Constant HDD Thrashing in Vista is Affecting Performance

[Googintosh]

My HDD activity is at a constant state of thrashing. I have noticed it mostly happens after I installed a program. Immediately after installation the HDD will just thrash on-and-on, like I have never experienced before -- it sounds like its defragging. For instance, I've just installed FEAR Combat and my HDD has been thrashing now for well over 30 minutes quite loudly. I tried playing FEAR but the thrashing lagged the hell out of the game.

I'm using the Process Monitor from Sysinternals to try and identify what is going on, and also using the Task Manager to see the I/O Read and writes. I'm having a hard time identifying what the culprit is, but the most frequently occurring processes are lsass.exe [PID 580], svchost.exe [PID 976], and explorer.exe [PID 1644].

I've disabled indexing service and even Windows Defender because it was suggested that the trashing is due to indexing. I am running no other 3rd party applications that did not come with Vista aside for the latest Nod32 trial edition. All the drivers I have installed are native except for the most recent X-FI and ATI drivers.

This is border line ridiculous and really discouraging because aside from the constant thrashing noise it is lagging the system.

Some specs that might help if anyone is interested:

2GB of RAM

AMD64 x2 3800+

Brand new Seagate Barracuda SATA 500GB 16MB Cache

Could anyone help me out?

[CrowaX]

I came here looking for a solution to this same problem. I sleep in the same room as my computer. Before it was quite, now that I have Vista, the hard drive runs non stop when im not at it. Disabled Defender and indexing as well. It almost sounds like a defrag running all the time.

[PGHammer]

I came here looking for a solution to this same problem. I sleep in the same room as my computer. Before it was quite, now that I have Vista, the hard drive runs non stop when im not at it. Disabled Defender and indexing as well. It almost sounds like a defrag running all the time.

How much HD space do you have, and what is running in the background? Even running the 64-bit version of Vista Ultimate, the fact that you have 2 GB of RAM means you should be seeing *less* thrashing unless you have a truckload of background stuff running.

Even with my mere 1 GB of RAM and Vista Ultimate 32-bit, my HD doesn't thrash that much unless it's close to being full.

(And I'm running a mere P4 Northwood-C that is clocked bone-stock.)

[Googintosh]

Well I have seemingly found a solution. Disabling the Superfetch service has yielded promising results. No more constant thrashing at all. So far so good.

[Siddharth Prabhu]

Vista is set to automatically defrag the hard drive every Sunday at 4:00 AM. Maybe this could be one of the reasons?

[ManMountain]

Experienced exactly the same problem here, drives thrashed so much it impacted on the OS's performance. However, for me, stopping Windows Defender, ReadyBoost, setting a fixed swap file and disabling scheduled defragmentation has done the trick :)

Edited March 1, 2007 by ManMountain

[jimbo11883]

With SuperFetch and Scheduled Defrag disabled, your thrashing should almost completely stop. If you're not actually using ReadyBoost disable that as well.

[Apogee]

I had some problems with Vista causing my sata drives to make a knocking noise, usually related to the increased thrashing over XP. I disabled the automatic defrag and enabled advanced disk performance option in the device properties on each of my drives. Now they are silent.

[franzon]

I've disabled indexing service and even Windows Defender because it was suggested that the trashing is due to indexing. I am running no other 3rd party applications that did not come with Vista aside for the latest Nod32 trial edition.

Indexing service, Windows Defender scanning and Vista Defragmenter run at low I/O priority so they don't disturb the other applications i.e. they don't cause hard disk trashing.

I think your problem is Nod32.

Disabling superfetch is a stupid thing because superfetch is the main Vista's memory managment for the applications.

ReadyBoost service is also used for ReadyBoot and so disabling it is bad! (ReadyBOOT is different than ReadyBOOST, but they share the same service so if you disable readyboost service you'll lost readyboot feature!)

ReadyBoot

Windows Vista uses the same boot-time prefetching as Windows XP did if the system has less than 512MB of memory, but if the system has 700MB or more of RAM, it uses an in-RAM cache to optimize the boot process. The size of the cache depends on the total RAM available, but is large enough to create a reasonable cache and yet allow the system the memory it needs to boot smoothly.

Edited March 3, 2007 by franzon

[IceDogg]

Not to argue franzon, and I don't know what is causing the problem, exactly, but NOD32 works without this issue for me. So, it's either not NOD32 or the settings that's being used are messed up. Good info on the readyboost and readyboot, I didn't know they needed the same service running. I'll have to turn that back on as I had wondered why bootup time had increased so much. I disabled readboost (I think that's what it was called) because I don't use that..thanks for that tip. I'll try that and see if it fixes my boot slow down issue. I have been trying to figure out what caused that.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

Don't disable Search, Defender, or SuperFetch. SuperFetch won't cause thrashing of your disk to any significant degree.

If you just upgraded to or installed Vista very recently, give it a couple of days to settle down. During the first day or two (or more if your computer sleeps or is off when idle) Vista has a lot of "moving in" tasks it performs to optimize your system. Indexing is one of them, but there are many others like optimizing your disk, boot-up, and more. Of course, all that stuff should only happen when the computer is idle. If it's actually impacting your usage of the system, you probably have an incompatible application or driver.

Disabling Windows services isn't a very good solution, since it won't identify the real culprit. Vista certainly wasn't designed to have constant disk thrashing happening, so there's probably some external factor causing or contributing to your problem.

[Beastage]

I noticed this but a bit late reply --- what you seeing trashing you can see using the resource monitor built in vista you will see its vista shadow copying again and again, I had to kill system restore to fix this

[tedtoal]

Same problem here, Vista Premium Home edition, super-fast machine with 2GB RAM. Disabling Superfetch DID NOT fix it so I reenabled it. Same re Defender and ReadyBoost. How do I disable defrag?

Resource Monitor shows one process doing 80 MB of disk writes per second steadily! That process is identified as follows:

C:\System Volume Information\{f76b7329-2519-11dc-935b-0019d102956e}{3808876b-c176-4e48-b7ae-04046e6cc752}

I don't know what that is.

It DOES seem to happen more frequently after installing a program.

[apollo_1444]

i wouldn't diable indexing

[Yogurth]

Disable(delete) any scheduled task like Windows defender scan, Defrag, Index... Vista is so "smart" that it will fire up those tasks simultaneously and kill Your HD. Marketing technologies included in Vista like superfetch are just that..marketing. Disable everything You don't need, and You certanly wont need thing like superfetch. Serach without indexing is fast enough for everything unless You have terabytes of storage and milions of files, so disable that too.

Pleas Brandon_Live and Franzon, I hear You repeat same lines again and again about transparency of Vista I/O and yet everyone here has expirienced HD trashing except for You two, or are You simply making it up as You go. Do not advertise the faults of Vista as faults of users or 3rd party apps. It was MS responsibility to make included Vista features non-intrusive, and this is what has been delivered a complete nightmare in I/O department. Beside trashing, I think everyone has been introduced to copy/move performance in Vista either through his own expirience or through reading support forums, one more bonus in Vista :)

Nod32 the culprit of HD trashing...ROFL.

[OPaul]

i wouldn't diable indexing

Why not?

[0sit0]

because it is very useful.

i don't have any hd trashing in vista either... if you think searching its causing alot of noise on the hd try running indexing in power saving mode... its in power options.

[+mram Subscriber²]

Same problem here, Vista Premium Home edition, super-fast machine with 2GB RAM. Disabling Superfetch DID NOT fix it so I reenabled it. Same re Defender and ReadyBoost. How do I disable defrag?

Resource Monitor shows one process doing 80 MB of disk writes per second steadily! That process is identified as follows:

C:\System Volume Information\{f76b7329-2519-11dc-935b-0019d102956e}{3808876b-c176-4e48-b7ae-04046e6cc752}

I don't know what that is.

It DOES seem to happen more frequently after installing a program.

That process is the Volume Shadow (copy) Service, referred to as "VSS".

You can eliminate it entirely by going to Computer -> Properties -> System Protection, and unchecking a drive.

This is a service that is basically new to Windows client OS's (as of Vista). I would recommend keeping it on if you never perform backups -- it is a great way of saving differential changes to a disk at the cost of some thrashing. Yes, it triggers at the installation of programs and windows updates, and significant windows events like a backup. If you're new to the OS, it might seem like it's thrashing a lot because you're installing a lot. Like Brandon said, Vista is basically settling in, and I too recommend you let it.

Before you consider turning off the service, on the same page as the System Protection tab, hit the "System Restore..." button, then choose the option "Choose a different restore point" and analyze your last restore points. When I did this on my system, I've noted that every point was created at an installation or a significant Vista event. It seemed a lot more reasonable what it was doing rather than just arbitrary thrashing.

Granted that didn't help the fact that it takes about 20 minutes to complete the restore point on a 500gb drive. As it was stated earlier, checking the box for "Enable advanced performance" on your disk drive properties might even help that, but that's your own call.

Defrag is pretty benign and actually useful. By default it runs at 1am every Wednesday morning. Just go to task manager and reschedule it, no need to remove it.

Hope that helps.

(Edit: It looks like there are ways to selectively choose what files are backed up using VSS, and I'll research that to see if it increases the time it takes to create the VSS images. It might help those who do back up their systems fairly regularly but still want to leverage this service, while making the "thrashing" as minimal as possible.)

Edited June 29, 2007 by mram

[freak_power]

Vista needs 4Gb of RAM for problem free experience...

[Brandon Live Veteran]

Vista needs 4Gb of RAM for problem free experience...

Go away please, that's a ridiculous thing to say and you know it.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

Disable(delete) any scheduled task like Windows defender scan, Defrag, Index... Vista is so "smart" that it will fire up those tasks simultaneously and kill Your HD. Marketing technologies included in Vista like superfetch are just that..marketing. Disable everything You don't need, and You certanly wont need thing like superfetch. Serach without indexing is fast enough for everything unless You have terabytes of storage and milions of files, so disable that too.

Wrong on all counts.

• Indexing isn't a scheduled task. Disk maintenance / Defender scans won't be scheduled to run at the same time, and shouldn't run if you're using the machine.
  
• SuperFetch has nothing to do with marketing... other than the name, of course. SuperFetch extends the core Windows memory management capabilities and serves two main functions, both with the goal of making better use of memory (especially on high memory systems). First, it works to keep memory pages off the disk by pulling them out of the page file when memory becomes free. Second, it extends the prefetched/disk cache to load things into free memory before you need them.
  
• The indexer isn't designed to handle millions of files. Truthfully it works its best in the normal case of less than 100,000 items indexed (my systems tend to have ~50,000 and that's then times larger than most home systems).
  
• Disabling the indexer isn't a good idea for most people... disabling it will break or seriously hinder much of Explorer's functionality, both for browse (sorting/filtering/stacking/grouping) and search. It'll also prevent Start Menu search from working over your files and e-mail, and will break or hinder applications that rely on the indexer (Outlook, OneNote, and others).
  

Pleas Brandon_Live and Franzon, I hear You repeat same lines again and again about transparency of Vista I/O and yet everyone here has expirienced HD trashing except for You two, or are You simply making it up as You go. Do not advertise the faults of Vista as faults of users or 3rd party apps. It was MS responsibility to make included Vista features non-intrusive, and this is what has been delivered a complete nightmare in I/O department. Beside trashing, I think everyone has been introduced to copy/move performance in Vista either through his own expirience or through reading support forums, one more bonus in Vista :)

I work on Windows. The problem described is most likely caused by a third-party application or a compatibility problem. I'm also quite sure that most people aren't having disk thrashing problems with Vista. And in most cases copy/move performance via the Vista shell is significantly faster than XP (there are a few exceptions, which are being addressed).

Nod32 the culprit of HD trashing...ROFL.

That's quite possible and even likely. In fact, the number one cause of disk thrasing on Vista in my experience is a poorly behaved applications (like old versions of eTrust and in some cases NOD32) that flood the USN change journal for no reason, which might explain why lsass.exe is showing up. Another possibility is that the user had just copied a bunch of items and they were being re-ACL'd, although I believe that happens while the progress dialog is still shown.

[soldier1st]

Vista needs 4Gb of RAM for problem free experience...

vista works with alot less than 4 GB,where you got that from is beyond me.

Brandon Live:you are correct,superfetch is a good thing to have enabled,to all those that think superfetch is bad you need to try vista and test it.

[+mram Subscriber²]

I work on Windows. The problem described is most likely caused by a third-party application or a compatibility problem. I'm also quite sure that most people aren't having disk thrashing problems with Vista. And in most cases copy/move performance via the Vista shell is significantly faster than XP (there are a few exceptions, which are being addressed).

With respect, it's difficult to narrow the disk activity down generally like that. The original poster stated that the disk was thrashing while not actually doing anything in Vista. That's probably not a compatibility issue, but more a process issue. I look at my HDD (while I'm touching nothing) and after 10 minutes of churning, think to myself, "ok, something is doing something." It's just a matter of finding out what.

That's what started investigations into what is being read/written to disk, and my VSS service usage as listed above. For users like me who are comparatively new to Vista, and having large HDDs and little if no warning about the disk usage resulting of a simple program install/uninstall, it would appear to all neophytes converted to Vista that it just chews at the HDD. Fair enough, right?

I'm just saying that I've got fully 100% supported hardware and software, and can completely replicate a 20-minute "thrashing" of my HDD just by installing a program. Easily reproduced, and I've demonstrated how anyone here can do it. Not that it's a bad thing, I'm just explaining how it's happening from one point of view.

[phot0nic]

Disable(delete) any scheduled task like Windows defender scan, Defrag, Index... Vista is so "smart" that it will fire up those tasks simultaneously and kill Your HD. Marketing technologies included in Vista like superfetch are just that..marketing. Disable everything You don't need, and You certanly wont need thing like superfetch. Serach without indexing is fast enough for everything unless You have terabytes of storage and milions of files, so disable that too.

Pleas Brandon_Live and Franzon, I hear You repeat same lines again and again about transparency of Vista I/O and yet everyone here has expirienced HD trashing except for You two, or are You simply making it up as You go. Do not advertise the faults of Vista as faults of users or 3rd party apps. It was MS responsibility to make included Vista features non-intrusive, and this is what has been delivered a complete nightmare in I/O department. Beside trashing, I think everyone has been introduced to copy/move performance in Vista either through his own expirience or through reading support forums, one more bonus in Vista :)

Nod32 the culprit of HD trashing...ROFL.

Wow. Just... wow. You really have NO idea what you're talking about.

[ViperAFK]

Vista needs 4Gb of RAM for problem free experience...

Yes that is definably not true, runs great on 1 GB here. Just as fast as XP. Vista did some disk thrashing to me for the first day but then it subsided, it may be settling in because you are installing many programs, and you only just installed it.