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Vista is *thrashing* my hard drive!

S

SickBeast

Lifer
Is it normal for my hard drive light to blink almost continuously under Vista?

I opened up the 'Reliability and Performance Monitor' and it's saying that 'explorer.exe' is the main culprit, and it keeps hitting 'pagefile.sys'.

My specs:

Opteron 144 @ 2.7ghz
2GB DDR400
Asus A8N-E
Asus 8800GTS 320mb
 
It's normal for a while until it builds the search index, and after you install (and maybe uninstall?) a program because it saves System Restore info by default at those times.

But in general use, assuming you didn't just install Vista, my experience is that the hard drive is pretty quiet - and I have several things open (WMP, Firefox, Outlook, Excel, Powerpoint, Visual Studio, IM clients, etc.).

Edit: It is kind of strange for the page file to be the main source of activity though, especially if you have 2GB of RAM. Someone else will have to explain that one 😛
 
Originally posted by: SynthDude2001
It's normal for a while until it builds the search index, and after you install (and maybe uninstall?) a program because it saves System Restore info by default at those times.

But in general use, assuming you didn't just install Vista, my experience is that the hard drive is pretty quiet - and I have several things open (WMP, Firefox, Outlook, Excel, Powerpoint, Visual Studio, IM clients, etc.).

Edit: It is kind of strange for the page file to be the main source of activity though, especially if you have 2GB of RAM. Someone else will have to explain that one 😛
Click to expand...
I installed it about 2 weeks ago, and AFAIK it's finished indexing.

It's hitting the pagefile for some strange reason.

Also, it *always* uses *all* of my 2GB of RAM...for what, I don't know.
 
Originally posted by: mechBgon
SuperFetch, probably. And/or indexing.
Click to expand...
Well, it sure fetches alot, and then doesn't fetch what I need it to. I need it to fetch OpenOffice Writer, as the load time is terrible on that program and I use it quite a bit. It still doesn't seem to completely fetch it, as the hard drive gets hit pretty hard when I try to load it.
 
Maybe you should pick up Works Suite 2006 which includes full-version Word 2002. Just an idea 🙂 Should launch a lot faster, anyhow.

If you'd like to test whether indexing is the culprit, click Start and type indexing in the Search box, and then you can tell it to keep its grubby paws off your HDD, and see what happens.
 
Originally posted by: mechBgon
Maybe you should pick up Works Suite 2006 which includes full-version Word 2002. Just an idea 🙂 Should launch a lot faster, anyhow.

If you'd like to test whether indexing is the culprit, click Start and type indexing in the Search box, and then you can tell it to keep its grubby paws off your HDD, and see what happens.
Click to expand...
Indexing complete. 🙂

OpenOffice works great for me; I think I even *prefer* it over MS Word at this point just cuz I'm used to it.

It seems to be 'superfetching' a little bit more effectively for me lately; I just tried it and it opened up pretty much instantly.

Perhaps I just need to restart my computer. It's been running for about 2 weeks solid now. I never shut it down; I always just put it to 'sleep'. 🙂
 
Vista not only has extensive indexing, it also has extensive shadow storage tied to System Restore. Those can all be mitigated. Been computing for over 25 years and really - don't need no indexing. 🙂 I turn it OFF.
 
Regardless of whether "Indexing is complete," I think it may still do some indexing just to stay limber 😀 If you want to experiment, you can always turn indexing off and see what the effect is, if any.
 
Originally posted by: corkyg
Vista not only has extensive indexing, it also has extensive shadow storage tied to System Restore. Those can all be mitigated. Been computing for over 25 years and really - don't need no indexing. 🙂 I turn it OFF.
Click to expand...
You don't like being able to type in whatever you want into the start menu and have it appear instantaneously?
 
Turning System Restore off can help with HD activity, I also have Windows Defender off and have that set to scan once everyday,you'll find HD activity is only busy at startup then ,after it has done its prefetching etc will go quiet.
 
Originally posted by: Tegeril
You don't like being able to type in whatever you want into the start menu and have it appear instantaneously?
Click to expand...

Nope! I have never found the need to type anything in the Start Menu except REGEDIT or MSCONFIG. That sort of need stems from the use of "My Documents" or "Documents" as the central repository for all application files. I never let my apps use those dumpsters. Each has a dedicated storage area in an external drive, and I know where I put things.

 
Well, I'm not really noticing a performance hit from all the thrashing, per se, as far as I know at least. I was just curious as to why my hard drive is going so nuts, and why it's hitting the page file so much when I have 2GB of RAM and only FireFox running. Thanks to everyone for their input!
 
Originally posted by: corkyg
Vista not only has extensive indexing, it also has extensive shadow storage tied to System Restore. Those can all be mitigated. Been computing for over 25 years and really - don't need no indexing. 🙂 I turn it OFF.
Click to expand...

Wow, the search function is one of the best feature of Vista... and a much needed one seeing as how OSX and Google beat them to it.
 
I'm not sure it's true that Vista will use all your RAM before it starts using the page file. Memory management is complicated. It's possible you just have a usage pattern that reveals flaws in the system, but it's more likely something else like the indexer is going.
 
Originally posted by: xtknight
I'm not sure it's true that Vista will use all your RAM before it starts using the page file. Memory management is complicated. It's possible you just have a usage pattern that reveals flaws in the system, but it's more likely something else like the indexer is going.
Click to expand...
Everyone keeps suggesting the indexer. Why on earth would it need to access my pagefile to index stuff? It makes no sense...
 
Originally posted by: SickBeast
Originally posted by: xtknight
I'm not sure it's true that Vista will use all your RAM before it starts using the page file. Memory management is complicated. It's possible you just have a usage pattern that reveals flaws in the system, but it's more likely something else like the indexer is going.
Click to expand...
Everyone keeps suggesting the indexer. Why on earth would it need to access my pagefile to index stuff? It makes no sense...
Click to expand...

It's accessing your HDD, which is probably where your pagefile is stored.
 
Originally posted by: corkyg
Originally posted by: Tegeril
You don't like being able to type in whatever you want into the start menu and have it appear instantaneously?
Click to expand...

Nope! I have never found the need to type anything in the Start Menu except REGEDIT or MSCONFIG. That sort of need stems from the use of "My Documents" or "Documents" as the central repository for all application files. I never let my apps use those dumpsters. Each has a dedicated storage area in an external drive, and I know where I put things.
Click to expand...
Except start menu search is faster... =\ No opening of folders, no navigating with the mouse, just hit the windows key on the keyboard, type photoshop, press enter before it even displays results, and it launches.
 
Originally posted by: SickBeast
Originally posted by: xtknight
I'm not sure it's true that Vista will use all your RAM before it starts using the page file. Memory management is complicated. It's possible you just have a usage pattern that reveals flaws in the system, but it's more likely something else like the indexer is going.
Click to expand...
Everyone keeps suggesting the indexer. Why on earth would it need to access my pagefile to index stuff? It makes no sense...
Click to expand...

Its not the indexer.

Indexer would show activity under SearchIndexer.exe, not explorer.exe. Supercache also doesnt go under explorer.

The only reason explorer would be going that crazy that I can think of is if it was creating a lot of thumbnails.

Download "process monitor", and figure out exactly which files are causing it to spill over into the pagefile, and you should have a much better chance of tracking it down.
 
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