need monitor for hard disk thrashing

seems like about two or three months ago, i noticed that after powering up, the hard drive was hyper active for quite a while without any apps running that would do any hard drive access, then after a few minutes would stop the "thrashing" sounds and be quiet until i fired up an app...

long story short, the problem seems to be getting worse, and i was wondering if maybe there was a hard drive monitor that identifies what files are being accessed, and even what processes are performing the access; freeware is essential for me right now...

i do have process a monitor, process explorer, which shows no app activity during the thrashing, HD tune and a western digital diagnostic tool which do not provide the desired info - 'smart' does not show any problems, so i seek something better that will reveal what is going on with the hard drive before it wears itself out...

 

The only next thing I would do is run a burnin test. Download the Ultimate Boot CD (version 3 or 3.1 is the latest) they have hardrive burnin tests. The other thing is what is the sound that you hear?

Stone hitting a windshield or ping?
Knocking?
Clicking (fast counting clock)?

Clicking = bad (harddrive is failing but not yet be cautious)
Knocking = Reading arms are going to far and get thrown back into place (Format the drive usually fixes)
stone or ping = reading arm is moving too fast possible drive damage (format also usually fixes)

Im just going on what I have had happen.

 

thanks for the replies...

the "sound" is what to me is the normal "click" that you hear when an app performs a physical i/o to the hard drive, which is normal when running a disk intensive app, nothing out of the ordinary, just that it is there when there are no apps running (that i am able to ascertain...) and the cpu is at 99% idle wait ... i am certain that the hard drive is "healthy ", i just feel that something which i cannot "see" is hitting the hard drive...

according to "system information "...

total physical memory = 991.48 mb

available physical memory = 546.07 mb

total virtual memory = 2 gb

available virtual memory = 1.96 gb

pagefile space = 1.96 gb

(and pagefile is on the boot drive)

yes, i am on broadband, dsl, but isn't the cat5 cable the entire dsl connection? meaning to "disconnect" from the internet when it is thrashing to see if that has an affect ???

 

that possibility did very briefly flash through my mind, but my system is so thoroughly locked down with an excess of safeguards that to my knowledge it would be fairly impossible to be infected with any type of malware without my being aware if it... altho, i must admit that i am not well versed on "hacking" and realize that it is a possibility

so, admittedly, that possibility was one reason that i am trying to locate a hard drive monitor that will indicate what is doing the hard drive access... does such an animal exist?

 

Umm, do you have Norton Antivirus or Norton Internet Security installed? They will want to check every possible "new" file they can find (even if they have checked them many times during the last boot )

Try disabling antivirus, security suites or any other "file checking" program during a bootup and see if there is a difference.

Matt

 

Hello keywester,

Try:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/ProcessesAndThreads/processmonitor.mspx

Regards - Charles

 

Charles: BINGO! Thanks, great tool, pointed directly to the problem, which appears to be AVG antivirus - for the last couple of months, the email protection has been hanging up and i usually shut it off but process monitor shows that it is still in some kind of a loop even after disabling it... altho i wonder why process explorer did not seem to reveal the problem... anyway, PM is a great tool, exactly what i needed in this situation, thanks so much, i owe ya one...

Matt, sounds like you were on the right track with the AV being the potential culprit, and it was - altho, i also found that system safety monitor was doing some pretty wacko hard drive access also, so much so that i shut it down...

Thanks again, one and all - anybody else using AVG and know why they are not fixing their loopity loop problem???

 

Loopity? I have not heard of such problems with AVG.

The other side...a file system problem? Run Error Checking (chkdsk).
Defrag, only a maybe.
Large quantities of "temporary" files? They may not be picked up by Disk Cleanup (uh ha ).

It may be "sorting through" a lot of information that you did not know was there.

Matt

 

yeh, never had a problem with AVG before either, have not had time to look into it yet, but what it does is after it does the read process from the server, the little popup that notes what it is doing just hangs there and cannot be eliminated, and the little task bar icon that shows that the email scanner is working, keeps on spinning around after the read process is done and also no way to eliminate that without disabling the email scan protection, which is what i was doing, but even tho theoretically all visible signs of the email scanner goes away, it is still doing a read/write loop even after disabling, hence the hard drive thrashing, until i actually go in and kill the email scan... AVG is up to date, running against an up to date t'bird email system, will have to look into it someday soon when i have time, in about ten years.... thanks again...

 

Ten years...that's about my usual time frame as well

Maybe a thought, I would unistall AVG, download the current version and install that.

 

good idea, i'll try that, maybe sometime this year... thanks mattman

 

I realise that this thread is sorta old but....You could also have done a cntrl-alt-del and opened task manager, and looked under Processes tab, and cpu use would tell you what is beating up your hard drive.