but I doubt
there's anything you can do about it. My Vista system works the hard drive
much of the time, and I've got indexing turned off, no anti-virus scanning
(except Defender), and no Norton crap installed. It's a mystery!

My new Windows 7 system is much more kind to its hard drive. Vista is just
Vista, and there's probably nothing you can do to it to behave like XP, for
example. Yours is a common problem, and everyone with Vista experiences
it -- they just don't realize it!

EW
 

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