Disk activity not stopping

[Cool Hand 0]

I just went from win98 to w2k and did a fresh install of it. right from the start my boot HD is always doing something, but I dont know what. if I do just things that normally wont require loading in win98 the drive will load. even when I stop doing anything it will take about 30 secs to make the HD stop. but as soon as I move a window or other similar things that shouldnt require loading, it starts accessing the HD again.

thats pretty annoying not only because its freaking loud but also because HDtach shows at least 1 huge drop (about 70%) in the benchmark graphic when I do a test because the HD is accessing other things than just concentrate on the benchmark test.

is there any service that causes this and that I can turn off? any tweak available? or is this normal for win2k?

 

my components are:

Abit KR7A with 512 MB ram

2 seagte cheetah x15 36LP 18.4 GB

Tekram DC-390U3D controller

Pioneer DVD-116 on primary IDE controller

Secondary IDE controller is disabled and uninstalled in win2k

Virtual memory is 768 MB

[thymios 0]

Once you boot, open task manager, go to processes tab and sort the processes by CPU usage(dispalyed as CPU on the manager).

See which service is using the CPU (and obviously the H/D) and then you might have a clue of what is going on.

Let us know of the outcome.

[Cool Hand 0]

I found out that this activitiy is normal for w2k. w2k logs very much all the time. there is no way to turn it off without risking serious system instability

[insaNity 0]

;(

it is NOT normal

 

are you running any unnecessary startup programs?

[Cool Hand 0]

I tried out the program that someone mentioned before in this thread and it shows that windows is writing to a log file all the time when this access is done. maybe thats only the case with w2k pro and/or SCSI controllers, but it is happening!

I looked around in the internet and found out that it is a necessary feature which cant be turned off. I wish I could turn it off

I dont run any startup programs, it does this right after a fresh install without anything installed cept the hardware drivers from M$ and SP1. SP2 doesnt help too.

[thymios 0]

Let's specify something crucial here.When Win2k boots, it takes way more time for the disk to stop when the desktop show on your monitor, compared to win98/ME and winXP.In my system it takes around 20-30 sec to stop, and i can see from the task manager that the service that causes this is the winlogon mainly and the executable of services(services.exe).

CoolHand if your computer does that, then it's perfectly normal.

Now if it does the problem all the time, after the boot-up and after the system is booted for more than 5 minutes or so, then you have a problem, and i told you that an easy solution is to see what services causes this annoying problem and let us know to see if we can help you out.

[Cool Hand 0]

yes I too have that long duration of disk activity when booting into windows. but when that is done and I start working it will always do that with about a 5 to 10 sec duration after I finished something. i.e. if I play a game, the HD will almost all the time work. my HDs are pretty loud compared to normal IDEs and even if they just work just a tick, they sound like a floppy disk. as I said when I look at NT filemon it will show this activity WHICH I AM TALKING ABOUT as system:8 C:\$LogFile, C:\$Mft, C:\$Bitmap and ALOT of other random saving and verifying, when the system should normaly dont do a thing.

dont get me wrong, when the computer just sits there it wont do much except like one access every 30 to 60 secs (which is normal for my HDs). but Im talking about working with applications like graphical editing where the HD should not work unless youre saving or doing something else extensive. but it doesnt. the HD will work all the time even if I just draw simple lines.

[thymios 0]

Well in this case.it's definatelly not normal.I assume that you have defragged your HD and i also believe that you have installed the latest drivers for the external controller.

One last thing you could do, is actually connect your HD to the mainboard controller and see what will be the reaction of the system then. Leave the second controller as it is(disabled) it does not matter for this test.Just unplug the DVD and try putting the HD on, alone.

[Cool Hand 0]

cant, they are U160 HDs.

 

but if I understand you right you wont get any C:\$LogFile, C:\$Mft, C:\$Bitmap etc. writes when you watch NTfilemon (http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/filemon.shtml)?

[Toby 0]

Try to stop & disable the indexservice and see if it helps.

[Cool Hand 0]

index service is not running and disabled by default.

[DooDiddley 0]

I saw this on a previous post and saved it for myself. See if this works for you. It did for me:

 

"By default, Windows 2000 logs the I/O traffic of your hard drive. While this is a very useful setting for servers, for workstations it doesn't do anything except use up system resources. To disable it, go to the run menu and type diskperf -n to disable the logging."