Not sure why you wrote "not sure which drive it is, there are 4 in the
machine" ? as in the display panel (double-click on the system-try icon) it
clearly states under the column-heading "Disk" which drive is responsible
for that entry (numbered 0 to whatever).

Obviously, whatever drive you have installed your XP installation to (i.e
the SYSTEM drive) is going to be "by far and away" the most active,
normally, any other drives will only put in an appearance once in a very
rare while.

Also, there should be an equal [on average] number of read and write i/o
operations listed in the output [display] window. But if you find that, as
you seemed to be saying, there is a heavy "bias" toward just "reads" or
just all "write" operations try waiting a while and allowing the system to
"move on" and "calm down" than look again at the current output over two or
three minutes.

*NB The output [display] window does *not* capture any i/o data all the
while it is in "minimized" "Disk Tray Light" - mode.

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)




"Jim" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 25 Dec 2010 00:31:42 -0000, "Tim Meddick"
wrote:

I don't think the button you mentioned exists in the XP Task Manager -
you
may have been using Win7 to long now to remember.

Under the Performance tab are a Resource Monitor - style "graphical"
bar-meter to show real-time usage for both CPU strain (& running history)
and Page File usage (& running history).

Also, there are four boxes beneath the two "graphical" meters, displaying
constantly updating numerical values for :

Totals
Physical Memory (K)
Commit Charge (K)
Kernel Memory (K)

...but again, no "buttons".....

There are no "buttons" under the Resource tab, whatsoever!



On another related matter, perhaps the [free] utility from sysinternals
may
be of some [diagnostic] help here...

It's the "Disk Monitor" utility, and once run, can be minimized to the
system tray and acts just like any "Hard-drive lamp" on any PC.
Appearing
red for current disk i/o "writes", green for current "reads" and yellow
for
"no disk i/o".

Once copied from it's ZP-file to any place included in your %path%
variable, you can start it already minimised to the system tray from a
registry "Run-Key" command :

diskmon.exe /l

Download the Disk Monitor utility from the sysinternals website at :
http://download.sysinternals.com/Files/DiskMon.zip

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)




Tim;

I installed the Disk Monotor and can see no direct correlation between
the light panel light, the DISK MON light, and the log written by the
Disk Mon program, and the activity in Task Manager. The program is
writing occasionally to 5 of the same sectors on the hard drive (not
sure which drive it is, there are 4 in the machine). THe same data is
apparently written over and over again, at random intervals, but not
in synch with the log written by DIsk Mon, and they are always WRITEs,
I see no READs.

I'' have to read the HELP files on the program and see if they help.

Jim