Vista & Frantic Disk Accessing

  • Thread starter Thread starter Juliet Foxtrot
  • Start date Start date
J

Juliet Foxtrot

Hi All

Hope somebody can answer this.

Have a brand new computer delivered with Vista Home Premium.

Once every day when I first start the4 computer there is 20 to 30 mins of
frantic disk activity and a loss of some disk space. Can anyone explain
what Vista is doing for me. Have checked the following and it's not:
Restore Point (not daily and last one 3 days ago)
Click to expand...
Windows Update (does it when no internet connection)
Click to expand...
Anti Virus Software (happened before I installed it)
Click to expand...
Can find NO files with relevant date, have even tried viewing System and
Hidden Files but nothing big enough to account for the loss of disk space.
Click to expand...

Perhaps I am just imagining it, but if anyone out there has any idea as to
what Vista is doing, I would be forever grateful. Could I be imagining the
disk space loss, could it just be changes to the page file?????

Anyone who knows, help!

JF
 
Vista has some "hidden" things working in the background...

like FILE INDEXING to make search faster
SUPERFETCH to make programs load faster
and DISK DEFRAGMENTING that works also in the background....

you can disable any of these from > Control panel (in the classic view)>
Administrative tools>
Services... however I would suggest that if you are not comfortable with
changing such settings to just leave them as they are.. the indexing will
stop thrashing after some time (according to the amount of files you have).

Yes I know.. many people hate these "features" and I can understand them
100%

I would vote for a nice GUI options with buttons that people can find easily
to turn these
tools on and off according to what they prefer.. not things hidden as
services that force your
computer to thrash its disk...

Also make sure you have no viruses and adware spyware.
 
Juliet said:
Hi All

Hope somebody can answer this.

Have a brand new computer delivered with Vista Home Premium.

Once every day when I first start the4 computer there is 20 to 30 mins of
frantic disk activity and a loss of some disk space. Can anyone explain
what Vista is doing for me. Have checked the following and it's not:




Perhaps I am just imagining it, but if anyone out there has any idea as to
what Vista is doing, I would be forever grateful. Could I be imagining the
disk space loss, could it just be changes to the page file?????

Anyone who knows, help!

JF
Click to expand...
Don't worry about it. It's supposed to be doing that and after it gets
through indexing and superfetch "learns" your computer habits it will stop.
It will not ruin or damage you hard drive.
Frank
 
it will never stop if you keep changing, files on your computer...
If you handle a huge amount of data indexing is a problem..
if you keep writing files to dvds and deleting them indexing gives
erroneous results.. as this has been reported again and again
not only with vista indexing but also with google desktop search and others.

Vista indexing is an effort to keep up with what other companies
are doing, see apple and google. Im not sure its the best way...

basically indexing is for the "normal" user.. not a power user...
 
Former said:
it will never stop if you keep changing, files on your computer...
If you handle a huge amount of data indexing is a problem..
if you keep writing files to dvds and deleting them indexing gives
erroneous results.. as this has been reported again and again
not only with vista indexing but also with google desktop search and others.

Vista indexing is an effort to keep up with what other companies
are doing, see apple and google. Im not sure its the best way...

basically indexing is for the "normal" user.. not a power user...
Click to expand...

If you are changing files and folders on a daily basis you need to turn
off indexing cause you don't need it and it's not made for that type of
use.
Otherwise it is a useful tool for most users including so-called "power
users" [sic].
Frank
 
yes... I agree with you .. but I would prefer MS to have made
these services more apparent by adding buttons so people can turn them on
and off

you realize how many times people ask why the disk is thrashing all the
time?

I have seen this question at least 20 times in this newsgroup

and another 5 posts at least saying that indexing is giving them erroneous
results...

lol my personal opinion is that indexing is a bad idea they way its
implemented...





Frank said:
Former said:
it will never stop if you keep changing, files on your computer...
If you handle a huge amount of data indexing is a problem..
if you keep writing files to dvds and deleting them indexing gives
erroneous results.. as this has been reported again and again
not only with vista indexing but also with google desktop search and
others.

Vista indexing is an effort to keep up with what other companies
are doing, see apple and google. Im not sure its the best way...

basically indexing is for the "normal" user.. not a power user...
Click to expand...

If you are changing files and folders on a daily basis you need to turn
off indexing cause you don't need it and it's not made for that type of
use.
Otherwise it is a useful tool for most users including so-called "power
users" [sic].
Frank
Click to expand...
 
Former said:
yes... I agree with you .. but I would prefer MS to have made
these services more apparent by adding buttons so people can turn them on
and off

you realize how many times people ask why the disk is thrashing all the
time?

I have seen this question at least 20 times in this newsgroup

and another 5 posts at least saying that indexing is giving them erroneous
results...

lol my personal opinion is that indexing is a bad idea they way its
implemented...
Click to expand...


Cause 20 people wondered what was going on with their HDD and 5 saying
they have erroneous results you think its a "bad idea"?
So...I'm all for minority opinions being heard.
But I'm against one person yelling fire in a crowed room.
Frank
 
you are only seeing the tip of the iceberg.. for each one person who is
wondering about something
here, you can count on hudreds of people that are not here, but are
wondering the same thing.

The "bad idea" is my personal opinion as I made clear in my post. You can
agree with it or not..

you free to have your own.
 
Former said:
you are only seeing the tip of the iceberg.. for each one person who is
wondering about something
here, you can count on hudreds of people that are not here, but are
wondering the same thing.
Click to expand...

That's clearly an assumption of something not supported by any provable
numerical extrapolation.
Or else it's something you personally wish were true yet have no proof of.
Frank
 
for each one person who is wondering about something
here, you can count on hudreds of people that are not here, but are
wondering the same thing.
Click to expand...

......and presumably millions who aren't bothered at all and just get on with
using it.

Steve
 
I have noticed this too. I have indexing disabled for all drives, but my
system still thrashes for 5 to 10 minutes when I start it up. I would sure
like to know what it's doing.

It's truly irritating because it slows down my system while it's doing it.
It more than doubles the time for my apps to start while it's doing it. And
it takes a long time to do things like download email with Outlook 2007.
These things are supposed to make the performance faster on my machine, but
it ends up slowing down at the most critical time, when I am starting it up
and doing my first tasks of the day. That's why it's ill concieved!

I also have a 2GB Readyboost drive installed and that was supposed to help
with that. While it does help generally, it's no help for this SLOW startup.

I've often wondered why programs/OS insist on doing these tasks immediately
on start up. Don't developers understand that there may be another ten
programs doing the same thing. Why not have the system wait until things
have slowed down before launching these administrative tasks?
 
Back
Top