Windows 7: Error checking memory hog

Running error checking on my E drive and noticed it was sluggish. Opened up task manager to see if anything dragging it down. I have 24 GB ram and its using 23 GB of that. WTF? Its paging out pretty bad too. Is there a setting to limit amount of ram this hog takes? BTW, Windows 7 64 sp1.

You could open Resource Monitor to see exactly how your RAM is being allocated.

Resource Monitor

Windows 7 does a better job of allocating RAM than previous versions of Windows. As a general rule, you should not have any available RAM (or at least very little). Available RAM is wasted RAM. You paid for all of it and you really don't want to see any of it wasted. Windows 7 works hard to keep all your RAM working for you all the time, for example using it for cache if your apps don't need it, then taking it back again if your apps need it later. This is a good feature of Windows 7, not bad.

You could also run the free Process Monitor to get a better idea of what's using your RAM. Don't even have to install it. You can run it from the live link at the bottom of the page (run process monitor now.)

Process Monitor

You should not be using your computer when you are running disk checks. You told it to check your disk and repair correct? When it is going to use all of your RAM (not a bug) and attempt to finish as soon as it can by using all your memory. When you are running a check and a repair you should not use the computer until it is done. What you should have done is just have it check and not repair, then it will finish faster and not utilize your RAM to such an extent.

When error checking a secondary internal disk, shouldn't be an issue using your system. It's not the OS disk. The disk I scanned houses my music and movies only. Anyway, I had only around 500MB of ram left while the utility ran. When it completed, it all came back. I didn't write down the file that was hogging all the ram. When I run it again on my 3rd internal disk, will write down and post what I find.

It is an old bug upon Windows 7 release, fixed by the first batch of updates, aint your windows patched?

Have all the latest updates including sp1.

Its not a bug, never was a bug. When you use the repair function (/r) of chkdsk it will use all available memory to complete the job as quickly as possible. It is by design.

"Sacn for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" this options from the UI, leaving it unchecked will not consume a large amount of memory, and will sped the check up. (/r from the command line.)

Thanks for the answer. It was a 2TB hard drive. Took about 4 hours to scan and repair. If I remember when I scan the third drive, will post what I find. Thanks again.