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I currently use a notebook pc at work. I find that it's frequently very slow for what I'm doing (software development). I'd like to collect some data about how often my hard disk is hitting 100% active time and how long it is staying there. My thinking here is that whenever the disk is 100% active I'm nearly dead in the water -- some things I can do but others that I cannot. Building a c# project gonna take forever when your hard disk is buried already. On the other hand, reading a website is fine.

How can I log/track/monitor the amount of time in a day that my hard drive is hitting 100% active time?

Edit: I looked at SysInternals/Microsoft DiskMon and it doesn't seem to be doing what I'm askin for.

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Have a look at Process Explorer from Systernals. That will give you some live stats. Edit the columns to add extra counters.

I would also recommend using perfmon and have it log the data to file. Don't set the counters to grab the info too often as that will have a performance hit. Take a look at this for more info

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Are you sure it's the Hard Disk and not the processor? It is true the Hard Disk tends to be the biggest bottleneck in modern computers, but it is the processor maxing out at 100% usage (or nearly so) that generally counts for that dead-in-the-water feeling you can have with some computers from time to time.

Logging processor usage can be done with the CPU Utilization Monitor (or I assume any number of other apps, this was just the first FOSS app that showed on a google search for "log processor usage"). The app states that it's logs can be easily viewed in Excel for analysis and reporting.

UPDATE now that I've used the CPU log app:

The package you'll download for the CPU Utilization Monitor includes programming files that you won't need. But in the /bin/ directory you'll find the compiled executable (the program all ready for you to run).

It's a pretty simple interface that will show you visually what your current CPU % utilization is and then a series of bars that indicate the percentage of time your CPU has spent at any given percentage level of usage. There's also a place to choose where this data is being logged. Pretty simple and self-explanatory. Does one thing and does it well enough.

CPU Utilization Monitor

Make sure to check both Calc Moving Average and Log Moving Average to actually save the data to the log.

UPDATE with Hard Drive logging option:

Since you're certain it's an HDD issue, the standard rule applies: Make sure the drive is defragmented.

I'm assuming you have Win7 or Vista, which should both automatically defrag your disk at regular intervals, but at least check and make sure this is occuring.

Next, because ResMon and PerfMon are tied into the system you can using built-in Windows tools to log events. They won't necessary report to you the percentage of the time the HDD is pegged at 100%, but you could probably set the rules to record an event each time HDD usage goes above 80% and possibly record how long it stays there.

I don't have a Vista/7 box to test this on myself right now, but here's an article from Technet that details how you may do this logging using the windows tool logman: How to pull the information that Resource Monitor provides.

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  • No it's definitely the hard disk. I can see it in the Resource Monitor -- whenever the computer is laggy I check the Resource Monitor and the HD is at 100% active.
    – jcollum
    Sep 30, 2011 at 16:21
  • I'm curious: what is the CPU usage at when the HDD is pegged at 100%? Sep 30, 2011 at 16:48
  • Typically around 15-30%
    – jcollum
    Sep 30, 2011 at 17:02

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