Hard Disk utilization issue

[kirkb]

I've been getting on off stuttering issues with my new sage server. When the startering occurs, it is real bad; to the point you cant make out the audio. It's as if some one is rapidly hitting pause/play.

After pulling up resources monitor in VISTA, I noticed that when this happens, Disk "Highest Active Time" hits 100%. It will do this for 15-30sec and then all will be back to normal. This only happens when playing recorded shows and not live tv.

So far, I am unable to determine what is causing the sudden burst of i/o. It normally sits around 6%. So, it's not like I am running high to begin with.

System is an AMD x2 4800, 2 GB ram, primary "os" HD is a 60GB PATI and the "media" HD is a 750gb SATA drive. Running vista 32bit.

Can anyone suggest how I might trouble shoot this? Any tools to determine what processes are utlizing IO? I tried perfmon. However, it onlyt displays total and not current consumption. So, I am unable to determine what is banging away at the HD. Could be Sage could be something else.

Oh and BTW, I've using 64kb clusters on the media drive and it is 6% full and defragged. Also, this happens wether or not I am recording.

Thanks, Kirk

[jlmdxtv]

Hello KirkB,

To help me discover exactly what disk I/O is taking place, I use the product:

"Filemon for Windows" by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

I don't know if they have a Vista version out yet, but it works GREAT under XP.

john

[carlgar]

Have you turned off superfetch. This sounds like what I used to encounter with HD files before I disabled superfetch. Superfetch would also be accessing the file trying to bring it into memory.

[mikesm]

Plus, vista ships with disk indexing for search on. I am not sure how to turn it off, but you should try that too.

Have you tried running XP? It's a better fit for Sage server use - and the networking code is more reliable.

[kirkb]

I'm pretty sure it was superfetch. I've only played one recorded video since shutting it off. However, no perf issues.

Thanks all for the help. Will look at other perf tweaks for vista. So far, everything is nice and stable ... even HD. The superfetch thing threw me for a curve though.

[kirkb]

I'm pretty sure it was superfetch. I've only played one recorded video since shutting it off. However, no perf issues.

Thanks all for the help. Will look at other perf tweaks for vista. So far, everything is nice and stable ... even HD. The superfetch thing threw me for a curve though.

[motobarsteward]

Just a point. I don't know about vista but I find on my server that the service 'RealShedule' installed by the real player to check for updates and messages often gets it's self into a state where it thrashes the HD. This causes sagetv to stutter and stop. It used to do this, without fail, every day at 9:30pm but I'd often find it doing it at other times.

[kirkb]

Update: SuperFetch did indeed cause the choppy video/audio. So, anyone running VISTA stop and set Superfetch to disabled in the services control.