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PRTG is keeping my disks awake

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Hello,

I have PRTG running in an Hyper-V virtual machine with Windows XP. The host system is running Server 2008 R2 X64.

I noticed that my second harddrive on the host system is never going into spindown (checked the start/stop count with HD Tune).

With process explorer i determined it is because of wmiprvse.exe is accessing the disk every 30 seconds (i had my scanning interval at PRTG on 30 seconds).

See this screenshot for more information: http://tweakers.net/ext/f/hNy1H04X3bA8FrqeVfl8wrXS/full.png

As soon as i shutdown the virtual machine with PRTG, the wmiprvse.exe activity stops. And as soon as i boot the virtual machine, and PRTG starts, the wmiprvse.exe activity starts again.

I have paused the sensors that query the disk, but even then the activity continues...

Is this normal behavior for PRTG? I am not too happy about this, because my HDD never spins down because of this, which leads to extra power consumption

spindown wmi wmiprvse

Created on Jan 3, 2013 8:44:54 AM



1 Reply

Accepted Answer

Votes:

0

Hello,

I'm afraid as soon as you start monitoring with WMI in general, the wmiprvse.exe will be used, and that one then will most likely create disk- and CPU-load/activity. The only way to stop that would be pausing all WMI Sensors, or switching to SNMP and replacing all WMI Sensors. Sadly, it's beyond our reach to change (or have an influence on) the behaviour of the 'wmiprvse.exe'. I know it doesn't really help, but others are also experiencing this (seemingly not related to PRTG):
http://us.generation-nt.com/answer/continuous-hard-disk-activity-wmiprvse-exe-help-152122941.html#r
http://superuser.com/questions/277829/wmiprvse-exe-does-a-lot-of-disk-seeking-activity-once-every-day

best regards.

Created on Jan 3, 2013 2:39:58 PM by Torsten Lindner [Paessler Support]




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