HDD Activity after boot or Hibernation

After every boot and hibernation W7 starts reading of the HDD like crazy for at least 3-5min. I've checked in Resource Monitor and it's system process svchost.exe(LocalSystemNetworkRestricted) going through many files, MFT, Journal and other user and program files.

I know I can't terminate that process, as it is system process but I just want to know is that normal for W7 and is it happening to you people also or is just mine. Maybe some software that I installed messed with the settings or smth. Or maybe I did.

 

How long has it been happening? How long have you had Windows 7 installed? Windows tries to rearrange your files as it recognizes you using them more or less so that things run faster. That may be what you're seeing. svchost.exe means nothing... it's simply a program to run another program. You have to dig into the process tree to find out what's actually running.

 

I have dug deeper through Resource Monitor if that is what you mean. I put a check on the svchost.exe it is showing in lower window what is it moving, reading... There are too many files in the processing a t the same time to write them down or to memorize them. Is there a log produced from that or can I force one.
I don't if that started happening or it's like that from the beggining. Maybe I didn't notice in the beggining. But now it's annoying.
Maybe I'll just install a fresh copy and see if it's going to be the same.
Thanks for your answer.

 

Get a copy of Sysinternals Process Explorer. You can click on the instance of svchost and it will show you the actual service it is hosting.

Gary

 

Isn't that the same thing as a built-in W7 Resource Monitor? Well almost?

Anyway, will do that and get back. Thanks.

 

No, it's a bit different. Especially in its ability to identify the services hosted by a particular instance of svchost.exe.

Gary

 

It was definitely Superfetch service. I disabled the service and it stopped. But that service is pretty important as I hear/read so I'll have to enable it again. Or maybe not. I'll research a bit more. Thanks for that tip SC. +Rep for everyone.

Edit: Yes, I just found that out too. TX, once again.

 

Yes, this is standard behavior of Vista-based systems, including Vista 1.1 (Win7), in cases where you have a substantial number of programs with a complex system of DLLs installed.

Superfetch is somewhat useful, so I have decided to put up with it. It shouldn't interfere too much with system usability, at least not after about a minute or two. But, yes, you would think that they could have made this process a little bit easier on the system, by changing the way it is run. Oh well...

 

After running Win 7 RC since it was released until the official release of Win 7, I too noticed a significant increase in drive activity. After running the RC for months, I think the Superfetch function was satisfied that it knew my usage patterns and did not need to reorder/relocate files. Starting over with a clean install of Win 7 Home Premium x64 meant reintroducing a naive Superfetch to my usage habits. After a few cold boots and a lot of disk activity, this disk activity has stopped and I am back to very smooth operation.

Incidentally, I let my notebook sit until the drive activity stopped and then logged in. Then I let it sit until drive activity stopped before using Windows. Maybe this pause in user activity allowed Superfetch to complete it's task.

Also, I like to think that Gary's BootFileDefrag had something to do with the decrease of drive activity at startup...

Jeremy

 

Is it not that SuperFetch runs off of the HD if there is not enough RAM available? If so, maybe adding RAM would be a good idea and minimizing PageFile size.

 

This is the function of Superfetch I think we're talking about:

"SuperFetch monitors which applications you use the most and preloads these into your system memory so they'll be ready when you need them."​

Jeremy

 

Superfetch doesn't run off the HD if there isn't enough memory.

 

Yes and no; preloading code into memory does not explain several minutes of activity after the boot, and in fact the actual pre-fetching process is a lot faster. What does take time is to scan files containing application code (executables and DLLs mostly) to determine when and how often applications are being used. What SuperFetch seems to be doing is examine the last-access dates for all such files in order to determine what should be pre-loaded. Clearly, on a machine (such as mine... ) with literally hundreds of installed applications, and probably tens of thousands of EXEs and DLLs, this scan takes a looong time...

 

I'm not out of RAM ever and I have page file disabled.

Isn't last access time disabled by default in W7?

 

A scan? What makes you think it is scanning? Have you tried using the Resource Monitor of Task Manager to see if that is the case? It just seems like an odd way to implement that function, when logging the info would be so much less resource intensive.

Gary

 

I have used that, as well as the SysInternals monitors, and it really looks like it is reading virtually all of the executables and DLLs on my drive. Well, I haven't done any logging followed by a deeper analysis, but that's what it looks like.

Oh yes, I fully agree. And "odd" is a mild way to put it; there's stronger words that come to mind...
There is a chance that my guess as to how SuperFetch operates is wrong, but what I know for sure is that it is SuperFetch that is responsible for 5+ minutes of heavy disk activity after booting my machine, and that virtually all of that activity are disk reads of the above files.

 

Pirx,
Just so you know, my last post was a quote from Microsoft's website. Do you think they have accurately described what is going on with SuperFetch, or have you noticed something different?

Jeremy

 

What is at issue here is how, precisely, superfetch "monitors which applications use the most", and your quote does not tell us anything about that. In that sense, they have not accurately described things, but that was not the scope of this particular quote anyway. And, yes, SuperFetch does load some of that stuff into memory, but on a fresh boot I have maybe about 1.5gigs of memory in use, most of which is the OS itself and some auxiliary structures. Preloading even a full gig of stuff should not take that long.