Constant hd thrashing in vista

[Dzomlija]

Here is an advice with regards to getting fed up with thrashing noises/disk related slowdowns in Vista...

If you are using Vista Ultimate, use Vista's excellent disk imaging tool (Complete PC Backup) to upgrade from the CRAPPY 500 GB Seagate 7200.10 (I used to have this as my main HDD) to a 640 GB Western Digital Caviar Black Edition. Also, for those using Intel ICHR7 - ICHR10 chipset, make sure you are using the latest version of Intel's Matrix Storage Drivers and that you have enabled write caching in your Drive's Storage Policies (found in Device Manager). It will also help if you enable AHCI in the BIOS and setup Vista to use AHCI drivers if you are not using RAID.

The move from a Seagate to Western Digital was a big relief not only because the Western Digital is almost inaudible (I no longer hear the constant brrrp-brrrp sound of the Hard Drive when it starts seeking, reading, writing), but the disk IO is also faster. After I upgraded, I seldom notice the foreground tasks getting slowed down by disk activity... Note that I don't even notice disk activity that much anymore since the WD drive is almost silent.

Another tip is to right click on the hard drive icon (C drive) on Windows Explorer, select properties, and do a cleanup. Make sure you select the TEMP files for cleaning. If you haven't done this for a while you will notice tens of gigabytes residing in the TEMP files area... Those are the files Vista uses for Shadow Copies and which I suspect is one of the things which is causing all that hard drive activity after all the indexing and Super Fetch caching has been completed.

Note that once you delete those TEMP files, you are also probably deleting older Restore Points. I don't think I ever restored to a much earlier date anyways so that stuff for me is unnecessary.

While I agree with you about clearing the TEMP folders to free up lots of space, I feel I should correct you on something:

The TEMP folders is not used for Shadow Copies or Restore Points. Those are stored in the hidden folder "System Volume Information", which only the system is allowed to access.

Hard Disk thrashing as it is called, it caused primarily by the defragger running the background according to schedule, and the Search Indexer. The first thing I do after reloading ANY Windows Vista system is to go into Indexing Options, add whatever drives are available to the index, and then leave the computer idle to allow the index time to complete without interruption.

And in truth, I have yet to even see what this whole "Disk Thrashing" is all about, and I've been using Vista for nearly 2 years now, and have installed hundreds of machines in that time.

Personally, I believe that "Vista Disk Thrashing" should be classified as an urban legend. Everybody believes it exists, but nobody can provide proof...

 

[sygnus21]

4GB ultra DDR 400mhz - 3 seen by vista

Since no one caught this - Why is your machine only seeing 3gig of RAM when you have 4gig installed on Vista 64??? The sig under your name says you have Vista 64.

That in and of itself is a problem "If" you have Vista 64 since It should see all 4gig of RAM.

I'd start there.

 

[Dzomlija]

4GB ultra DDR 400mhz - 3 seen by vista

Since no one caught this - Why is your machine only seeing 3gig of RAM when you have 4gig installed on Vista 64??? The sig under your name says you have Vista 64.

That in and of itself is a problem "If" you have Vista 64 since It should see all 4gig of RAM.

I'd start there.

That happens because the "lost" memory is allocated to onboard devices when the machine is first powered up, long before Vista even starts.

This phenomenon is most common in motherboards that cannot support more than 4GB RAM anyway...

 

[softwareguy256]

It's either because vista does not support the motherboard and ASUS has zero support. I could turn on the memory hole to remap the hole 1 GB hole from 3gb to 4gb used by 32 bit windows, but that would black out my screen. that has nothing to do with my HD noises. I have pretty much isolated it down to that damn svchost.exe process described earlier

Also, has anyone ever done a task scheduler audit and removed non-critical tasks from it? I prefer to manually defrag my disks, besides my CPU is rarely on at 2am, except when I'm gaming, not the time I'd want a defrag.

4GB ultra DDR 400mhz - 3 seen by vista

Since no one caught this - Why is your machine only seeing 3gig of RAM when you have 4gig installed on Vista 64??? The sig under your name says you have Vista 64.

That in and of itself is a problem "If" you have Vista 64 since It should see all 4gig of RAM.

I'd start there.

 

[sygnus21]

That happens because the "lost" memory is allocated to onboard devices when the machine is first powered up, long before Vista even starts.

This phenomenon is most common in motherboards that cannot support more than 4GB RAM anyway...

Hmmm...never heard that before.

That must be a pretty old MB to not support at least 4gig of memory. What other problems lurk there?

It's either because vista does not support the motherboard and ASUS has zero support.

With that statement, I'd look at another MB. also, how much memory does you MB support, and what board is it? I'm telling you, you have a problem there.

Here's my system, and I only have 4gig of memory installed (not including the video card ):

 

[TeamanFL]

Here is an advice with regards to getting fed up with thrashing noises/disk related slowdowns in Vista...

If you are using Vista Ultimate, use Vista's excellent disk imaging tool (Complete PC Backup) to upgrade from the CRAPPY 500 GB Seagate 7200.10 (I used to have this as my main HDD) to a 640 GB Western Digital Caviar Black Edition. Also, for those using Intel ICHR7 - ICHR10 chipset, make sure you are using the latest version of Intel's Matrix Storage Drivers and that you have enabled write caching in your Drive's Storage Policies (found in Device Manager). It will also help if you enable AHCI in the BIOS and setup Vista to use AHCI drivers if you are not using RAID.

The move from a Seagate to Western Digital was a big relief not only because the Western Digital is almost inaudible (I no longer hear the constant brrrp-brrrp sound of the Hard Drive when it starts seeking, reading, writing), but the disk IO is also faster. After I upgraded, I seldom notice the foreground tasks getting slowed down by disk activity... Note that I don't even notice disk activity that much anymore since the WD drive is almost silent.

Another tip is to right click on the hard drive icon (C drive) on Windows Explorer, select properties, and do a cleanup. Make sure you select the TEMP files for cleaning. If you haven't done this for a while you will notice tens of gigabytes residing in the TEMP files area... Those are the files Vista uses for Shadow Copies and which I suspect is one of the things which is causing all that hard drive activity after all the indexing and Super Fetch caching has been completed.

Note that once you delete those TEMP files, you are also probably deleting older Restore Points. I don't think I ever restored to a much earlier date anyways so that stuff for me is unnecessary.

While I agree with you about clearing the TEMP folders to free up lots of space, I feel I should correct you on something:

The TEMP folders is not used for Shadow Copies or Restore Points. Those are stored in the hidden folder "System Volume Information", which only the system is allowed to access.

Hard Disk thrashing as it is called, it caused primarily by the defragger running the background according to schedule, and the Search Indexer. The first thing I do after reloading ANY Windows Vista system is to go into Indexing Options, add whatever drives are available to the index, and then leave the computer idle to allow the index time to complete without interruption.

And in truth, I have yet to even see what this whole "Disk Thrashing" is all about, and I've been using Vista for nearly 2 years now, and have installed hundreds of machines in that time.

Personally, I believe that "Vista Disk Thrashing" should be classified as an urban legend. Everybody believes it exists, but nobody can provide proof...

It's not an urban legend. My disk runs all the time for no apparent reason. When I run task manager, no applications are running.
I use AVG and have told it to NOT scan on a schedule. I manually scan every so often.
The only icons in my tray are AVG, volume control, network, and safely remove hardware (I have a USB mouse, so the USB plug for that is in all of the time).

MY HD light is blinking right now and the only thing running is this web page using FireFox.

 

[Dzomlija]

That happens because the "lost" memory is allocated to onboard devices when the machine is first powered up, long before Vista even starts.

This phenomenon is most common in motherboards that cannot support more than 4GB RAM anyway...

Hmmm...never heard that before.

That must be a pretty old MB to not support at least 4gig of memory. What other problems lurk there?

Read again: I said - "Some motherboard that don't support MORE than 4GB of ram will exhibit this phenomenon". Which implies that the board would handle a maximum of 4GB.

But to clarify also what I said about "lost memory" being a hardware issue, and not a Vista issue, this is a throwback from the days as far back as the first 32-bit processors, the venerable 80386. In those days, it was unheard of for mainstream "consumer" PCs to have 4GB ram, let alone possible.

When later processors came out, and Windows 95 became more popular and the real home-computer explosion began, more memory was required, and motherboard manufacturers started releasing boards with ever increasing memory capacities.

It is only in the past year or so that boards supporting more than 4GB have become truly mainstream, with the increased popularity of Vista x64.

Back when 4GB memory was unheard of, devices that required memory, such as printer ports, COM ports or VGA cards, had their memory space mapped into the 3GB - 4GB range, which was considered a safe practice, because most PCs in the early days of 32 Bit never exceeded perhaps 32MB of memory, and later on perhaps 512MB.

The problem of this "lost memory" arose when commonly installed memory capacities started exceeding the 3GB mark, and we started seeing an overlap. No two devices can have the same memory address spaces. So now when the computer is first powered up, the attached hardware gets preference, and gets allocated memory addresses in the 3GB to 4GB range. Those memory addresses that are allocated are then no longer available to the system, regardless of which OS you are using.

It was only when x64 computing started becoming popular and installed memory capacities started exceeding 4GB that manufacturers started finding ways of resolving this issue.

I'm planning on formatting this weekend to install Windows 7 as my primary OS. I think I'll try a little experiment first. I'm going to install Windows XP, and then post a screenshot of memory as reported by Task Manager. I'd do the same with Vista, except I don't have a legal Vista x86 available, so XP will have to do.

My motherboard reports 4096MB installed RAM, and 4094MB available.

 

[softwareguy256]

Here is an advice with regards to getting fed up with thrashing noises/disk related slowdowns in Vista...

If you are using Vista Ultimate, use Vista's excellent disk imaging tool (Complete PC Backup) to upgrade from the CRAPPY 500 GB Seagate 7200.10 (I used to have this as my main HDD) to a 640 GB Western Digital Caviar Black Edition. Also, for those using Intel ICHR7 - ICHR10 chipset, make sure you are using the latest version of Intel's Matrix Storage Drivers and that you have enabled write caching in your Drive's Storage Policies (found in Device Manager). It will also help if you enable AHCI in the BIOS and setup Vista to use AHCI drivers if you are not using RAID.

The move from a Seagate to Western Digital was a big relief not only because the Western Digital is almost inaudible (I no longer hear the constant brrrp-brrrp sound of the Hard Drive when it starts seeking, reading, writing), but the disk IO is also faster. After I upgraded, I seldom notice the foreground tasks getting slowed down by disk activity... Note that I don't even notice disk activity that much anymore since the WD drive is almost silent.

Another tip is to right click on the hard drive icon (C drive) on Windows Explorer, select properties, and do a cleanup. Make sure you select the TEMP files for cleaning. If you haven't done this for a while you will notice tens of gigabytes residing in the TEMP files area... Those are the files Vista uses for Shadow Copies and which I suspect is one of the things which is causing all that hard drive activity after all the indexing and Super Fetch caching has been completed.

Note that once you delete those TEMP files, you are also probably deleting older Restore Points. I don't think I ever restored to a much earlier date anyways so that stuff for me is unnecessary.

While I agree with you about clearing the TEMP folders to free up lots of space, I feel I should correct you on something:

The TEMP folders is not used for Shadow Copies or Restore Points. Those are stored in the hidden folder "System Volume Information", which only the system is allowed to access.

Hard Disk thrashing as it is called, it caused primarily by the defragger running the background according to schedule, and the Search Indexer. The first thing I do after reloading ANY Windows Vista system is to go into Indexing Options, add whatever drives are available to the index, and then leave the computer idle to allow the index time to complete without interruption.

And in truth, I have yet to even see what this whole "Disk Thrashing" is all about, and I've been using Vista for nearly 2 years now, and have installed hundreds of machines in that time.

Personally, I believe that "Vista Disk Thrashing" should be classified as an urban legend. Everybody believes it exists, but nobody can provide proof...

It's not an urban legend. My disk runs all the time for no apparent reason. When I run task manager, no applications are running.
I use AVG and have told it to NOT scan on a schedule. I manually scan every so often.
The only icons in my tray are AVG, volume control, network, and safely remove hardware (I have a USB mouse, so the USB plug for that is in all of the time).

MY HD light is blinking right now and the only thing running is this web page using FireFox.

That guy who says it is an urban legend must work at M$. This problem isn't even new its been around for 3 years since 2006, google "hd activity vista". Have you tried opening your task manager with show all processes? I'm curious to know if it is a svchost.exe.

 

[softwareguy256]

Here is an advice with regards to getting fed up with thrashing noises/disk related slowdowns in Vista...

If you are using Vista Ultimate, use Vista's excellent disk imaging tool (Complete PC Backup) to upgrade from the CRAPPY 500 GB Seagate 7200.10 (I used to have this as my main HDD) to a 640 GB Western Digital Caviar Black Edition. Also, for those using Intel ICHR7 - ICHR10 chipset, make sure you are using the latest version of Intel's Matrix Storage Drivers and that you have enabled write caching in your Drive's Storage Policies (found in Device Manager). It will also help if you enable AHCI in the BIOS and setup Vista to use AHCI drivers if you are not using RAID.

The move from a Seagate to Western Digital was a big relief not only because the Western Digital is almost inaudible (I no longer hear the constant brrrp-brrrp sound of the Hard Drive when it starts seeking, reading, writing), but the disk IO is also faster. After I upgraded, I seldom notice the foreground tasks getting slowed down by disk activity... Note that I don't even notice disk activity that much anymore since the WD drive is almost silent.

Another tip is to right click on the hard drive icon (C drive) on Windows Explorer, select properties, and do a cleanup. Make sure you select the TEMP files for cleaning. If you haven't done this for a while you will notice tens of gigabytes residing in the TEMP files area... Those are the files Vista uses for Shadow Copies and which I suspect is one of the things which is causing all that hard drive activity after all the indexing and Super Fetch caching has been completed.

Note that once you delete those TEMP files, you are also probably deleting older Restore Points. I don't think I ever restored to a much earlier date anyways so that stuff for me is unnecessary.

While I agree with you about clearing the TEMP folders to free up lots of space, I feel I should correct you on something:

The TEMP folders is not used for Shadow Copies or Restore Points. Those are stored in the hidden folder "System Volume Information", which only the system is allowed to access.

Hard Disk thrashing as it is called, it caused primarily by the defragger running the background according to schedule, and the Search Indexer. The first thing I do after reloading ANY Windows Vista system is to go into Indexing Options, add whatever drives are available to the index, and then leave the computer idle to allow the index time to complete without interruption.

And in truth, I have yet to even see what this whole "Disk Thrashing" is all about, and I've been using Vista for nearly 2 years now, and have installed hundreds of machines in that time.

Personally, I believe that "Vista Disk Thrashing" should be classified as an urban legend. Everybody believes it exists, but nobody can provide proof...

I provided proof, it's in the screenshot I put on page 1 with that SVCHost.exe.

 

[Dzomlija]

Here is an advice with regards to getting fed up with thrashing noises/disk related slowdowns in Vista...

If you are using Vista Ultimate, use Vista's excellent disk imaging tool (Complete PC Backup) to upgrade from the CRAPPY 500 GB Seagate 7200.10 (I used to have this as my main HDD) to a 640 GB Western Digital Caviar Black Edition. Also, for those using Intel ICHR7 - ICHR10 chipset, make sure you are using the latest version of Intel's Matrix Storage Drivers and that you have enabled write caching in your Drive's Storage Policies (found in Device Manager). It will also help if you enable AHCI in the BIOS and setup Vista to use AHCI drivers if you are not using RAID.

The move from a Seagate to Western Digital was a big relief not only because the Western Digital is almost inaudible (I no longer hear the constant brrrp-brrrp sound of the Hard Drive when it starts seeking, reading, writing), but the disk IO is also faster. After I upgraded, I seldom notice the foreground tasks getting slowed down by disk activity... Note that I don't even notice disk activity that much anymore since the WD drive is almost silent.

Another tip is to right click on the hard drive icon (C drive) on Windows Explorer, select properties, and do a cleanup. Make sure you select the TEMP files for cleaning. If you haven't done this for a while you will notice tens of gigabytes residing in the TEMP files area... Those are the files Vista uses for Shadow Copies and which I suspect is one of the things which is causing all that hard drive activity after all the indexing and Super Fetch caching has been completed.

Note that once you delete those TEMP files, you are also probably deleting older Restore Points. I don't think I ever restored to a much earlier date anyways so that stuff for me is unnecessary.

While I agree with you about clearing the TEMP folders to free up lots of space, I feel I should correct you on something:

The TEMP folders is not used for Shadow Copies or Restore Points. Those are stored in the hidden folder "System Volume Information", which only the system is allowed to access.

Hard Disk thrashing as it is called, it caused primarily by the defragger running the background according to schedule, and the Search Indexer. The first thing I do after reloading ANY Windows Vista system is to go into Indexing Options, add whatever drives are available to the index, and then leave the computer idle to allow the index time to complete without interruption.

And in truth, I have yet to even see what this whole "Disk Thrashing" is all about, and I've been using Vista for nearly 2 years now, and have installed hundreds of machines in that time.

Personally, I believe that "Vista Disk Thrashing" should be classified as an urban legend. Everybody believes it exists, but nobody can provide proof...

I provided proof, it's in the screenshot I put on page 1 with that SVCHost.exe.

By my calculations, that instance of SVCHOST has read about 28GB. But if you look closely, the very next entry is your anti-virus, at about 19GB.

Question: What happens if you end-task that SVCHOST?

 

[sygnus21]

That happens because the "lost" memory is allocated to onboard devices when the machine is first powered up, long before Vista even starts.

This phenomenon is most common in motherboards that cannot support more than 4GB RAM anyway...

Hmmm...never heard that before.

That must be a pretty old MB to not support at least 4gig of memory. What other problems lurk there?

Read again: I said - "Some motherboard that don't support MORE than 4GB of ram will exhibit this phenomenon". Which implies that the board would handle a maximum of 4GB.

But to clarify also what I said about "lost memory" being a hardware issue, and not a Vista issue, this is a throwback from the days as far back as the first 32-bit processors, the venerable 80386. In those days, it was unheard of for mainstream "consumer" PCs to have 4GB ram, let alone possible.

When later processors came out, and Windows 95 became more popular and the real home-computer explosion began, more memory was required, and motherboard manufacturers started releasing boards with ever increasing memory capacities.

It is only in the past year or so that boards supporting more than 4GB have become truly mainstream, with the increased popularity of Vista x64.

Back when 4GB memory was unheard of, devices that required memory, such as printer ports, COM ports or VGA cards, had their memory space mapped into the 3GB - 4GB range, which was considered a safe practice, because most PCs in the early days of 32 Bit never exceeded perhaps 32MB of memory, and later on perhaps 512MB.

The problem of this "lost memory" arose when commonly installed memory capacities started exceeding the 3GB mark, and we started seeing an overlap. No two devices can have the same memory address spaces. So now when the computer is first powered up, the attached hardware gets preference, and gets allocated memory addresses in the 3GB to 4GB range. Those memory addresses that are allocated are then no longer available to the system, regardless of which OS you are using.

It was only when x64 computing started becoming popular and installed memory capacities started exceeding 4GB that manufacturers started finding ways of resolving this issue.

Thanks for the clearification.

However, I still fell the OP has an issue that needs to be addressed with regards to his lost/missing memory.

"My motherboard reports 4096MB installed RAM, and 4094MB available." - same here. And as you've seen, Vista 64 shows 4gig installed.

Thanks,

Peace

 

[softwareguy256]

While I agree with you about clearing the TEMP folders to free up lots of space, I feel I should correct you on something:

The TEMP folders is not used for Shadow Copies or Restore Points. Those are stored in the hidden folder "System Volume Information", which only the system is allowed to access.

Hard Disk thrashing as it is called, it caused primarily by the defragger running the background according to schedule, and the Search Indexer. The first thing I do after reloading ANY Windows Vista system is to go into Indexing Options, add whatever drives are available to the index, and then leave the computer idle to allow the index time to complete without interruption.

And in truth, I have yet to even see what this whole "Disk Thrashing" is all about, and I've been using Vista for nearly 2 years now, and have installed hundreds of machines in that time.

Personally, I believe that "Vista Disk Thrashing" should be classified as an urban legend. Everybody believes it exists, but nobody can provide proof...

I provided proof, it's in the screenshot I put on page 1 with that SVCHost.exe.

By my calculations, that instance of SVCHOST has read about 28GB. But if you look closely, the very next entry is your anti-virus, at about 19GB.

Question: What happens if you end-task that SVCHOST?

If I end task the svchost.exe after shutting off readyboost the activity seeems to stop. AVAST is annoying, but it does not cause my HD to go on full blast. Most of the activity must be the VRDB which gets built only when a screensaver is up. When i took the SS avast was not causing any activity but SVChost.exe was going full steam.

 

[Dzomlija]

If I end task the svchost.exe after shutting off readyboost the activity seeems to stop. AVAST is annoying, but it does not cause my HD to go on full blast. Most of the activity must be the VRDB which gets built only when a screensaver is up. When i took the SS avast was not causing any activity but SVChost.exe was going full steam.

Ok, try this, but I'm not too sure if it will work.

1. Press <WINDOWS_KEY>+<R> to open the run dialog
2. Type "msconfig" (without quotes) then press enter
3. Click the "Services" tab
4. In the list header, click the "Status" column to sort by running status
5. Make a note of which processes are marked "Running"
6. Close MSCONFIG
7. Endtask that particular service
8. Open MSCONFIG again as shown in steps 1 - 4 above
9. Compare the list of running and stopped services to the notes you made in step 5.
10. If a service is listed as stopped that was previously running, disable it by removing it's checkmark.
11. Click OK

I know this is a brute-force way of stopping the offending service, and I do not give the advice lightly, and indeed caution you to seek an alternate solution to this problem.

Using MSCONFIG in this way also at least give you a quick and easy method of turning the service back on if things go pear shaped.