Drive activity

[HSK]

is there any way on Vista to check whats being currently indexed, or recently has...or what proccess is accessing drives?

I've plugged in an external Lacie drive via firewire...and it's just been constantly reading...that drive isn't under the Indexing setttings...I'm pretty sure i've seen the information on whats been indexed somewhere else in Vista, but i can't remember where at all now, and i've tried looking again.

It's annoying me a lil, because theres a prob i can't sort out on my PC or can put my finger on to what it exactly is... when there alot of drive activity...i get crackles in MP3 playback...and the files aren't even stored on the Lacie drive.

[RoBe]

if i remember correctly, turning off the search function sorts that out. Or turning off auto-indexing, something like that

edit: Navigate to Control Panel/System and Maintenance/Indexing Options. There you can remove all locations or only those you use rarely from the indexing

[RoBe]

check this also

How to disable Vista indexing

[threepe]

Open up Task Manager, and then Performance Monitor. I am sure in there that opens up and shows disk activity. I don't currently run Vista myself, but do use it on other people's machines.

Another thing to do is again open up Task Manager, then look at the various processes that are running. Sort by the activity column, so those that are using the most of the CPU are at the top. That should give you a clue as to what is running and doing things.

Things to look for are:
Windows indexing
Other indexing...google, copernic, nero etc
Disk degragging (Disk Keeper)
AV scanning
Anti spyware scanning

Those are the most common for attacking your drive.

ALSO, DONT UNPLUG THE DRIVE IF ITS IN USE. If you do, you will most probably corrupt its partitions. I did this on a friends machine. I did not know he has Disk Keeper...it hard started to defrag my USB drive. I did not realize and just unplugged it...opps.....120Gb of data down the pan

[HSK]

if i remember correctly, turning off the search function sorts that out. Or turning off auto-indexing, something like that

edit: Navigate to Control Panel/System and Maintenance/Indexing Options. There you can remove all locations or only those you use rarely from the indexing

hmm i thought it might of been that at fist, but the drive isn't listed at all in the indexing options.

Open up Task Manager, and then Performance Monitor. I am sure in there that opens up and shows disk activity. I don't currently run Vista myself, but do use it on other people's machines.

Another thing to do is again open up Task Manager, then look at the various processes that are running. Sort by the activity column, so those that are using the most of the CPU are at the top. That should give you a clue as to what is running and doing things.

Things to look for are:
Windows indexing
Other indexing...google, copernic, nero etc
Disk degragging (Disk Keeper)
AV scanning
Anti spyware scanning

Those are the most common for attacking your drive.

ALSO, DONT UNPLUG THE DRIVE IF ITS IN USE. If you do, you will most probably corrupt its partitions. I did this on a friends machine. I did not know he has Disk Keeper...it hard started to defrag my USB drive. I did not realize and just unplugged it...opps.....120Gb of data down the pan

Ahh! yea i left it alone for a few hours, it stopped in the end. i can only assume is was either my ESET NOD32, or diskeeper? (even though the drive wasn't defragmented & only had 10 gigs of files).

i never knew nero indexes though? hmm it might of been that...

cheers guys for ur replies.

[threepe]

Oh, you do have DiskKeeper!?

That thing is mental if its the version I came across. It automatically attempts to defrag any USB drive when it connects So if you just hook up a drive to transfer a file you are pretty stuffed unless you know diskeeper is doing this. Even the stop hardware button did not work for me.

There is an option buried somewhere within diskeeper that stops it form automatically doing this for usb drives..i would highly recommend this.

As for Nero, if you have the full version, there should be a little search bar at the bottom of your screen (unless you have closed that). It acts as a desktop search facility. Even if the bar is closed, the process still indexes your files.

I have come across machine that have the windows indexing service, copernic and nero. The irony being that each can actually starts indexing each others indicies lol!!

[HSK]

i think this one is ok when it comes to the USB drives, it's say auto defrag and i-faast not availble when ever i plug them in.

ahh, so its the nero search that indexes aswell...kool. even though it's disabled, i think i'll try and get rid of it.

cheers!

[threepe]

If you have XP

Start>Run>msconfig

Then go to startup items, then look for any references to Nero, then disable. You can normally disable all Nero startup items without issue (note that I said disable, not delete). There are other utilities that can do this, but some of them delete the entires. If you want ever need them back then just pop back in an enable them. You cannot screw it up (well I have never managed).

The next time you reboot a little menu appears saying you are running in some sort of diagnostic mode. There is a little box you can tick and it will not show up again.

[arthurleung]

Have you tried updating your BIOS?

I have a Nforce 430 mobo which crackles if I use USB drive while my X-Fi is playing anything and also cause data corruption. This is sorted by updating the BIOS.

I had a Nforce 4 SLI mobo which crackles if I transfer data on my 3Ware card while my X-Fi is playing anything and ALSO cause data corrution. Didn't find any fix for it though :S

[HSK]

^ i want to...but im scared to, as i did when i first got the board, but - it started to restart its self randomly after a few mins of use. so i had to reflash it back to the orginal.

do you think it's worth me trying to see if there's a newer one from the one i tried? or just try going up a firmware at a time...not the latest striaght away.