[dutchie140]

I have a laptop [Toshiba Tecra] that continues to have excessive Hard Disk Activity even though it is otherwise not being used. It appears to be doing a background scan and/or defragmenting but no software is running or obvious.

Does anyone know a utility that shows what software is accessing the HDD to help me solve this?

Thanks in advance.

dutchie140

[Hughv]

Task Manager

[dutchie140]

There are no programs running and therefor nothing to show in Task Manager.
There are some processes running but nothing obvious.
Indexing is off, no obvious virus scanning etc.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Anyone know a utility that will show which process/program is accessing the HDD?

Thanks in anticipation

dutchie140

[Hughv]

http://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000687.html
"To see how much RAM is in use by each program or process, click the Processes tab and then click the Mem Usage heading twice to sort the list in descending order. You can use this information to decide which programs to close so that you can return to normal performance. (Remember, though, it’s perfectly OK for a process to use a large amount of RAM if you’ve got the physical RAM to spare. Don’t just start closing programs that use large amounts of RAM!)"
If it was obvious, there'd be no need to investigate.
Check the "View" menu for additional data columns.

[dutchie140]

My thread here is about HDD usage not RAM usage. I have >1GB RAM installed so unless the issue is about Virtual memory I don't see that this is relevant. [Am I missing something here?]

As I understand it, virtual memory would be used for a memory intensive application requiring > 1GB RAM. As there are no applications running [and virus free] there must be some hidden application that is demanding HDD resources. [Task Manager reports little use of resident RAM].

Any other ideas?

Thanks for the suggestions but they don't seem relevant.

dutchie140

[Hughv]

Task manager will tell what processes are running, and can be sorted to tell you which are using the most memory. Anything writing to the disk has to use memory.
Check out the page file usage as well. When memory is all used, the page file will write to disk.
In Task Manager/ Processes, view the I/O columns.

[RetroGuy]

You should use taks manager.. add some columns by going to task manager options (view>select columns). Add virtual memory (page size) and see which program is taking how much. Also make sure Show processes from all users is selected.

By the way 1 Gb ram can easily fall short. If you're using Vista, it most certainly is too little.

The program you're asking for is FilemonNT. I'll attach it if it isn't rejected.. (It's probably not the newest version).. Good luck with it though, you'll be surprised by the hard disk activity in a normal comp, or yours..

I suggest you stick to Task Manager, and add those extra columns for mem usage, peak mem usage, page size, commit size etc. and see who's doing what. It's probably some indexing program, they usually are the ones getting stuck up (if not a virus.. I'm assuming you've scanned for that )

[RetroGuy]

And as for your statement:

"As I understand it, virtual memory would be used for a memory intensive application requiring > 1GB RAM. As there are no applications running [and virus free] there must be some hidden application that is demanding HDD resources. [Task Manager reports little use of resident RAM]."

Well, no. The various system processes belonging to windows, your antiviruse, other programs also take up RAM. In a typical windows xp system, you'll have 38+ processes taking up easily 400 mb ram. In Vista, make that 70 and 700mb, plus virtual memory requirements that can vary.

So ya 1 gb can easily fall short :-)