Monitor I/O on Windows 2003 for specific directories?

Question

I want to monitor I/O of a Windows 2003 server system. I'm specifically interested in the I/O activities of specific directories (where I have an unknown and ever changing number of files). I have a rough idea how to monitor a complete disk or partition, but not for "just" some directories. How would I do that?

Answer 1

Try the SysInternals tool Process Monitor. It monitors quite a few different types of activity on your system (registry access, file access, network activity, etc.).

It has pretty flexible filtering. For your case you could do something like this:

1. Select the menu item Filter -> Filter...
2. Add a filter entry for the path, e.g. "[Path] [begins with] [C:\Your\Path] then [Include]".
3. Add a filter entry for the operation, e.g. "[Operation] [is] [ReadFile] then [Include]".
4. Press "OK" and you should now see specific entries pertaining to the path you wanted.