Solved Performance - Limiting Factors?

[jamiedolan]

HI;

I have problems with programs "Not Responding" at random times. Most of the time they snap out of it, many times they need to be closed and re-opened.

I've monitored my memory use and have never seen more than about 6 out of my 8 GB being used at one time.

Here is a sample of what I would frequently have running when I see the hanging & "Not Responding":

FireFox 5 to 10 windows open
Chrome 5-10 windows open
Picasa - Usually spends at least several hours a day uploading
Frequently running a YouTube or other video uploads via a browser window
A couple office documents open
Files coping in the background.

There are times I have other things open, but that gives you an idea.

Looking at task manager and Resource Monitor;
Memory currently at 5.8GB out of 8GB
Processor running around 15%
The disk says 96% Highest active time

So it looks like to me, that the speed of the hard drive is bottle neck in my system.

Does it sound like a faster hard drive might address my issues, or Does it sound like something else is causing the "Not Responding".

It seems to me from what I am seeing in the performance monitor that I have more than enough ram available and that the i7 processor is barely being used.

Thanks for any guidance.

Jamie

 

[linnemeyerhere]

jamiedolan,
Do you happen to have the spec's of your hard drive or drives, model numbers and such.

 

[jamiedolan]

jamiedolan,
Do you happen to have the spec's of your hard drive or drives, model numbers and such.

I have 2 externals connected, however, the external drives were just connected in the past few days for back-up purposes.

The internal, is the primary disk I work off of:

WDC WD1001FALS-00J7B0 1TB

If you view the second page of this PDF file, my drive is listed in the far right column.

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701276.pdf

It does appear from that chart that this is entry level, at least compared to the other drives on that chart.

I don't know how to evaluate if the HD is my bottle neck and if so, what kind of drive I would have to move up to. I'm currently running windows backup in the background, and uploading photos to two different places. The computer can't even show the text here as fast as I type it.

If there are any performance programs or anything you want me to run, I can do that as soon as this really slow windows backup completes.

Thanks very much in advance.

Jamie

 

[profdlp]

I know there are some "speed" tweaks for Firefox which pre-cache pages from links on the site(s) you are viewing. While I've generally had good luck with this it does sometimes cause it to hiccup. Don't know if there's something comparable with Chrome because I don't use it.

You've got a decent Internet connection speed and certainly have enough RAM, but it does appear that you are heavy on the bandwidth usage with that many different things running. It might be worth it to try various combination's of the programs you listed, opening them one at a time, then see at what point it chokes.

I haven't had it for a good while, but during the Win 7 Beta period I had all sorts of trouble with youtube stuttering.

 

[Julio Cortez]

My two cents (not being an expert, though): I'd run the Windows Experience test first, to try and see where the bottleneck is (even if in the most of the cases it's the HD).

Picasa - Usually spends at least several hours a day uploading

It reads data from the disk, then.

Frequently running a YouTube or other video uploads via a browser window

It downloads to temporary files the content of the video (so it can be played more fluently) so it writes to the HD.

Files coping in the background.

At least read or write from/to the HD.

Is it possible (again, consider that this is just a guess so it may well be wrong) that software hangs while trying to access the HD so it won't respond until it gets the needed data from it?

 

[jamiedolan]

I haven't had it for a good while, but during the Win 7 Beta period I had all sorts of trouble with youtube stuttering.

One thing I realized is that I spend a lot of time uploading via the browser to services like YouTube and FaceBook because they have no clients for upload. Perhaps this is part of the problem. I just had FireFox crash on me again, it just stopped responding while I was writing a forum post here. I was uploading photos to FaceBook in another browser window.

Maybe I'll setup my Windows 7 Sony VAIO Laptop and try to use that for all my uploads and see if that makes a difference. Then I can just leave that computer to run with some uploads running and nothing else.

The amount of times the programs on this machine just Hangs really seems odd to me for a machine this fast.

I do have the Windows Defender thing installed. I wondered if that slowed things down, but since I don't see the processor being used very much, I am not sure that is the problem.

Thanks

Jamie

 

[jamiedolan]

Is it possible (again, consider that this is just a guess so it may well be wrong) that software hangs while trying to access the HD so it won't respond until it gets the needed data from it?

I agree, this seems like the most likely guess to me as well. I don't know how to solve / deal with this other than by getting a faster hard drive. I will try and run some of my uploads from my laptop and see if that helps solve the problem.

I'll like to some how nail down that the slow hard drive is the true cause of the problem before I go out and buy some high speed drive.

I wonder if I put my files onto an external USB drive, then uploaded them from there, I wonder if that would help, because it would keep the system disk free for, running the system and programs. What do you think?

Jamie

 

[jamiedolan]

My two cents (not being an expert, though): I'd run the Windows Experience test first, to try and see where the bottleneck is (even if in the most of the cases it's the HD).

Yes, I confirmed that the Windows Experience test does show my hard drive as being the slowest component in the system.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

jamie,
I checked and your WD hard drive is fine. Yes 64mb of cache is better but 32 is still a solid performer.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

I might suggest looking into a SSD but it will make the programs and OS load faster but as all the data will still reside on the spinner and your saying that it hangs from time to time, this could still happen. You may want to test the drive for it's general health. I have moved to a Sata III SSD for my OS and App's. and man in my opinion it's been the biggest single component upgrade I've ever done. And as a 60-80gb SSD can be had for around $120.00 with more advancements in this coming soon this would be on my serious watch list !

 

[tman69]

have you checked your settings for the 'Page File'??

see this article--starting with 3rd post. (Your RAM usage seems excessive for what you're doing).

Having a problem with Excessive "modified" memory usage in Win7 x64, upwards of 3.6GB, any suggestions?

 

[jamiedolan]

have you checked your settings for the 'Page File'??

see this article--starting with 3rd post. (Your RAM usage seems excessive for what you're doing).

Having a problem with Excessive "modified" memory usage in Win7 x64, upwards of 3.6GB, any suggestions?

Sometimes I think that FireFox has a memory leak, as it gets up to about 1.3 to 1.5 GB of ram, but when it does, I often have a lot of windows and tabs open. That's usually about the heaviest single app.

So the ram use looks legit to me, other than the times that FireFox looks on the high side.

On the paging files, I played with that a little bit, but set it back to system managed, which is the setting it has normally been on.

 

[jamiedolan]

I might suggest looking into a SSD but it will make the programs and OS load faster but as all the data will still reside on the spinner and your saying that it hangs from time to time, this could still happen. You may want to test the drive for it's general health. I have moved to a Sata III SSD for my OS and App's. and man in my opinion it's been the biggest single component upgrade I've ever done. And as a 60-80gb SSD can be had for around $120.00 with more advancements in this coming soon this would be on my serious watch list !

I looked at the solid state drives for a while this afternoon, I saw some 120GB drives around $200 that were spec'ed at some pretty fast speeds.

As you mentioned, more advancements coming soon, I've been following a bit of the tablet scene. Rumor has it that a new Ipad will be released next month, with double the amount of memory, that means it will be at 128GB. I suspect many other tables will follow suit, which should drive down the prices of SSD's.

Are there other drives to consider with high transfer rates? Back in the late 90's when I was building servers, I would be using 10,000 to 15,000 RPM SCSI drives. I don't know if SCSI drives are even faster than the new IDE drives anymore.

I may start dealing with a lot more videos for a new project, if I do, I may have to just go ahead and get one of the 120GB SSD drives and give it a try.

I'm disabled many of the graphic effects in Windows 7, that seems to help things move around a bit better.

I checked if it needed to be defraged, but the windows defrag app said it is fine.

Thanks

Jamie

 

[linnemeyerhere]

Jamie,
This was just posted here under News. This will give you some added insight on what's coming and here.
OCZ'z Vertex Pro 3 Demo: World's First SandForce SF-2000 - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

 

[linnemeyerhere]

FYI, I'm running a Sata III Crucial Real SSD in a 64 gb capacity with an Asus Sata III adapter....it's wicked !

 

[tman69]

"Sometimes I think that FireFox has a memory leak..."

to fix this, see:

Fix for Firefox memory leak on Windows - How-To Geek

 

[sygnus21]

With regards to performance issues, before you run out and spend money on a SSD drive, you need to be sure there are no other issues slowing your system down.

I have problems with programs "Not Responding" at random times. Most of the time they snap out of it, many times they need to be closed and re-opened.

Programs "not responding" IS NOT indicative of a slow hard drive, but more of an OS/software issue! In short, unless you fix the software issues, all you're going to do is move those issues to the SSD drive!!!

You may want to reinstall the offending programs, or do a system repair of the OS - http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/3413-repair-install.html

Sure, you can just reinstall everything on the SSD drive.... but then you'll never know what the true issue was.... and it/they could pop up again.... making that investment on an SSD drive seem like a waste of money (at the time)

My two cents.


Now for my "off point" comment....

jamie,
I checked and your WD hard drive is fine. Yes 64mb of cache is better but 32 is still a solid performer.

Actually having both drive I really didn't see that much of a difference between the two, other than the loud noise of the 64meg version - http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/90141-sata-6-wd-caviar-black-1tb.html

BTW....

- WDC WD1001FALS = 32meg cache drive
- WDC WD1002FAEX = 64meg cache drive


Anyway back to the post, check your system status before upgrading to an SSD drive or you'll be transferring the problems there!

 

[soho1]

I am going to go out on a limb and say it's not your system. You have a dang nice HD there. I didn't see your experience numbers, only that you reported the HD being lowest. In this case, you might want to indicate the hard numbers. I you are at least 4 you should be fine for Windows 7.

How old is your cable modem? WTH? Yeah, how old? ISPs like comcast are upgrading. You can get 100Gb transfer rates now. Not on those old modems however, and some old modems are causing problems with services as they struggle to stay online at high data speeds. All your web apps transfer data and Office occasionally talks to the web so you should at least monitor to see if you are having any modem communication issues.

Sorry I do not have any network tool suggestions. At a minimum, a tool that might help a little is Karen's 'Net Monitor which can at least ping a series of sites every minute. You SHOULD have no communcation errors all day, but if you do, it may be an indicator. You might look at BBY or AMZN for a DOCSIS 3.0 modem.

In short, yeah, don't run out and blow money on a HD when you already have nice stuff.

 

[sygnus21]

One thing I forgot to mention in my previous post is that in order to help diagnose "performance" issues we need "full" system specs, otherwise we're searching in the dark.

 

[profdlp]

...How old is your cable modem? WTH? Yeah, how old? ISPs like comcast are upgrading. You can get 100Gb transfer rates now. Not on those old modems however, and some old modems are causing problems with services as they struggle to stay online at high data speeds...

Good suggestion.

When I moved a year-and-a-half ago the guy connecting my cable (same company, same city) saw that I was paying for the enhanced high speed service and replaced my modem. He said the old one couldn't handle the faster speed. Too bad I paid an extra $20 a month for three years at the old place for something I wasn't really getting. :sarc: