Vista Hard Drive Thrashing

When I first got my P-7805u I noticed that the hard drive light was always flashing. I read somewhere that it is normal for Vista to always be accessing the hard drive. I recently read somewhere else that Vista shouldn't always be accessing the hard drive and that in some cases the thing that triggers the hard drive light can be messed up. I would like to use Vista's Perfmon to see what (if anything) is using the hard drive during idle but I don't know how to make the list sort in chronological order. Is the nonstop blinking of the light normal? (By nonstop I mean it won't go more than 1 second without blinking again.)

 

It's normal for a vista system, the byproduct of a service called superfetch which pulls frequently used programs from the drive and loads them into memory for faster app loads. It's up to you if you wish to disable it, there is alot of internet talk about the services benefits and disadvantages.

 

I did disable it, but it didn't stop the hard drive usage.

 

Did you disable it in the registry also?

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters

Change EnableSuperfetch from 3 to 0.

Unless you did this already, in which case pull up the task manager and open resource monitor, look at which operations are using up the disk at idle.

 

Ok I disabled it in the registry (I think: do I switch the numbers from 3 to 0?), but still Vista is hard at work. Looking at the performance monitor, it is all System stuff with the files generally in System32. The PIDs are 4. Could you explain what that means?

 

What are the listed file names for the processes that are using the most disk (read or write)? From what I've seen, they are typically log files that are being written.

Pid 4 is the id of processes that are run at the system level. Usually log files etc.

Can you take a screen shot perhaps of the file name (or simply post it) that is using up the most disk? I had a similar problem a while ago, sorted it out, but for the life of me I can't remember what it was anymore... lol

BTW, do you have system restore enabled?

 

OK finally figured out how to upload an image, although no idea if this will work. Yeah they seem to mostly be logs. I do have System Restore turned on, although this feature is in XP which doesn't constantly access the HD but I could try turning it off.

 

I turned off System Restore, which freed up 42GB of space but did not change disk usage. This leads me to another question though. I've heard that Vista will only put the system restore data on the drive that contains the OS, but with Windows 7, since it is optimized for SSDs, can it put the system restore on a separate hard drive?

 

I'm unsure about 7, I don't have an install of it. Perhaps someone else can answer that.

As for Vista, I've gotten my install to idle without any disk usage, for what appears to be an unlimited amount of time. Though, I've done alot of trimming to the OS, some of which reduces functionality of certain processes and sevice (error reporting and logging for example)

A screenshot of my resource monitor. This was after I closed firefox, with no programs running.



Some things I can think of that I have done, though I may miss a few.

Disable SuperFetch

Disable SuperFetch through Regedit

Disable Windows Search service

Disable Indexing on all drives
-Open My Computer / right click C and select Properties / Uncheck Allow windows to index this drive / repeat for other drives

Disable all log files except ReadyBoot
-Open Control Panel / Administrative Tool / Reliability and Performance monitor / Data Collector Sets / Startup Event Trace Sessions / Disable all except ReadyBoot Example:



Disable Volume Shadow Copy Service

Disable Error Reporting Service

Disable Windows Event Log Service
-Be fore-warned doing so will also disable Windows Task Scheduler. If you have custom scheduled tasks, they will not run. Nor will you have the ability to trouble shoot through the event log.

Disable Windows Backup Service

That's all I can think of at the moment. There may be a few more, though I think I covered most of the bases.

EDIT:
One other thing I forgot to mention was a process called RegBack. Registry Backup. It caused me headaches on my last vista install with my Raid setup. It's part of system restore.

Another thing about system restore, even though it was disabled, I've found that it needs to be disabled from the control panel also.

Control Panel / System / Advanced System Settings / System Protection tab / ensure your drives do not have a check mark next to them.

You may find that with the volume shadow copy service disabled, you can't gain access to this tab. In this case, re-enable Volume Shadow Copy service, change the settings in the system protection tab, then disable Volume Shadow Copy service.

 

Thanks for the awesome guide. I'll have to try this stuff out when I have more time. BTW, does the link to my image work? What's the easiest to use image uploader out there?

 

Yes your image did work. If you want to post embedded images, use photobucket and copy the provided tag.

Give those various options a shot and let me know if you see an improvement in disk usage.

 

For what it is worth, Win 7 on my P7805u also accesses the HD every half second or so.