Whats going on?

[G+_Rud Dog]

Whats going on? After starting up my computer in the morning grabbing the first cup of joe and while reading the days email happen to notice the hard is constantly being run.

 

So I opened up Task Manager in Windows 8.1 and indeed the drive was running at 100 percent then continued to run at above 80 percent and yes it was making that sound we are all to familiar with drive head accessing the platters.

 

Moved on to the resource monitor and there are a ton of processes running to many to list here but want to know how I track down the constant high disk access culprit?

 

[G+_Rud Dog]

After about 20 to 30 minutes all returns to a quiet morning disk drive?

[G+_Akira Yamanita]

Under the Disk tab in Resource Monitor, you can sort the processes by activity in the Disk Activity section. If the issue comes and goes, a total bytes column might help but if you're seeing the activity at that moment, sort by each of the bytes per second columns. It's often the Windows Search service or antivirus.

[G+_Rud Dog]

Akira Yamanita Don't know why hadn't noticed this before but either way it appears there is some sort of power up initialization going on only because after a fair amount of time the drive is back to barely being accessed.

My alternative is to clone and swap out for SSD.

 

Thank you for your input.

[G+_Ben Reese]

I had the same thing a couple days ago. Tracked it down to Windows Defender scanning using the Resource Monitor that Akira mentioned. It's a great tool!

[G+_Rud Dog]

Will assume it is normal and live with it or replace my spinning drive with a SSD. Thanks all.

[G+_David Wiggins]

The sysinternals tools can let you know what is hammering your hard drive. (I'm a huge fan of process explorer). If you have Spotify, there is a bug they are rolling out a patch for that was causing it's internal database to be deleted and regenerated every few seconds, resulting in hundreds of GB of write/erase/rewrite a day.

 

Also, chrome, Firefox, and chromium browsers have been rewriting the tab page cache every 15 seconds. There's a setting in about: config that can fix that, too.

technet.microsoft.com - Sysinternals Suite

[G+_Damien Wessling]

Before you change anything out Rud, Spinrite on level 4. Windows will prioritise resources to reading the drive when it's having difficulty doing so, which may be the reason you're seeing high cpu cycles and memory use relative to disk activity. Run Spinrite first, it's my first 'go to' in these scenarios... and doesn't require tools or disassembly ;)

[G+_Rud Dog]

Damien Wessling Sounds like a good idea and will be able to test Spinrite on a 1TB drive. Although might have to wait till later this evening for one of those over night runs. Will let you know how that goes.

 

On another note has anyone heard if/when Steve will release his long awaited newer version really looking forward to it.

[G+_Damien Wessling]

Steve's getting back to his Spinrite revision once he's wrapped up and released SQRL. Not long to go from what I hear. Look forward to hearing your results.

 

grc.com - GRC's | SQRL Secure Quick Reliable Login

[G+_Golden Retriever]

Damien Wessling level 4 will take a week or two to finish on a modern HDD

[G+_Damien Wessling]

Tod Sage Granted the larger drives naturally take longer, a 1Tb in 'serviceable' condition (still running) might take 6 - 12 hours on level 4. This is of course variable depending on how Spinrite sees the drive condition. The time frame is generally linear for larger drives if the condition is comparable. Naturally, the processing time is relative to the drive state. That said, if Spinrite is reporting unrealistic hours to complete once it's started analysis, that's a fair indicator the drive was definitely in need of Spinrite. I wouldn't be detered by the potential for extended processing times, it's still the single most consistent tool for drive recovery.