Program to check what is using my hard drive much?

woopdeloop

Posts: 15   +0
Sometimes randomly my HDD starts doing crackling noises alot and especially when i do something. This may last for like 5-20mins. Is there any program to check what program or other is using up all the bandwidth going/coming through to my HDD?
 
You have one way already in your pc. Go into 'Task manager', then 'performance' tab, then 'resource monitor'. The 'Overview' tab tells you what is happening. It is very useful to show if you have enough RAM installed for the programs you are running.
*One idea though, do you have a defragmentation program installed, which is set to run in the background or 'smart/auto' mode ?

**If you want to try a more detailed program try; http://systemexplorer.net/download.php
Click on 'Download' tab.
(The link for the download is near the bottom of the site, just above the blue advert. 'Download installer version' is the one.)
Run it 'as administrator'. This program highlights the programs which have just been active with a coloured background, which may help you .
 
Okay its showing the hog is the same program which i am running at the time. problem is i get spiking sometimes ( but by far not always) that make the app and program run really slow. When this happens the app also sometimes closes. could this be malware that has infected exe files?
 
If it's a certain program that causes this slowing down, I would look at the amount of RAM it is using, it's possible that program needs more RAM than your pc has installed, so 'pages out' to the hard drive, which what all the HDD activity is.
You could prove it, true or not, by running your program, start 'Task manager', click 'Performance' tab, and watch the memory display. If it's using all, and needing to use more, it will show up there.
 
As a general rule, Windows allows 1 point 5 times the RAM fitted, for paging area.
If you tick the box 'Automatically manage paging size....', then that's what you should get, although I have 3GB RAM and my paging area is 3GB also. The recommended for mine is 4 point 6GB.
So I would suggest that you let your system do the same.
But check in the scanning options of your antivirus, see if its doing a 'full scan' every time you switch on the pc, it doesn't need to do that.
 
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