local drive spins up when I access fileserver. why? how do I stop it?

[taltamir]

I am running a windows 7 RTM 64bit machine with:
X25-M G2 - drive C
WD6400 - 2 platter 640GB drive - Drive D
ZFS fileserver RAID6 (z2) - Mounted network drive Z


Whenever I do certain actions in drive Z, Drive D spins up (it is off after 5 minutes) and I have to wait 2 seconds for it to spin up before windows will continue to process my access of drive Z.
Example: I opened Z in explorer. as soon as I double clicked a rar file my WD6400 started spinning up, and the file did not open until it finished.

Also happens with firefox or chrome downloading a file to drive Z.

What is going on here?

 

[nickbits]

Where is your temp folder located?

 

[taltamir]

ok, i just had an epiphany...
I realized that I put all my "user" folders in drive D (except appdata which does not allow relocation). I relocated (via location tab):

Favorites, contacts, desktop, downloads, links, documents, music, videos, pictures, saved games, and searches to drive D.

I am gonna try to relocate a few of those back to C and see if it solves the problem, my guess is that links or searches are the culprit

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: nickbits
Where is your temp folder located?

which one? there are many

 

[imported_Mills]

Likely he's referring to %TEMP% .

Mills

 

[taltamir]

well... i have several temp folders in my appdata folder... which one of those is %TEMP%?

 

[imported_Mills]

Start>run> %TEMP% will open it. It's a variable so it could be set to anywhere, on Win7 for me it is C:\Users\Mills\AppData\Local\Temp .

Nevertheless, I'd assume it's more to do with the way explorer works. You can use Procmon to see what directories/files are polled when you double click your shortcut and ensure they are on the SSD.

Good luck,

Mills

 

[Nothinman]

Example: I opened Z in explorer. as soon as I double clicked a rar file my WD6400 started spinning up, and the file did not open until it finished.

And WinRAR (or whatever you're using to open that file) is installed where?

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: Mills
Start>run> %TEMP% will open it. It's a variable so it could be set to anywhere, on Win7 for me it is C:\Users\Mills\AppData\Local\Temp .

Nevertheless, I'd assume it's more to do with the way explorer works. You can use Procmon to see what directories/files are polled when you double click your shortcut and ensure they are on the SSD.

Good luck,

Mills

i see, the appdata\local\temp folder... yea, its on drive C (the SSD)

 

[taltamir]

ok... this did NOT solve the problem... although I think I am seeing it spin up less, i just saved a file in chrome directly to my Z drive, and the D drive spun up. (although there was no "wait" in chrome)
right now my drive D has:
downloads, documents, music, videos, pictures, and saved games.

 

[Thorny]

Please post the solution when you find the solution. I was having the same problem until I disabled spin-down on the drives. I would love to have them on standby since I rarely need to use them, but I hate the 2 second lock up when they spin up for no reason.

 

[taltamir]

i also disabled it... i don't mind the wait, its the noise and the potential damage to the drive that bothers me. it just keeps on turning them on...

 

[Thorny]

I've got 7 fans spinning in my case, so I can't really hear the drives once thier on. However, when they spin up my system locks, and since they spin up staggered it's a pain. I don't understand why they do it, I have NO apps on the drive and not much data otherwise, they are just for back ups and my XP boot drive. They get used so little it's a waste to have them running all the time.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: taltamir
ok... this did NOT solve the problem... although I think I am seeing it spin up less, i just saved a file in chrome directly to my Z drive, and the D drive spun up. (although there was no "wait" in chrome)
right now my drive D has:
downloads, documents, music, videos, pictures, and saved games.

Taltamir I don't know this for absolute truth but doesn't windows explorer service "poll" all drives to ensure the static system information is still valid regarding drive ID's and drive letter assignments?

I did not have the exact same issue as you, but I did get tired of the spin-up wait every time I did pretty much anything with my rig involving reading/writing files anywhere in my drive landscape so I ultimately gave up and disabled drive spindown.

Good luck chasing down the labyrinth of service dependencies and validations that are triggered every time explorer is asked to touch or do anything with your filesystem. I so thoroughly hate the windows explorer situation, its one thing I truly loath about windows OS.

I love how if explorer "hangs" while trying to access or ID network resources then your whole rig, despite being a quad-core or more, suddenly can't do jack about anything in the meantime until that explorer service times-out or gets the info its seeking from the network. And don't get me started on keyboard shortcut hangs and timeouts.

 

[Nothinman]

Taltamir I don't know this for absolute truth but doesn't windows explorer service "poll" all drives to ensure the static system information is still valid regarding drive ID's and drive letter assignments?

It polls removable drives periodically to see if there's a new volume inserted, but it shouldn't really touch non-removable ones unless it really has to read/write something.