DISK I/O 1

[dljohnson19]

Does anyone know of a tool or utility (preferrably free) that gives detailed disk I/O?

 

[edfair]

What kind of detail? What kind of disk?
And under what type of environment?

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[dljohnson19]

RAID 0 SCSI (hardware RAID) Dell 1750

Just looking for usage/percentage. Looking to find a bottleneck. (Basically have a file that is taking 2 hours to zip up and looking to find out where the bottleneck is, if it is memory or disk I/O, etc...)

 

[PRPhx]

2 hours!!!!! How big is this file?? I have 4-5 gig SQL server backups that I zip that don't take that long.

 

[dljohnson19]

43 GB ,,,, yes 43 GB.

 

[edfair]

You should be able to find the I/O throughput on the controller chipset on the Dell site.
This is out of my league, but can you separate the the input and output locations?

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[PRPhx]

WOW... That is one large file. You must be using Winzip 9? Or some other zip program. Have you tried increasing the size of the page file? How large is the partition where your temp zip file resides? How much ram in your computer. Also shut down any and all services you can until the zip is complete. Any way of breaking the file up into smaller chunks?????

 

[dljohnson19]

I believe it is a DOS based WinZIP. No way to break it up as it is actually a database that is being zipped up. Machine has 4 GB of RAM. 236 GB partition (on same partition as db) 2-4 GB page file on C only. How large should I go on the page file and should I add a page file on the partition that has the db (236 GB)?

 

[PRPhx]

I'd almost bet it can NOT be a DOS based zip program. At least not pkzip. Looking on their site, they don't mention file size, only the number of files (up to 16,000).

Winzip is a Windows zip program, pkzip is the DOS based zip program. And DOS would limit the amount of available memory (unless your using a DOS extender).

I know that Winzip prior to version 9 had a file size limit of 4 gigs. Ver 9 is supposed to be unlimited in size.

As far as page file, I'd add another 43+ gig. Make it as large as the zip file. I'd also zip it to any other, less busy drive than C:. Also where does the db back up to?

Also make sure you defrag your hd after you zip this file. You might see a bit of improvement. Also shut down any/all programs/services that don't need to be running during the zip process.

Your bottleneck is probably the size of the db your trying to zip. Zipping can take up lots of resources.

 

[kmcferrin]

I agree, it's probably the file size, which of course then leads you to the memory size. But since the system is pretty much maxxed out on RAM, you'll have to go with increasing the amount of virtual memory. If your system is configured to handle virtual memory settings on it's own, then you might already have a large enough page file. From a command prompt, go to the root of the C: drive a do a:

DIR /A:H

That will list the hidden files. See how large your PAGEFILE.SYS file is, as that is your virtual memory.