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How to tell which files are open?


jcbullen

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I just pooled 4 drives together and put a few video files on them, nothing else. As soon as I pooled them together, the drives have been making noise as though they are being accessed even though there isn't much on them to access and I'm not using anything from them. The GUI shows that 2 files are open and I'm not sure what they are. Is there a way to find out what files are open and possibly making the hard drives make noise? The Windows install is new and I don't believe anything is scanning them. I've set everything in Drivepool (rebalancing, duplication, etc..) to only happen during certain hours at night, but for some reason some files are open and the hard drives are being accessed.

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Do you have AV or media software installed that might be scanning the pool? Given you mention it's a new install of Windows, it could also be Windows itself. After a change to your system - e.g. adding a drive, installing a program, a Windows Update, a random dust mote passing within sixty inches of the case, etc - Windows may decide that it must go scanning and indexing and generally rummaging about, supposedly to "optimise future performance", with the extra-annoying habits of (1) not bothering to ask first, (2) sometimes leaving files open during/afterwards, (3) sometimes hogging the CPU and/or drive thrashing and/or filling up the system log folder, (4) paying lip-service to claims that it's supposed to pause if a user is active, and (5) taking ages to finish if it ever does. #StupidWindowsThings

Things that might help:

  • for Windows 7, a minimum of 4 GB of RAM; for Windows 8, upgrade to Windows 7 or 10; for Windows 10, a minimum of 8 GB of RAM.
  • tell Windows Update to check for new updates, install any it finds, and repeat this loop until no more appear, in case MS has fixed whatever's broken this time.
  • using Windows' Resource Monitor and/or SysInternals' Process Explorer to maybe find the culprit. If you're lucky, it won't be the System process.
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On 12/4/2020 at 9:53 AM, jcbullen said:

The GUI shows that 2 files are open and I'm not sure what they are.

In the DrivePool GUI, if you expand the Performance section, there should be a section on the bottom right hand of the screen called "Disk Performance" that will either be empty "No disk activity on the pool" or it will show the exact file(s) DrivePool is currently accessing. If you hover the mouse over the file listed, it will open a pop up box with complete path and file name. In my experience, if DrivePool is working with files, it tells you.

I agree that this may be a Windows issue as operations happen in the background all the time without informing you, especially automatic updates which can take a long time if the update is large. You could try opening up the Task Manager in Windows and check to see which services are working with your HDD. That may help narrow down the suspects.

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