Indexing Complete

[VirusType2]

Windows 7x64 -

I can't stand my computer running the hard drive all the time (actually it just stopped for some reason), so I was going to stop the indexer, but it says indexing complete.

So what the hell is doing things to my hard drive constantly? It sounds like it's constantly indexing a media library. It's very busy.

Help me find out what's doing it. I just don't know Windows 7 very well at all. I'd rather have no index than have my hard drive busy at all times, ****ing up my performance.

I just woke up, so ****.

 

[stemot]

I have no idea what an indexer is, but I haven't disabled any Win7 options other than Tablet support and my HD is quiet nearly all the time.

What is indexing?

 

[TechnoHippyChic]

What is indexing?

It makes searches a lot faster.


A fresh install will grind. There are other things like SuperFetch, etc. that are probably working in the background, too. It should all quiet down after a while.

You weren't downloading anything were you?

 

[Adabiviak]

How much RAM do you have? I'm pretty sure the indexer is what keeps the list of doo dads in the search box in the start menu up to date. If I'm opening and closing programs in W7, doing different things, I get a bit of hard drive activity. I actually find that W7 turns off drives that aren't in use after a while.

 

[VirusType2]

It makes searches a lot faster.


A fresh install will grind. There are other things like SuperFetch, etc. that are probably working in the background, too. It should all quiet down after a while.

You weren't downloading anything were you?

Yeah, it seemed to have quieted down and finished up yesterday, but when I booted into Win7 this morning, it was going ape-shit again. I mean, it's really really busy sounding. Like almost full on. And I launched GTA, and it didn't stop, like I would expect, and GTA crashed. So I made that post and then it stopped.

I was thinking it might have been a buggy app. I remember someone having a problem with Java constantly thrashing the drive.

How much RAM do you have? I'm pretty sure the indexer is what keeps the list of doo dads in the search box in the start menu up to date. If I'm opening and closing programs in W7, doing different things, I get a bit of hard drive activity. I actually find that W7 turns off drives that aren't in use after a while.

I have 4GB.

I've got custom power saving settings.

IMO, do not turn off HDD drives unless you are on a laptop battery (to save power), if they are solid state, or if you won't be using them for a couple days. It's better to keep spinning than to start and stop all the time. Just for the record, I've had hard drives running for several years without stopping, and I've never lost a HDD.

Starting and stopping all the time is probably why External HDD's have such a high failure rate, but there could be other factors - like shock. (bumping them)

 

[Adabiviak]

I haven't even checked those settings - I may have to change that. I was asking about the RAM in case you had a tiny amount and were getting lots of page file requests.

 

[VirusType2]

I heard some people say they removed the page file and just use RAM. Page file is intended to act as RAM in case you don't have enough.... Of course there are people who say "NO NO NO DON"T DO THAT!" But do they really know?

I'll probably research this later.

Bad thing is, if you were to run out of RAM,computer responses lag really bad. It can be difficult to do anything, even closing applications to free up RAM. You might not be able to launch task manager to close something, for example. Should be alright, in my experience, just takes a long time to respond until you free up some RAM.

 

[Asus]

RAM and then HDD (pagefile) are places were your stuff gets run from but it is tiered. So your stuff that was in RAM but isn't getting used but also has not closed goes to pagefile as your RAM fills up with stuff you are using. So the stuff you expect to be quick and are working with is running from RAM. I'm not saying anytime you minimize WMP for X minutes it goes to the pagefile.
If your usage overflows beyond your actual RAM capacity to needing stuff from both RAM and the HDD (page file) then you can actually do it and nothing crashes. It just happens to be slow (the stuff from the HDD anyway). Disable page file and that happens, expect a crash. It's just that some are at 4gb and 8gb with desktop systems who don't push their limits so the back up of the page file can be disabled.

About disabling the page file (from 2005) Shows how to do it but also mentions:
"However, I'm not so sure there's any practical performance increase from disabling your pagefile. If our systems were never running out of physical memory with 2gb, then theoretically the pagefile never gets used anyway. And disabling the pagefile also introduces a new risk: if an app requests more memory than is physically available, it will receive a stern "out of memory" error instead of the slow disk-based virtual memory the OS would normally provide."

 

[VirusType2]

If our systems were never running out of physical memory with 2gb, then theoretically the pagefile never gets used anyway.

Interesting. I guess that settles it. I was under the impression that Windows seems to use it whether it needed to or not - just to keep memory free.

 

[VirusType2]

Good call Asus.

Microsoft shell programmer on the [Windows 7] page file:

You shouldn't turn off the page file... There's no benefit to doing so

The default PF size has been made smaller in Win7, and if disk space is really an issue (like on a small netbook) you can certainly make it smaller. But you should always leave at least 200MB available for the page file. Further, if you hibernate, you may experience decreased hibernate / resume performance if you disable the page file.