Excessive Hard Drive Activity...

[Vio|37]

Hi Guys

I am running a Windows 2000 Server and the main services that it's responsible are as follows:

[list=1][*]IIS[*]SQL Server[/list=1]

IIS is resposible for hosting our Intranet site and SQL serves as its back end database for the Intranet.

At times users will complain that accessing pages for our Intranet system is really slow.

When this occurs, I check the server and run Performance MMC only to find that under the Performance Object of Physical Disks the "Disk Transfer" counter has peak to 100%.

My problem is that I have no way in finding out, EXACTLY what is causing the excessive activity to the server's hard drives.

Would any of you guys know of a utility tool that would enable me to pin-point EXACTLY which application or program that is constantly hammering my hard drives?

Thanks.

[Yawgm0th]

Some quick Google searches were pretty inconclusive, and I don't know of any good software myself.

I found these. They might do what you want, but they seem intended for other things.

http://www.ariolic.com/activesmart/
http://www.eurosoft-uk.com/

I don't have much experience with 2000, but what can its Task Manager (Ctrl + Alt + Delete) do? XP's can show you processes. I just pick processes (and end them) that I know aren't neccesary until I found what i'm looking for if I have a virus or some sort of problem like that. But even if 2000 can do that, don't go ending stuff unless your sure it isn't neccesary (unless you don't mind the server crashing and needing to reboot). There's always the risk of problems with doing this (randomly ending processes, no that can't be bad:rolleyes2 ) but I have never had problems, even when ending important Windows processes.

[minibubba]

sounds to me like you need to beef up the RAM

[Yawgm0th]

True enough, I should have asked for system specs before replying.:o

[Beefy]

If you look at the Process tab in Task Manager, and sort by CPU usage, you should be able to see where all the work is being done. Depending on the usage of SQL, and without any server specs, I'm guessing that's where the problem lies.

[Vio|37]

True enough, I should have asked for system specs before replying.:o

I really don't think this problem of mine has anything to do with the system specs of my server.

Specifications of main components are as follows:

• Dual 1Ghz Pentium 3
• 2GB Physical Memory
• x5 SCSI 18GB Hard Drives (1,2 as RAID 1 and 3, 4, 5 as RAID 5)

[Vio|37]

If you look at the Process tab in Task Manager, and sort by CPU usage, you should be able to see where all the work is being done. Depending on the usage of SQL, and without any server specs, I'm guessing that's where the problem lies.

Throughout the Intranet slow the CPU usage was ranging from 0 to 10%.

It was soley hard drives 3, 4 and 5 that were getting hammered.

[asklepios]

i think you should give filemon a try. i have personally not tried it but looks like this is what you need.
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/filemon.shtml