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What could be causing this behavior? I think it is wearing my hard drive down. D is not the system disk, it is for data storage. This happens even if I am not accessing it in any way, but something triggers it, because this does not happen immediately after restart.

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2 Answers 2

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$LogFile is a file which collates all changes to your file system. It's not only used by the System, but also by your programs e.g. Chrome.exe or iTunes.exe, so if it's shifting data and such around. It will write the changes to $Logfile.

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    The $Logfile is a special NTFS system file. It is a circular log of all disk operations and is used to roll back disk operations. The file stays the same size and the same Place and is allocated when the disk is originally formatted. It might be a bit off to say "programs use it", it is the file system, and eveything goes through that file system that uses it. (my understanding so far) Wear a hole right through the disk :-) disks are good for Millions or re-writes, but honestly I wish I could move it every year, just for principal.
    – Psycogeek
    Apr 3, 2013 at 10:30
  • @Psycogeek I think it was just poorly worded on my part :P, the meaning behind it is that anything that changes the file system is going to cause a write to the $Logfile I do agree that moving it would be advantageous.
    – Martin Toy
    Apr 3, 2013 at 10:43
  • So, how can I find out, which programs trigger this? Will such constant writing ruin my disk? Is it possible to disable this logging?
    – Euphorbium
    Apr 3, 2013 at 11:57
  • technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx <-- Process Monitor will tell you what program is running and what it's doing to your system. It's a great little tool. As far as I know, you can't disable it, I may be wrong but I've never stumbled across anything like it. As for it ruining your disk, I shouldn't think so, as @Psycogeek mentioned, it's an NTFS system file and is on any machine using NTFS formatted disks. It should be nothing to worry about.
    – Martin Toy
    Apr 3, 2013 at 12:10
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I have solved this by doing D drive check and repair (Right click on a drive>properties>tools>check). Now there is no disk activity unless there should be.

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  • hm interesting note, that check drive fixed the issue. it's like $LogFile was constantly sitting on same position on drive and being constantly rewritten damaged maybe several clusters resulting in constant rewrite, until good log record was found. It would be nice to know after check disk if there were more bad clusters present on disk?
    – SoLaR
    Nov 1, 2018 at 7:12

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