Disk Activity % graph

[forestial]

On the Disk Performance tab, there is a graph with the title "Disk Activity %". It shows about 3-4 minutes worth of trend data on how busy the drive is.

I would like to see the same trend data but over a longer time period. So I was wondering what the equivalent counter in PERFMON would be, in the hope I could set it up to be monitored there.

[hdsentinel]

In Perfmon, there is no disk activity - but there is a "percent disk idle time" counter, which shows the opposite: how "idle" is the hard disk.
This shows 100% when the disk is idle (no activity) and dereases (to 0%) as the disk activity increases.

[forestial]

Thanks. I found "% Disk Time" counters under both the "Logical Disk" and the "Physical Disk" which appear to be what I was thinking of, without the need to subtract from 100. Also the two seem to always report exactly the same value (so Physical = Logical for this purpose). I am on Windows 7 x86.

This is helpful but what I am really trying to do is resolve a problem where every few minutes my C: drive goes to 100% on those counters, the disk access light comes on continuously, and the system almost locks up with a really severe performance problem. It remains like that for a 2-3 minutes and then goes to normal, but then does the same a while later. I presume some software process is running wild and causing all this disk IO, but I cannot pin down what process is causing it. The CPU remains at low utilization throughout.

I have replaced the C: drive with a new one in hopes of resolving this but it made no difference. The old C: drive which used to suffer from this is now repurposed as an almost empty data drive and shows no unexpected activity, so I do not think the problem is hardware related. That's why I am looking for a software or OS reason.

Any ideas how to trace from a period of very high "% Disk Time" to the process that is causing it? I am familiar with Process Explorer but have not been able to find anything with it.

[hdsentinel]

Generally, the Logical drive is the partition (eg. C:) while the physical drive is the drive itself.
If the hard disk has only one partition, there is no difference, then yes, both counters may show the same.

Such issues usually occur if there is a problem between the drive and the host computer itself.
The most common causes are

1) when the hard disk finds a (previously undetected) bad sector, it starts the re-allocation procedure, to move the sector data to the spare area and then re-direct all further reads/writes to this spare sector.
This is a lengthy process and yes, for that, the complete system may seem "freeze".
But if the issue happens with an other hard disk, then this may not be case (especially if the drives are otherwise perfect)

2) problem with the power source, power cable
The hard disk may spin down / spin up (and this may repeat many times). 4-pin -> SATA cables, power splitters can cause such issues.

3) problem with the data cable which results in communication issues. Usually these are recorded by the hard disk and Hard Disk Sentinel reports them ( http://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_cas ... _error.php )

But as I suspect as you tried to replace the drive, you verified the cables, connections, so there may be other problem, yes, more likely related to software.

In some situations, the driver of the hard disk controller (motherboard) where the drive connected can cause problems. Changing / replacing the hard disk controller driver may help, for example if you replace the driver to "Standard AHCI compatible controller driver" in the Windows Device Manager (if the controller is an AHCI controller) can help.

Also personally I'd try to

- open the Windows Task Manager (yes, the simple one, no need to use other tools)
- enable to show more columns, like the I/O read bytes, I/O write bytes

and when such situation happens, you can check which process is performing high amount of I/O activity.
This would confirm if the issue is related to a running process.

[hdsentinel]

Also I'd perform the tests:

http://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php#tests

just to reveal any possible issues with the hard disk (or the storage system in general) - or confirm that the issue is really related to a software.

And if you use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option in Hard Disk Sentinel, I can check the actual situation, controller / driver combination and this may give further ideas about how to investigate and improve.

[forestial]

I ran the Surface Scan (Read) test and it was 100% clean.

I have sent the 'Report to Developer' - thanks for looking at that.

I looked in Device Manager but strangely I cannot see any thing there about SATA - under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers I have
ATA Channel 0
ATA Channel 0
ATA Channel 1
ATA Channel 1
Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller
Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller
but these all seem to have the latest available drivers.

Motherboard is MSI KA780G (MS-7551)
AMI BIOS v16.4 (there is a later 16.7 version available - is that worth installing?
Cannot find any other motherboard drivers on the MSI website.

[hdsentinel]

Thanks for the report !

The problem may be exactly that the controllers work with the "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller" drivers, instead of the drivers actually designed for this controller (motherboard chipset).
In many cases, the Windows Standard drivers work correctly (and for some controllers, even better than the drivers released by the manufacturer of the device) but in this situation, installing the proper drivers may help.

As I just checked on their website:

http://www.msi.com/support/mb/KA780G.ht ... &Win7%2032

if you select your operating system (Win7 32 bit), then there are drivers offered:

1) on-board PIDE/SATA drivers (simple package of just this driver)
2) system & chipset drivers (complete package of all drivers)

Please note that with these drivers, it may not possible to monitor the hard disk status. There are many AMD drivers which does not provide hard disk status information - but it may worth to check if you experience the performance issues with these drivers as well.

The BIOS update may also help - as from 16.4 to 16.7 version, both the SB module and RAID ROM updates listed - these may also cause different (hopefully better) operation of the disk controller.

[forestial]

I updated the BIOS to v16.7 but with no apparent improvement.

I tried to install the MSI-supplied PIDE/SATA drivers (via Device Manager, Add legacy device etc.) but could not get them to install. No manufacturer/model information was shown in the wizard after I selected that INF file.

So I downloaded the most recent driver from AMD's web site and installed by the same method. This leaves me with an AMD SATA Controller device (that never existed before), but it shows a "The device cannot start. (Code 10)" error that I cannot figure out.

Something strange about all of this is that the BIOS makes no mention of AHCI. So I do not see any way to switch from IDE to AHCI (if that is even a meaningful thing to attempt.)

[forestial]

After some further experimentation I now seem to have the system using a current AMD driver for the 'AMD SATA Controller' device.

Two steps seem to be necessary:
1. Install AMD driver for KA780/SB7xx chipset (which is what my mobo uses)
2. Follow the registry modification instructions here: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/61 ... tml?filter
3. Reboot and in the BIOS change 'RAID mode' to 'AHCI'. Even though I am not using RAID (no redundant drives) this appears to be essential.

Now (it took 2 reboots) there is a device in Device Manager called 'AMD SATA Controller' and it is using v1.2.1.402 of AMD's driver dated 29-Mar-15.
Device Manager now shows (under IDA ATA/ATAPI controllers)
AMD SATA Controller
ATA Channel 0
ATA Channel 1
Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller

So I think I am now updated with latest chipset drivers, and latest BIOS for this machine. Now I need to monitor and see if there is any improvement in the high disk usage problem that started all of this.

[hdsentinel]

Thanks for the details ! I'm sure this may help other users as well in similar situation.

Yes, to be honest after your previous message I was surprised that it is not possible to switch the controller to AHCI mode, but maybe the BIOS update revealed that option on your motherboard. Yes, that change surely helped - as the drivers may not install in non-AHCI mode (but they should install in RAID mode, even if no RAID configuration used, as you wrote - so it's weird why it did not install).

I wanted to examine such motherboard with more details just had no time, you were faster

If possible, please use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option with Hard Disk Sentinel, as it would be nice to check the difference, verify the driver version. The Support -> Driver Zone page ( http://www.hdsentinel.com/driverzone.php ) recommends 1.2.1.263 driver, and I'm just collecting information to verify if the newer AMD driver (installed now) is better - or at least different.

I also hope that the hard disk performance issues are now fixed by this driver change.

[forestial]

Sent the latest developer report.

Yes, the performance problem seems to be gone after installing this driver.

It's possible that the AHCI option was there under the old BIOS but I just did not see it. I thought that 'RAID' was not relevant for me so didn't look too much at it.

Anyway, thank you for the excellent support and for HD Sentinel which is a great piece of software.