Disk Thrasing

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Rex · #1 Post by **Rex** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 4:28 am

Hi there,

I have been rebuilding a 60gb hd in my T22, running W2k/NTFS and compared with my previous hd (20gb; W2k/FAT32) there is a lot of Disk Thrashing.

Have Googled the problem and come up with a number of solutions; set virtual memory and add the lines MinFileCache = 1280 and MaxFileCache = 1280 to the Sys.ini file. Has anyone added (or got) these two lines in their sys.ini file and is it a good idea to play with that file?

Have also downloaded Disk Monitor and File Monitor. They are giving me a lot of information but what do I do with all this data?

Really grateful for any advice and this disk thrashing is making PhotoShop (amongst others) very slow/unusable.

Rex

danage · #2 Post by **danage** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 6:10 am

what is disk thrashing?

Musti · #3 Post by **Musti** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 7:37 am

danage wrote:what is disk thrashing?

Excessive disk access because of page in/page outs, in other words, high virtual memory usage.

As for the PS problem, check the tips on see if they help...

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 933#223933

vlyne · #4 Post by **vlyne** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 7:58 am

This thread sounds oddly familiar....

To check on page faults, fire up the Windows Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del then "t"); under Performance you'll find the Page Fault display. High activity in this display implies that the memory available is insufficient for the tasks at hand. If this shouldn't happen, check the size of memory the system thinks it has versus what is physically installed. If they match your processes are taking up more memory than is installed.

ashleys · #5 Post by **ashleys** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 11:30 am

From my experience of both NT4 and W2K, attempting to change the memory management values are usually counter productive in a memory constrained system. Adjusting one set of values merely pushes the problem elsewhere.

As previously mentioned, use Task manager to get some figures on your virtual storage usage. If the total Working Set storage of your concurrent tasks exceeds your real storage (RAM), then it's likely that your system is encountering a paging overhead. Idle tasks should have already been swapped out but page steals will take place when the available frame queue gets too low.

Minor gripe here about Windows terminology ...
I wish on the performance tab where you can set the "Virtual Memory" they used the correct term of Auxiliary Storage. Virtual Memory, or to use it's proper name, Virtual Storage, is a concept *NOT* your paging file.

Rex · #6 Post by **Rex** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 1:41 pm

Vline,

Yes, this thread is familiar. Similar topic but I thought I was coming from a different point of view. Aslo, my last thread started to go off on a tangent and as I was not receiving the e-mail notifications, I figured that it had died.

Before progressing any further, thank you all for your replies.

What is a Page Fault display?

Task Manager/Performance gives the following readings a few moment s ago.

Physical Memory 523742; Available 398120; Sys Cache 27764
Kernel Memory Total 50388; Paged 40924; Nonpaged 9464

Memory Usage 147072K/1801540K

I really have no idea what these number mean. Are they good, bad or average? (I figure average!)

I have 512 RAM and the virtual memory is set as the default settings.

Rex

ashleys · #7 Post by **ashleys** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 2:02 pm

Rex,
I must make my tea

but I'll give you a quick breakdown,

Physical Memory 523742; Available 398120; Sys Cache 27764
Kernel Memory Total 50388; Paged 40924; Nonpaged 9464

Memory Usage 147072K/1801540K

Physical memory - AKA RAM, shown in Kb (512Mb as you confirmed)
Available - Free RAM not in use
Sys Cache - Windows cache storage used by the cache
manager in conjuction with the memory manager
Kernel memory - Storage taken by OS routines (split between
paged and non-paged)
Memory Usage - High/Low threshold of real storage usage.

These look pretty average to me.

I'll post a more lengthy description of virtual storage OS's and paging/swapping later.

Rex · #8 Post by **Rex** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 3:07 pm

Ashley,

Thanks. If it looks average, don't worry about too much additional information as I am unlikely to know what to do with it.

Rex

ashleys · #9 Post by **ashleys** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 3:27 pm

OK forget the virtual storage description, chapter and verse

I learnt it all back in the 1970's !!!

If you want to see who is using what memory, go into task manager and take the processes tag. That will show all your running tasks and their memory usage.

When you're running Photoshop and you suspect you've hit a storage constraint, got into task manager and check the figures.
Furthermore, the Mem Usage figure is split beween current usage and maximum (virtual) storage available. If the first figure shown has exceeded your RAM then you've started paging.
If it's approaching the second figure then your close to running out of total virtual storage to hold all your working sets (the second amount is calculated by adding your RAM size to your paging file).

#10 Post by **rkawakami** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 3:29 pm

Disk thrashing can also be the result of a program running in the background. Bring up the Task Manager (as vlyne points out) and click the Processes tab, then click the CPU heading to sort the list in ascending or decending order (each click of the heading button will change the sort order). System Idle Process should show ~90% most of the time. If there is another process eating up more than 10 or 15%, please list it. If you see "helpsvc" running and consuming around 40%, click on the Name column to sort in alphabetical order, click on the helpsvc line, then click the "End Process" button near the bottom of the Task Manager window. That one seems to pop up once in a while on my WinXP system; don't know if Win2K has the same process or not. When it does, the system slows to a crawl.

vlyne · #11 Post by **vlyne** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 7:57 pm

For a more lasting fix to those pesty background processes (see which one is running first) you can either disable them by running
msconfig (Start menu; Run; type msconfig), check the Services tab.

Else, Control Panel; Performance and Maintenance; Administrative Tools; Services; right-click the "Help and Support"; Properties; then set the Startup type to Disabled or Manual depending on your preferences. Of course, you will lose all that really useful "Help and Support" services that can consume all your memory and CPU cycles.

Cheers

Rex · #12 Post by **Rex** » Wed Nov 29, 2006 11:46 am

Don't seem to have the 'Help and Support' service listed. However, there are a lot that are started automatically and many that I have selected to start manually.

At this moment, many of the manual items are running; so what is the difference between automatic and manual? For example, two that are started automatically are Protected Storage and Event Log. Do I need these running? What is protected storage? And I seem to have too many bloated logs anyway. Can I turn these off with no ill effects?

Rex

Musti · #13 Post by **Musti** » Wed Nov 29, 2006 12:16 pm

This guy (Black Viper) taught me everything I needed to know about services...his website is no more now, but there are some mirrors. Here's one of them:

http://www.dead-eye.net/WinXP%20Services.htm

Rex · #14 Post by **Rex** » Wed Nov 29, 2006 4:20 pm

Musti,

Great link. Thanks very much. Now I can tinker to my heart's content!

Rex

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