Hammering Hard Drive

I have installed Windows 2000 Professional using NTFS file system. After a few days the hard drive is constantly hammered by the operating system for five minutes or more. When I look at task manager no applications are running. The CPU is being accessed at between 75-99%. This then stops any other application from running. I have also used Windows XP with NTFS and the same thing happens. When I re-install the operating system and just run it under FAT32 I do not get this problem. Can anybody help please because I would like to run under NTFS for the added security features.
Computer is Tiny 1.7 Pentium IV
Bios is Award Modular V6.00 PG
Thanks

 

When exactly is this happening? At startup?

Have you looked at the networking tab while this is going on?

 

Hi Newt,
The hammering does'nt usually begin at start up. The computer can be in action for various amounts of time before this problem surfaces. My machine is not networked.
Thnaks for your time,
Chalkie

 

If no applications, check the processes tab and you can see (hopefully) which process is beating your system up so badly.

Also check your event logs. There may be errors in there that will give a hint.

Post back with what you find.

 

Hi Again Newt,
Today have changed my hard drive for another one that I had and have re-installed Windows 2000 Professional.
So far, and it's only been a couple of hours I have not had a re-occurence of the problem.
When I did get the problem the only thing that was moving in the processes window of task manager is the system idle process.
Can you tell me where I can see the events log that you speak of.
Thanks. Hope to hear from you soon.
Chalkie

 

Right-click "My Computer" and manage. You should see the tab for event logs. You will have at least 3. Applications, security, system.

Nearly any event you see will have a Q article at the Microsoft online help site that will give you details.

 

Hi Again,
I have found the event viewer in conrol panel/administrative tools. I have seven different error messages about the hard drive which say the device\ide\ide port0 did not respond within the time out period. It then gives an event code of 9. Any ideas as to what this all means plese.
Chalkie

 

Hammering Harddrive...

My two cents... Could it possibly the indexing service that comes along with using NTFS? Windows 'help' files will tell you how to shut this feature off, if you don't need or want it. It can cause an extreme amount of hard drive activity.

B

 

Hello Mr. B
Thanks very much for your input. Have done what you suggested and turned off the indexing service. Only time will tell.
Cheers,
Chalkie

 

Indexing does add overhead but usually doesn't beat a drive up to the extent yours were.

Try using M$ online help and putting in the source, event id, and a little of the description and see what comes back. Dont' restrict to just the 2K section because this one probably shows up with other OS versions as well.

And Yup - you can certainly get to the event logs the way you did. I just think the right-click thing is a little faster but only just a little.

 

Thanks Again Newt for your input. I will probably end up throwing the machine out the window. Hey got another problem if you can help. Windows2000 is installed on my C drive and I have another drive called D drive. There is nothing yet on D drive but 66.8mb has been used up on it. I have used the disk management utility on this drive and have asked it to delete the partition. It won't let me. It just states that there is a problem with the disk utility. I have managed to reformat D drive through windows and have changed the file system from FAT 32 to NTFS, but it still shows that 66.8 mb has been used, This must be a partition mustn't it, although that extra partition doesn't show up anywhere. Is there a way to re-format D drive outside of windows. Any help on this appreciated.
Thanks,
Chalkie

 

Thanks everyone who gave their suggestions for my "hammering hardrive." I think that I have found the problem and solution. When the hardrive was being accessed at 100% for sometimes several seconds at a time about three times an hour, the log showed that the device\device\ide\ide port0, did not respond within the time out period and have an error code as 9. Have managed to track that error code number at Microsoft and it states that time out in the storage sector has occured. Well to cut a long story short I altered the delayed transaction in BIOS from enabled to disabled and for the last 2 or so hours the computer has behaved itself. I really hope that I have solved the problem.
As to my other problem with drive D (see previous entry) if anyone can help on that I would be exremely grateful.
Thanks again,
Chalkie

 

Re: the phantom 66.8Mb - do you have windows explorer set to show all files? Otherwise there could well be some hidden stuff on there you just aren't seeing.

 

Hi Newt,
Thanks again for getting back to me. Yes I have show all files set to show but there is nothing showing. When I go into disk utilities it asks me if I wish to remove the partition but even though I do ask it to it won't. It just says that there is an error with disk management.
Any case I can live with that.
Thanks again,
Chalkie

 

Try getting a copy of the (free) NTFSInfo app from sysinternals. It will show you an amazing amount of detail about exactly what you have on an NTFS partition.

You got something busted somewhere and before deciding it is harmless, I think you would do well to figure out what you are dealing with. It may well be benign but nice to know.

While you are there you might want to pick up another free utility they offer. Called Contig and is a single file defragmenter program. Outstanding for crunching any files that tend to frag badly while the remainder of the drive stays in pretty good shape.

 

Thanks Newt for those links. I have run NTFSinfo but do not really understand what the results mean that I am getting. As for contig, do not quite understand how you get that one to work. Any guidance from you on this would be very welcome.
Thanks for your time on all the issues,
Chalkie

 

Thanks Newt for those links.
I have run NTFSinfo but don't really understand what the results mean that I am getting. As for contig I do not understand at all how you run that one. Any help on these issues would be very welcome.
Thanks for your time,
Chalkie
P.S. Sorry have somehow managed to reply to you twice.

 

Chalkie - I just ran it on my XP-pro system. Meta-data didn't do so well since they haven't tweaked to app for NT5.1 but here is what I got (and my comments in bold italics.

And I don't know if it is specifically mentioned but both the apps must be run from an open command window.

NTFSInfo c:

NTFS Information Dump
Copyright (C) 1997 Mark Russinovich
http://www.ntinternals.com

Volume Size should tell you how much of the drive is being used
-----------
Volume size : 38162 MB
Total sectors : 78156161
Total clusters : 9769520
Free clusters : 8348311
Free space : 32610 MB (85% of drive)

Allocation Size
----------------
Bytes per sector : 512
Bytes per cluster : 4096
Bytes per MFT record : 1024
Clusters per MFT record: 0

MFT Information and if any is tied up with Master File Table (MFT) data
---------------
MFT size : 53 MB (0% of drive)
MFT start cluster : 786432
MFT zone clusters : 800000 - 2007648
MFT zone size : 4717 MB (12% of drive)
MFT mirror start : 4884760

Meta-Data files if you have info in this section, please post it

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

contig [-v] [-a] [-q] [-s] [filename]
-v=verbose -a=analyze only -q=quiet mode and only summary info -s=subdirectories too

I put this one in more for general interest than for any specific help with your current drive space problem. But with a command window open, it works as follows:

contig c:\somefile.txt will defrag that one file
contig c:\*.txt will defrag all the .txt files in c:\
contig -s c:\*.txt will defrag all .txt files in c:\ and all sub folders (recursive)

More useful probably to do something like
contig -s c:\windows\*.dll

 

Hi There Newt,
Thanks for that info. Have run NTFSinfo on drive D and below are the results. Do they mean anything significant?

Microsoft(R) Windows DOS
(C)Copyright Microsoft Corp 1990-1999.

C:\>ntfsinfo d:

NTFS Information Dump
Copyright (C) 1997 Mark Russinovich
http://www.ntinternals.com

Volume Size
-----------
Volume size : 57239 MB
Total sectors : 117226241
Total clusters : 14653280
Free clusters : 14580853
Free space : 56956 MB (99% of drive)

Allocation Size
----------------
Bytes per sector : 512
Bytes per cluster : 4096
Bytes per MFT record : 1024
Clusters per MFT record: 0

MFT Information
---------------
MFT size : 0 MB (0% of drive)
MFT start cluster : 4
MFT zone clusters : 64 - 1831680
MFT zone size : 7154 MB (12% of drive)
MFT mirror start : 7326640

Meta-Data files
---------------

C:\>

Have also run contig on various files and it tells me that it has fragmented some of the files.

With regard to my system and processor hitting 100% and not being able to use it for a certain time, I thought that I had cured it by altering a setting in the bios. Didn't work. I now have cured it by loading a different driver on to handle IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers. Now system and processor not locking up and no more error 9 messages about time out.
Hope to hear from you soon,
Chalkie

 

Except to note that you seem to have more of the drive in use by your something]/i] I don't see anything here that is exciting or strange. Darn. Was hoping.

I'm gonna start grasping for straws here. Few things to try that may tell you what you got or may not do anything at all. Different ways of approaching the phantom files and may shake something loose. All these are to be done from a command window and the path set to the root of the problem drive.

attrib -r -a -s -h *. which will set any folders and files without extensions as normal.

attrib -f -a -s -h *.* which will do the same for any files not picked up by the first command.

tree which will give a different view of any files/folders than dir would and may show you something.

erase /p *.* which will try to erase any files on the disk but should ask you first

None of the above may show anything whatever. Or something may. No harm and not much wasted time at any rate.

Next thing I'd try is from a cmd prompt chdksk /r /v and watch. It should do everything on the drive including a surface check and tell you what is happening.

If that doesn't do it (and you haven't already done it) run one of the disk wipe uitilites that is supposed to go thru and zero every byte on the drive. Then format NTFS and see where you are.