HD constantly being accessed

Let me start by saying that I love my new T400. I just have one issue I would like help with.

When I set the HD spin down to 30s it never spins down for more than 10 seconds(when idle), which kind of defeats the purpose of it spining down in the first place. This would not be an issue on other laptops, but since the power usage is under 10w, and the HD uses 2-3w just spinning, this is about 20-30% battery life(2hours~)!!!!

here is a screenshot of vista performance monitor running for about 3 minutes at idle

What is the C:/$LogFile ? how can I stop it from accesing my hd?

 

How long have you had your laptop?

 

can't it be the indexing being turned on? does the issue persist if you disable it?

 

Exactly why I asked how old it was... could take up to 2 weeks

 

I have the same going on in XP with no indexing, computer a month old.

 

its a couple days, but it has been running constantly(indexing is finished), and indexing is turned off on battery

 

from sysinternals forum...

This is standard NTFS data streams (ADS).
For example $LogFile is the volume log file that records changes to the volume structure.

also, check this out...
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/ntfs/archFiles-c.html


how to get it to be quiet, i don't know. i am beginning to suspect that turning off system restore might be helpful.

 

This is Windows Search (Indexing) and Superfetch.

Disable services and you will see an improvement.

 

this is not Windows Search and Superfetch, those would use a lot more than 57kb....

why cant the system just remember to do it when the hd is running again? Its not like the 57kb are THAT important....

If this is a NTFS feature, is there any way to disable it? would FAT32 be better?

 

I'm telling you, disable the services and you will see an improvement.

 

um... superfetch actually reduces HD usage because it preloads the programs that you use to your ram, and indexing is turned off on battery

 

Um, that's what they say Superfetch does, but if deal with a lot of apps running and large files open, it actually does not reduce HD use; it keeps fetching big stuff you may or may not need.

I did a lot of test; running Superfetch slows an already faster computer (ex. 64 bit, 4GB RAM, 7200rpm drive.)

Windows Search/Indexing is an issue to. Sure, off battery it might not run (if configured that way), but it's still horrible. Better to use a good 3rd party search tool.

As for other things, ShadowCopy, System Restore, etc can slow a machine down as well (and keep the logs churning).

Another thing, which will sound counter intuitive, is to make sure you have pagefile establish (fixed size; ex. 2GB on a 4GB machine). the reason that if pagefile is not enabled, Vista will still create temporary ones and swap to it. A lot of apps don't like this, and I have seen this lead to a lot of thrashing of the hard drive (and even "out of memory errors". Once a fixed pagefile was set up, the issue went away.

 

hey p- had any luck? i'm always looking for ways to decrease hard drive use...

 

not really, disabling system restore seemed to make the usage go down, but I still have $LogFile and $mft.... I probably just going to get one of those intel x25 ssd's when the price goes down...

 

Files only get indexed once. Once they are indexed, the indexer doesn't consume any more hard drive resources.

Have you performed a clean install, or is it factory pre-imaged? By looking at your System Tray, you appear to have a lot of applications running that may require disk access.

 

factory install, I only have nod 32, and skype runnning. I read that a clean install consumes more power

 

mine is XP SP3, indexing disabled, system restore turned off, and it still is at it.

and this is with ramdisk, windows\internet logs and avg8\log and windows\temp directories junction'ed to the ramdisk

it is not incessant, but it is never idle, either

 

That is correct; a clean install uses more power; the power management tools that come with the Thinkpad help your run longer. (I've tested both ways.)

 

Can't you re-install those power management tools?

 

I figured out that the longer the computer runs on battery, the less HD it uses. just let it sit idle for about 2 hours, and you will see what I am talking about. It uses the HD about every 5 minutes instead of 45s...

I also found this program, I dont know for sure if it works, but it lets you set the idle time all the way down to 5s. (this might actually make the battery life worse thou)
http://www.mediafire.com/?uiwxqbvzjn1

 

update: i found a relevant thread
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=243342

it seems that the system just doesnt write to the logfile by it self, it just logs everything it writes there, so something else always goes along with it...

update 2:

here is a solution for "C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\AppData\Local\lastalive0.dat"
http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2669520&SiteID=17

 

yeh i just noticed this problem with my T400 recently. i think its the result of certain updates.

when i reformatted everything was fine. after a few recent updates ive noticed the T400 get a bit louder, slight noise that is. now i think the fan is top left and the noise is coming from the right side; is that where the HDD is located?

anyway, i hope lenovo gets news of this and fixes this in a future update.