System/CMD/PHP writes to $LogFile gets interrupted and never cleans up

[Stewox]

Hello

I have potentially stumbled upon a massive problem with php.exe, command prompt and the System process that writes to $Logfile when downloading and saving some stuff.

This is the PHP script i was using https://github.com/K-S-V/Scripts/wiki

There has been past writting, but I have totally reformatted all my other drives and restructured my files (moved around 4 TB around) consolidated partitions and set 32K allocation size on all my HDDs.

So the old stuff is not there, except System Drive C: which is an SSD with Windows 7 x64 ULT.

The script does not have any manual clean stop feature mid-process, only a predetermined timeout command which I don't need to use for what I'm doing, so if i close the command prompt window (because what I was downloading was a live transmission and it didn't stop when it should) the file is never created, to delete what has been written.

I have also tried stopping php.exe but that didn't help, thought CMD has to be open for the System process to create the file if php.exe is done doing it's stuff.

The actual video file with a name and extension is only visible in explorer after the download has completed this means the script has to be successful, all other cases the file is never created in the beginning.

The space taken, is never loosened up, it took about +1 GB I think and I never got that space back, I cleaned the recycler and rebooted and it didn't loose my space on SSD which is ridicolous that I already have slowdowns if I don't have at least 20% free space on there.

I have done this in the past on C: - I think there's more space being eaten up all this time, which is many months. I have notices SSD behaving suspiciously slow.

I have posted this here incase the problem is with CMD and/or Windows components.

If someone wants to recreate this you take latest php for windows (i think i choosen non-thread safe, i had no idea what that means) then get that script, but even when you enable the curl extension in ext folder there's still some dlls missing which I don't understand why they don't put stuff like this with the script, just ask me and i'll UL it since I had a hard time searching for them too.

PS:
Just 2 weeks ago I made my first clonezilla image of my C: drive, still, I really want to take all other options before this one.

EDIT: I can't find the picture of resource monitor showing the logfile being written on among other things.

 

[GokAy]

Download trimcheck 0.7 (Index of /trimcheck) and test if it is actually enabled.

Then download portable version of WizTree (https://antibody-software.com/web/s...using-the-most-disk-space-on-your-hard-drive/) and see what folders/files are taking up space.

Also check System Restore settings for your C (default is 10%).

Benchmark your SSD with AS SSD.

 

[Stewox]

Download trimcheck 0.7 (Index of /trimcheck) and test if it is actually enabled.

Then download portable version of WizTree (https://antibody-software.com/web/s...using-the-most-disk-space-on-your-hard-drive/) and see what folders/files are taking up space.

Also check System Restore settings for your C (default is 10%).

Benchmark your SSD with AS SSD.

System Restore, Backup, And Volume Shadow Service are completely disabled and snapshots deleted, pagefile and hibernation are disabled (i do stuff like this the minute i install windows, among other hundreds of tweaks)

As far as I know I had trim enabled and I did test in the beginning, this was 2 years ago, I made this DIY PC myself and I was neurotically making sure to apply around 20 tweaks for SSDs and it took me 3 weeks to set it all up I really took time for it. (i mean, the whole PC, hardware, software, new desk, cabling, etc)

It appears the SSD is behaving extremely slow in the past week even with more than 20% free space it cannot perform tasks at the speed it can before, basically grinds to a halt when I would fast-transcode some video files with ffmpeg in the SG-1 folder (concat of 5x1.05GB to a new ~5GB file)

Not to mention the treesize scan takes longer than one of the HDDs, usually treesize scan was lightning fast.

Note: I have killed the hardlinks, only the windows-default ones should exits on C: now.

Primary Suspect: Accidential execution of Windows 10 Intaller from USB that I quickly quit, double-clicked instead of right-click and explore, windows installers have been known to be messing up stuff even if you don't seelect the drive, I use another (currently disconnected) for booting linux and windows 10 preview, i keep that drive disconnected manually when I boot into win7 with the 3 drives.

Win10 already messes up other partitions on the drive, changes their letter and puts pagefile on it, this automatic intrusion is one thing I really don't like from Windows products.

Note: $.Windows folder that win10 created, has already been deleted so it's not visible here, I also did a general clean, deleted around 10GB out that I had planned for cleanup as well as more data that was moved to HDD that will be hardlinked back in later.

At the time when I launched php KSV script the free size in explorer showed some 13 GB left, after 30 minute download which amounted to probably over 1 GB or more the free size showed 13.2 and it never jumped back to 13.7 is the last I remember at the time, it was more than 13 ofcourse at the beginning, i just wasn't at the computer to see the progression.

I rebooted and did as I didd it remained at 13,2 or 11,2 i don't remember exactly the second number but I remember the decimal never changed back up, since I spend about an hour researching and trying to figure out on the spot I didn't find anything on the internet about this issue, then I wrote this thread and proceeded to cleanup of the C as planned.

Those 35GB from the top folder are some transcoding/extracting that is temporary and keeps getting deleted and created (it's just a lot of work so that "temporary" means more than 6 months, probably a year now, heh) the 35GB is right now the max size it's around 20GB normally and the total disk free space never goes below 10GB and it ALYWAYS worked fast.

Something's definitely up, I ran the same transcode operation it usually completes in about 30 seconds, and the progress is shown, so if i would leave it, it would easily take many many minutes, orders of magnitude.

Trying AS-SSD:

AS-SSD Clashes, SSD activity is 100% and barely can open other programs, the whole thing took 10 minutes to stop after I clicked Abort after already 5 mins of leaving it on before I noticed a problem.

Here's a video of the last 1 minute: http://www.**************/download/...eirdClash_4K_$LogFileTrimIssueSevenForums.mp4 (edit: im not going to reupload that, figure it out, one of the top 13 list)

The number should look something like this<<< - i have searched for a test I probably did 2,5 years ago but can't find it now, probably archived it to DVDs by mistake stuff like this I think I should put in My Docs but I didn't.

Idea1: should I try scanning the whole partition with disc recovery software to scan for some weird hidden file that windows might have created because I don't think just enabling trim would fix the problems done back before, but I will monitor how disk sizes change if at all.

Idea2: should i make a video of the KVS Script in action with me purposelly interrupting mid-point and have the DL size precalculated so I know how much numbers we're dealing with then monitoring the changes after that.


The screenshots above should be the baseline of the stable size right now, i will not be moving any large files until this problem is solved or cancelled.
Ofcourse slight change should occur because of temporary files/caches by browsers and windows activity.

 

[GokAy]

Did you re-run trimcheck after 1st run as instructed in the command prompt window? If so what did it tell?
If it say that trim is disabled then run in elevated cmd:

fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify

if it returns a 1, then trim is disabled. If so run the next command:

fsutil behavior set DisableDeleteNotify 0

I should be thanking you by the way, I checked trim on my system and found out it was not working for C, which turned out to be disabled somehow. It was working when I first installed 2.5 months ago. So definitely make sure trim is enabled and working.

We both have Windows 10 common by the way (at least partially). I have it dual-boot on a partition on my SSD.

 

[Stewox]

trimcheck said it appears to be working.

and fsutil confirms it as well

should I start looking into the SSD hardware failure possibility then ...

 

[GokAy]

I would first check with another user account - http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/181024-user-account-create.html
Try Safe Mode too.
Also a clean startup - http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorial...ation-conflicts-performing-clean-startup.html

 

[Stewox]

I'm not really sure what the heck to do.

The long term plan, in a month or two, I might actually sell this SSD before it fails and buy a new one.

But I might still try do something and if I can get it working without any hints of impending doom I might change my mind.

Trying to scan for smart data but that should already alert the OS if error was detected no ? ...

 

[Stewox]

Something got fixed now with the write, but 4K still won't release, will try video transcoding again with other benchmarks.

It's another heat wave around here, so my progress on this was slow and will be for some days.

 

[Stewox]

I still have warranty, so I'll probably do that for the issue with writing

The logfile isn't big actually, about 60 MBs ...

I just can't find anything to indicate any large file around here, I did a 20minute analysis and looked around, I'm not sure what are all those detected NTFS items since this SSD never had anything else other than this one single windows 7 x64 ultimate ever installed.

What if the $Logfile writing when I used the HDS Downloader was because of the SSD problem ?

Well stupid me, I will now try testing while it tests the SSD ... will report back here.

 

[Stewox]

These are the ATTO and Crystal Disk Mark ... i'm not an expert on these numbers, but they do not seem to hang nor do anything weird ... so I guess this is some good news, but the final test will come ...

Now, i will go back to that video transcoding operation and see if it'll do anything.


Basically I have 5 year warranty so I'm going to use it but the store has holidays for 2 weeks and I also need this PC for two weeks so I have to wait with the recreation of the other issue of not cleaning up (the main issue of this thread)

Since I want to finish work, clean up, and also create a good clonezilla image, before I actually try the recreation test with full monitoring, I will be back with that later and will post, then I will clean the SSD (reformat) and ship it to RMA if it proves that SSD is at fault.

Otherwise I won't RMA it just reformat and reinstall the image, which I doubt will clean out the hidden-occupied space.

 

[GokAy]

Your seq write is too low for a 840 (along with 4K). However, I just noticed Crystal DiskInfo shows a feature DevSleep. I am not home to check my 850. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DevSlp

Maybe this is causing the issue? Try changing the power cable for the SSD.

Also check in DiskInfo, function - advanced - AAM/APM - see if they are set to performance.

 

[Stewox]

I'll be darn ....

Just 2 weeks ago I have made maintenace with reformatting my HDDs and adding a new 1TB one ... which included changing cables such as Sata ports and power cables around ...

Due to my limited budget I kept using the old PSU I had from 2008 (Which cost me 200$ it's Enermax 620W) due to my mistake i let the shop to assemble my PC back in 2008, they didn't provide all the cables for this PSU along with other stuff, a big lesson, long story ...

So, since the sata power extensions don't have the orange wire, I googled about that if the SSD would require it or not, I heard it's usually not used, but I thought why not, so I think i included it, but that's how it was before too I think, not sure, will report back.

I left the SSD on the same Sata Port 1 just rearranged the HDDs so they are in the port number as they are with the letters (C D E F G) ofcourse I have no idea for sure how exactly it was before.

 

[GokAy]

Keep the SSD plugged in the first SATA port of motherboard, the drive lettering is an OS thing, it won't change by changing SATA ports. The drive that is holding the installation should be first.

Let us know after you try it out.

 

[Stewox]

I believe I always had it on SPort 1 but I do not know wether or not it was with 3.3vdc or not.

Just for clarity when I rearranged my files between drives (consolidated partitions, etc) I just put them in the same order as they are in the OS. Also because of the DVD/USB boot thing and the 5th win10/linux drive I don't have connected all the time.

Due to the hot weather I didn't bother and just cut the orange 3.3v wire with a knife.

These tests are now without 3.3v - but there's another thing, I've tried latest version of CDInfo and it still shows DevSleep in the Features, I hope this means "supported" which wouldn't indicate wether is enabled or not, it's not greyed out either.

seems like new version is not the same.
edit: the new test on the old version got slightly lesser numbers in 512k than compared to the first test on page 1, I don't think these tests are actually reliable since it's always different by way too much.

I aslo screwed up by testing atto with only 1 GB ... the first test being 2GB, will this make the comparison invalid ?

 

[GokAy]

Cutting the wire is a bit drastic?

I won't be home until 22-22:30 local time to actually check DevSleep on mine. Maybe someone else with a similar SSD will comment.

Do you have Samsung Magician installed? Are there any firmware updates available? Also, there is a performance optimizer within magician, try running that.

 

[Stewox]

Will try that utility.

Well I still have one Sata power with 3.3v intact but ... I really didn't had any other choice since no more Power connectors I would have to disconnect other drives and I already had a lot of headaches with the lack of cabling now I set it up nice and zipped it up with cable ties (that are one-shot only) and not going to bother with it until I buy a new PSU.

Also I want to report that the ffmpeg video transcoding test did complete successfuly in the expected time, probably a reboot fixed it, not sure what happened.

Maybe it was a side effect of the weird PHP script thingy ...

 

[Stewox]

Write Caching for SSD is disabled. Samsung Magician tells me that it should be enabled, and also says that Write Cache Buffer Flushing should be disabled (this means both buttons ticked in windows)

So SSD doesn't need flushing and I won't lose any data if I disable (tick) this option?


I already have superfetch/prefetch/pagefile/hibernation/indexing disabled by default even if I would use a HDD.

 

[GokAy]

Hmm, on my system Write cache enabled (ticked) while write-cache buffer flushing (unticked). It is possible the Pro can flush with the power left in capacitors before drained of energy while a power failure.

And mine show DevSleep too, just checked.

 

[Stewox]

Hmm, on my system Write cache enabled (ticked) while write-cache buffer flushing (unticked). It is possible the Pro can flush with the power left in capacitors before drained of energy while a power failure.

I was researching and have been aware of such a feature, when I was shopping in early 2013, I didn't notice it for this drive, but there was big PR about this for many workstation/server SSDs which were much more expensive (use other type of flash)

Also, there is a bit of a mix in the utility, for flushing it says "Deactivated features that SSDs don't use", but when I click details it says that flushing should be enabled (unticked) same as it does on the website FAQ, i'll go with this and leave flushing enabled then and test again.

There is also a firmware update available, but I will do that once I finish the mentioned work in around 2 to 3 weeks or so, and after I make a system image, ofcourse.

Current: DXM04B0Q
Available: DXM06B0Q


----

Now I remember, I think I've messed with this quite some time ago when electricians were repairing some industrial machines downstairs (home business) and they had once cut power without asking me (or anyone else, so I put large warning signs around the circuit breakers) so I just disabled write caching cause I had experiences in the past with power loss (registry corruption) and looks like I forgot to re-enable it.

Still, this is a side thing, the problem that the thread title mentions is ofcourse still open ...

 

[GokAy]

Yes, firmware update after an image backup just in case.

Did you run the optimizer within magician by the way?

I will comment if I get any more ideas but for now, I am out