Windows 7 what is going on with the disk thrashing?

[sxr7171]

I have to say this is really, really just pissing me off. I have done everything in my power to stop this.

I get random thrashing on my HDD and I understand when an OS is installed on it. But I moved my OS to an Intel SSD. So this HDD is simply a storage drive which holds only my music. It holds nothing else.

I have disabled Windows disk defrag. I have even gone so far as to disable Superfetch to troubleshoot this. I have no page file on it and I have system restore disabled.

Why is this thing thrashing like crazy?

I have checked resource monitor and it reports absolutely no disk reads or writes to that HDD while this drive is making enough noise to drive me crazy. What is going on here?

It did this thrashing for 2 full minute upon boot up and now just stopped. I can't understand for the life of me what is going on. Is it optimizing the MBR or the file table? Why can't this OS leave my drive alone?

 

[TJCS]

Have you written a lot of new data to the drives? Try disabling windows from indexing your hard drives in My Computer > Right-click drive > properties > All files on this system to have content indexed...

 

[Anubis]

dissable superfetch

 

[Spikesoldier]

disable windows indexing service

 

[darkequitus]

I have disable Prefecth, superfetch, Search etc on Windows 7 as I have several SSDs. I have notice in performance monitor, a file 'c: \Windows\Prefetch\Readyboot.etl (not Readyboost) Thrash my drive for a good 15 minutes or so.

Going to 'Control Panel -> Administrative tools -> Performance Monitor -> Data Collector Sets -> Startup Event Trace Sessions' - I can reduce the butter down from 20Mb thus reduce the thrashing. It does a lot of thrashing for 20Mb IMO

It can be disable from 'Event Trace Sessions' also

 

[WildW]

It could also potentially be creating a restore point?

 

[taltamir]

Maybe you have a program installed that is using it (rather then windows itself), maybe even a virus. it could be anything..

 

[skid00skid00]

It's probably 'search indexing', and it's really not a problem.

 

[RU482]

nm/m

 

[tweakboy]

When Vista or Windows 7 boot up and after your desktop has loaded and everything in tray is loaded then what happens is in a couple minutes the hard drive thrashes for 10 minutes to 15 minutes then stops. Now everything is in RAM and your system will be fast.

This is a fact. Anyone boot up and dont touch your comp for 20 minutes, soon youll see hard drive start working out of know where and you have to wait 10 minutes around til it stops and now you can use your system. It's awful that this is the case but Vista had same issue and looks like they never sorted it out..

 

[Voo]

It's awful that this is the case but Vista had same issue and looks like they never sorted it out..

It's awful that they cache applications so they load faster when you need them? I think we have different definitions of "awful", but if you don't want it you just have to disable superfetch.

 

[taltamir]

tweakboy, superfetch is the best thing to ever happen to windows... and is a substantial advantage windows has over any other OS in the market.

And I thought the OP said he disabled superfetch and indexing so it can't be the cause for him.

 

[Anubis]

do you have your AV set to scan at startup?

 

[zagood]

From http://talkback.zdnet.com/5208-12354-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=47786&messageID=895626&start=0
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For anyone who's going to disable ReadyBoost it's also a good idea to disable the related but different ReadyBoot. According to Microsoft, ReadyBoot and ReadyBoost reduce booting time by up to 20%. But the price paid is harddisk writing noise a while after the machine has been started and is supposed to be all yours. You can observe a 20 megabyte file created by ReadyBoot on your boot disk at %windir%/prefetch/ReadyBoot/ReadyBoot.etl and you can observe the cost of writing to that file by watching disk usage in the Resource Monitor program not long after startup. I notice no change in boot time after disabling ReadyBoot, ReadyBoost and Superfetch. Nor any change in system performance overall, except for the pleasant reduction in disk activity.

Here's how to disable ReadyBoot. Launch the "Reliability and Performance Monitor" program (under "System Tools" inside "Computer Management"; or via any of the other routes to launch this program). Then on the lefthand side of your screen click "Data Collector Sets", and underneath that heading click "Startup Event Trace Sessions". Now on your righthand side you'll see a list that includes ReadyBoot, and you'll see the word 'enabled' beside the word 'Readyboot'. Double clicking the list item brings up the ReadyBoot Properties dialog. This dialog has a number of tabs. Pick the "Trace Session" tab. Finally, uncheck the "Enabled" checkbox on that tab.

 

[sxr7171]

do you have your AV set to scan at startup?

I don't know does Microsoft Security Essentials run a startup scan? But that's a good call. Almost obvious, but easily missed.

 

[sxr7171]

To add I noticed that it likes to do some disk thrashing for a while after a big file (40GB) has been copied to or from the drive. It almost seems like the drive is doing some self optimization or maybe it is Windows doing it. But the thrashing here is is for only half a minute and somewhat light.