How to know when Hard drive is being accessed?

[gebran bassil]

Is there a way to know when the Hard Drive (or SSD) is being accessed? I know there's the red light on the PC case that blinks whenever the Hard Drive is accessed, but it's impossible to watch this light and watch the monitor at the same time, since I want to know when it's being accessed during an application(e.g. a video game). So is there anyway to monitor when the HDD (or SSD) is being used, anything would do, whether it's a blinking light on the monitor or a logging application.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

Microsoft DiskMon is what you are looking for:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896646.aspx

 

[gebran bassil]

Okay, is there any way diskmon can tell what programs are using the drive?

 

[JohnnyLucky]

Go back to the Microsoft web page that I linked to. Look at the left hand column. Check out the "File and Disk Utilities", "Process Utilities", and "System Information Utilities". Each category has numerous Microsoft utilities. Look them over and try the ones that interest you.

You will probably find that most of the time the hard drive is idle rather than reading and writing data.

 

[gebran bassil]

Actually diskmon is showing constant write activity. This is a little disturbing considering I have an SSD.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

Go back to the Microsoft web page that I linked to. Look at the left hand column. Go to "File and Disk Utilities". Download, install, and run "Process Monitor V3.03" to identify the activity going on in the background.

Could be something like Windows SuperFetch or search indexing if you did not disable them.

 

[gebran bassil]

What am I supposed to be seeing in Process monitor? I see about 1 million processes. And how do I know which one is using the SSD? (Superfetch and search indexing are turned off)

 

[popatim]

On task managers performance tab hit the Resource Monitor button.
On the Resource Monitor screen click onto the Disk Tab.

Theres just about everything you need right there.

 

[gebran bassil]

I need something like the blinking LED on the PC case, except you can see the blinking on the monitor while running an application to know when the drive is being accessed without turning attention away from the monitor to the PC case. Also to know the directory/file being accessed would be good. Resource monitor is good but just doesn't do it.

 

[popatim]

What do you find lacking in it?
It shows you whats accessing the drive, the drives usage in graph and % form, the usuage in total and individually, and the window is resizable so you can adjust it to show only what you want. All its missing is your red flashing light but really if you watch it, your drive is always in use for something...