How can I tell which processes are accessing an ext HD ?

bonzodog2 · 22-02-2010 05:11PM #1

I have an external HD. Its access light keeps flashing, but I'm not (ATM) running any p2p software. How can I find which process is doing the access ? Running WinXP SP2.

ressem · 22-02-2010 06:46PM

Process Monitor (ProcMon) from the Microsoft Sysinternals Suite will help.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb545027.aspx

zodac · 22-02-2010 06:49PM

I'm pretty sure XP has this function....

Open Task Manager and go to the "Performance" tab. Click "Resource Manager". Under the "Disk" tab, you'll see a section called "Disk Activity". One of the headings is called "File". If the driver letter is the letter of your Externam Hard Drive, that process is accessing that drive.

bonzodog2 · 22-02-2010 06:52PM

zodac wrote: »

I'm pretty sure XP has this function....

Open Task Manager and go to the "Performance" tab. Click "Resource Manager". Under the "Disk" tab, you'll see a section called "Disk Activity". One of the headings is called "File". If the driver letter is the letter of your Externam Hard Drive, that process is accessing that drive.

I can't see a "Resource Manager" button on the "Performance" tab.

ressem · 22-02-2010 06:58PM

Nope, Resource Manager is in Vista and later, unless it's somewhere as a download.

zodac · 22-02-2010 07:00PM

bonzodog2 wrote: »

I can't see a "Resource Manager" button on the "Performance" tab.

ressem wrote: »

Nope, Resource Manager is in Vista and later, unless it's somewhere as a download.

Bah, how about Start> Run> perfmon.exe?

ressem · 22-02-2010 08:01PM

Perfmon will give you counters for Disk reads per second and similar stats, or process I/O read bytes per second etc.

Is there a way of getting it to report the particular processes reading/writing to a particular device?

ProcMon would be a lot quicker I'd say.
You get a list of processes and what they are doing. Click the buttons in the menu to filter to only view disk accesses.
It'll tell you what processes are accessing what files, and whether it's reading, writing or whatever.

zodac · 22-02-2010 11:27PM

ressem wrote: »

Perfmon will give you counters for Disk reads per second and similar stats, or process I/O read bytes per second etc.

Is there a way of getting it to report the particular processes reading/writing to a particular device?

ProcMon would be a lot quicker I'd say.
You get a list of processes and what they are doing. Click the buttons in the menu to filter to only view disk accesses.
It'll tell you what processes are accessing what files, and whether it's reading, writing or whatever.

Ok fair enough; been a while since I've used XP.

God I love Win7.

bonzodog2 · 22-02-2010 11:57PM

OK, thanks for your help. Procmon didn't do much for me; maybe its because the NTFS is F**KED up on that disk. I'm trying to remove stuff from it and not write any new files. I used RegMon and FileMon before, didn't realise they'd merged.

ressem · 23-02-2010 12:34AM

If NTFS is having problems then the disk access is likely autochk being run automatically by windows because the file system is in a 'dirty' state.

How can I tell which processes are accessing an ext HD ?

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