100% disk activity, but very little disk transfer

I've often noticed that sometimes my boot hard disk goes crazy, disk
activity light flickers constantly, system becomes unresponsive, but
there's no particular process hogging the processor cores. I managed to
watch one such incident while Hard Disk Sentinel was present in memory,
and when I looked at the boot disk in the Performance tab, it showed
100% activity, but data transfer was down near zero. Obviously, I had to
reboot the computer to get it back to normal.

I'm talking about Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit in this case, but I've seen
similar things happen under Windows XP Pro 32-bit in the past too.
Another thing I noticed is that during this time, the System's own
SVCHOST.EXE program is using up a lot of memory too, over 300MB by itself!

What could be happening here?

Yousuf Khan

Yousuf Khan wrote:

> I've often noticed that sometimes my boot hard disk goes crazy, disk
> activity light flickers constantly, system becomes unresponsive, but
> there's no particular process hogging the processor cores. I managed
> to watch one such incident while Hard Disk Sentinel was present in
> memory, and when I looked at the boot disk in the Performance tab, it
> showed 100% activity, but data transfer was down near zero.
> Obviously, I had to reboot the computer to get it back to normal.

> I'm talking about Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit in this case, but I've seen similar things happen under Windows XP Pro
> 32-bit in the past too.

That can be just the drive retrying on marginal sectors.

Post the Everest SMART report on that drive.

> Another thing I noticed is that during this time, the System's own SVCHOST.EXE program is using up a lot of memory
> too, over 300MB by itself!

Are you saying that it doesnt when that isnt happening with the drive ?

> What could be happening here?

Yousuf Khan wrote:
> I've often noticed that sometimes my boot hard disk goes crazy, disk
> activity light flickers constantly, system becomes unresponsive, but
> there's no particular process hogging the processor cores. I managed to
> watch one such incident while Hard Disk Sentinel was present in memory,
> and when I looked at the boot disk in the Performance tab, it showed
> 100% activity, but data transfer was down near zero. Obviously, I had to
> reboot the computer to get it back to normal.
>
> I'm talking about Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit in this case, but I've seen
> similar things happen under Windows XP Pro 32-bit in the past too.
> Another thing I noticed is that during this time, the System's own
> SVCHOST.EXE program is using up a lot of memory too, over 300MB by itself!
>
> What could be happening here?
>
> Yousuf Khan
Check with the 'puter maker? May be a scan or diagnostics. HP does
this on my machine. I usually just kill it.

On Wed, 01 Dec 2010 03:12:43 -0500, Yousuf Khan
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> I've often noticed that sometimes my boot hard disk goes crazy,
disk
> activity light flickers constantly, system becomes unresponsive,
but
> there's no particular process hogging the processor cores. I
managed to
> watch one such incident while Hard Disk Sentinel was present in
memory,
> and when I looked at the boot disk in the Performance tab, it
showed
> 100% activity, but data transfer was down near zero. Obviously, I
had to
> reboot the computer to get it back to normal.


> I'm talking about Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit in this case, but I've
seen
> similar things happen under Windows XP Pro 32-bit in the past too.
> Another thing I noticed is that during this time, the System's own
> SVCHOST.EXE program is using up a lot of memory too, over 300MB by
itself!


> What could be happening here?

If svchost.exe is not running out of the windows.system32 folder,
then it could be malware that it is running. You should check what
svchost.exe is hosting by using Process Explorer. PE is free to use,
and you can use Bing or Google to find out how to use PE to look at a
running process, see what it is hosting and see what directory a
process/program is located when it is running.

--
posted with a Droid

On 01/12/2010 08:12, Yousuf Khan wrote:
> I've often noticed that sometimes my boot hard disk goes crazy, disk
> activity light flickers constantly, system becomes unresponsive, but
> there's no particular process hogging the processor cores. I managed to
> watch one such incident while Hard Disk Sentinel was present in memory,
> and when I looked at the boot disk in the Performance tab, it showed
> 100% activity, but data transfer was down near zero. Obviously, I had to
> reboot the computer to get it back to normal.
>
> I'm talking about Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit in this case, but I've seen
> similar things happen under Windows XP Pro 32-bit in the past too.
> Another thing I noticed is that during this time, the System's own
> SVCHOST.EXE program is using up a lot of memory too, over 300MB by itself!
>
> What could be happening here?
>
> Yousuf Khan

That used to happen a lot on systems with insufficient memory, swapping
program segments in and out from the page file.
I guess it could also happen where the page file was either not used or
too small an allocation.

Ed

On 01/12/2010 3:43 AM, Rod Speed wrote:
> Yousuf Khan wrote:
>
>> I've often noticed that sometimes my boot hard disk goes crazy, disk
>> activity light flickers constantly, system becomes unresponsive, but
>> there's no particular process hogging the processor cores. I managed
>> to watch one such incident while Hard Disk Sentinel was present in
>> memory, and when I looked at the boot disk in the Performance tab, it
>> showed 100% activity, but data transfer was down near zero.
>> Obviously, I had to reboot the computer to get it back to normal.
>
>> I'm talking about Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit in this case, but I've seen similar things happen under Windows XP Pro
>> 32-bit in the past too.
>
> That can be just the drive retrying on marginal sectors.
>
> Post the Everest SMART report on that drive.

Here it is:

***report start***

> [ Hitachi HDT721010SLA360 (STF604MH0UR52B) ]
>
> 01 Raw Read Error Rate 16 99 99 65537 OK: Value is normal
> 02 Throughput Performance 54 132 132 113 OK: Value is normal
> 03 Spin Up Time 24 146 146 25756040 OK: Value is normal
> 04 Start/Stop Count 0 100 100 408 OK: Always passing
> 05 Reallocated Sector Count 5 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal
> 07 Seek Error Rate 67 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal
> 08 Seek Time Performance 20 125 125 33 OK: Value is normal
> 09 Power-On Time Count 0 99 99 12906 OK: Always passing
> 0A Spin Retry Count 60 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal
> 0C Power Cycle Count 0 100 100 368 OK: Always passing
> C0 Power-Off Retract Count 0 100 100 409 OK: Always passing
> C1 Load/Unload Cycle Count 0 100 100 409 OK: Always passing
> C2 Temperature 0 166 166 22, 36 OK: Always passing
> C4 Reallocation Event Count 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passing
> C5 Current Pending Sector Count 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passing
> C6 Off-Line Uncorrectable Sector Count 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passing
> C7 Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate 0 200 200 0 OK: Always passing

***report end***

>> Another thing I noticed is that during this time, the System's own SVCHOST.EXE program is using up a lot of memory
>> too, over 300MB by itself!
>
> Are you saying that it doesnt when that isnt happening with the drive ?

Well, I don't normally check out the size of this program, but when I
have done so, it's usually 30-50% of that size, i.e. between 100MB to 150MB.

Yousuf Khan

On 01/12/2010 8:40 AM, LouB wrote:
> Check with the 'puter maker? May be a scan or diagnostics. HP does this
> on my machine. I usually just kill it.

I'm the 'puter maker.

Yousuf Khan

On 01/12/2010 9:51 AM, Big Steel wrote:
> If svchost.exe is not running out of the windows.system32 folder, then
> it could be malware that it is running. You should check what
> svchost.exe is hosting by using Process Explorer. PE is free to use, and
> you can use Bing or Google to find out how to use PE to look at a
> running process, see what it is hosting and see what directory a
> process/program is located when it is running.

Yes, I know about ProcExplorer, that is what I was using to report this
size.

Yousuf Khan

On 01/12/2010 10:36 AM, Ed Cryer wrote:
> That used to happen a lot on systems with insufficient memory, swapping
> program segments in and out from the page file.
> I guess it could also happen where the page file was either not used or
> too small an allocation.
>
> Ed

Yeah, that was my usual gut-reaction initial guess too. But I have 8GB
of memory on a 64-bit system, and taskman was showing that I was only
using about 4.9GB out of the 8GB. That's still quite a lot being used
up, but still not saturated. During normal operations, the memory being
used up ranges between 2.5 to 3.0GB.

Yousuf Khan

Yousuf Khan wrote:
> On 01/12/2010 8:40 AM, LouB wrote:
>> Check with the 'puter maker? May be a scan or diagnostics. HP does this
>> on my machine. I usually just kill it.
>
> I'm the 'puter maker.
>
> Yousuf Khan

Thought that might be.
How about the drive maker?
Pls report back when you find the cause.