CPU almost completely locked when copying large files.

[mxnerd]

Hi:

I'm running Windows 2003 standard x64 with 8G PC6400 RAM, and the processor is E6400.

The system only used about 700M, about 1/10 of total memory.

When I'm copying large files (4-10G) , the CPU was almost completely locked, I hardly can move the mouse at all, even though the task manager showed that the CPU usage is from 20% - 40%, never over 50%, and the commited charge for memory is also about 750M, not much more when not copying.

Can anyone explain why is this? If system is using it's memory as cache for copying large files, why doesn't it reflect on task manager?

On the other hand, the task manager with showing kernal times option on, the whole CPU usage is between 20% - 40%, yet the kernal part (red portion of the CPU usage bar) occupies the most portion of the CPU usage.

Is there any adjustment I can do to improve the performance? Thanks.

 

[stevty2889]

Doesn't sound like a cpu or memory issue, sounds more like a hard drive. Are you copying the files to another partition on the same drive? Are you using IDE, and copying the files to another drive on the same IDE cable?

 

[DJ-phYre]

Originally posted by: stevty2889
Doesn't sound like a cpu or memory issue, sounds more like a hard drive. Are you copying the files to another partition on the same drive? Are you using IDE, and copying the files to another drive on the same IDE cable?

He speaks the truth... Hard drive is usually the #1 problem whether it be the speed of the HDD (with a setup like that I am sure you have at least a 7200RPM drive) or on the same IDE cable as he mentioned

 

[mxnerd]

It's different SATA drives. I'm copying from one SATA drive to another SATA drive.

Both are WD 750GB .

And the event viewer does not show any errors.

 

[Rubycon]

Are you using IDE or AHCI mode?

Sounds like the drives (in IDE mode) are not using DMA. This results in very high cpu utilization when copying large amounts of data, etc.

 

[mxnerd]

I'm using AHCI mode.

 

[Foxery]

Rubycon's post was my first thought, too. Copying files should take almost no CPU time at all on modern systems. 20-40% is completely unreasonable. I'm not familiar with how AHCI mode works, though. There's a bad setting somewhere, but it's not the CPU itself.

 

[noriseghir]

maybe if you try disable your AV software...