Disk monitoring

[ANUBIS]

Hi !

I have one question and one bug (kind of) to report, regarding hard disk monitoring and displaying on OSD or LCD.

1.) Why are disk numbers different in Windows Disk management and Aida64 ?

Disk 0 in disk management  =  Disk  1  in Aida64 
Disk 1 in disk management  =  Disk  2  in Aida64  
Disk 2 in disk management  =  Disk  3  in Aida64  
Disk 3 in disk management  =  Disk  4  in Aida64
Disk 4 in disk management  =  Disk  5  in Aida64

and so on...

 

2.) I have created a disk activity monitor on my LCD (i have 6 HDD's and a bar graph for each of them to show read and write activity and temperature. This way i know what is going on in my system)

The bug i have noticed, occurs sometimes (about 20-30% of the time) after cold boot. Sometimes my disk graphs (and temperatures) do not correspond to the names (C,D,E,F, etc.) they should. For example i scan Disk C with antivirus, but on the LCD -  bar graph over disk F shows activity. And other disks infos are messed up too.

Only thing that is helping, is restarting the computer. After that everything is correct again.

 

 

[Fiery]

1) Power users and software developers are fond of zero-based indexing, but for the majority of users a one-based indexing is easier to follow.

2) I guess the explanation behind that anomaly must be that for some reason after system restart (or cold boot) your Windows installation messes up the physical drive indexes.  So e.g. disk#0 may become disk#4 and vice versa, but it is restored back after the next reboot.

[ANUBIS]

1.) Ok, but this makes it a bit uncomfortable to create such monitoring displays like i did. (i guess i am a "power user")

2.) That's what i thought but under Windows Disk Management everything seems to be ok while this anomaly occurs. (I have all the disks interlinked and messing up physical drive indexes should mess up these links but they remain working)

[Fiery]

22 minutes ago, ANUBIS said:

1.) Ok, but this makes it a bit uncomfortable to create such monitoring displays like i did. (i guess i am a "power user")

2.) That's what i thought but under Windows Disk Management everything seems to be ok while this anomaly occurs. (I have all the disks interlinked and messing up physical drive indexes should mess up these links but they remain working)

1) If you're a power user, then I suppose shifting the indexes by one shouldn't be a problem

2) Please make a screen shot (or report, or copy-paste) of the Storage / Physical Drives page of AIDA64 at both states (when it's OK; and when the anomaly occurs).

[ANUBIS]

1.) No, not a problem. Just uncomfortable.   Because there are not only numbers - for some things there are numbers, for some things there are drive letters and for some things there are drive serial numbers. I need to check every time i change or create something regarding HDD's that correct number corresponds to correct drive letter and correct serial number and correct number in Disk Management.

It is a bit mess. For now i have created a table for myself - for example:  C = Disk 5 = Disk 6 in Aida64 = NVMe Force MP500      (and i have 6 Drives)

I was hoping that this can be made easier somehow.

 

2.) I will try to do so as soon as it occurs and i notice it. (i "hope" it occurs soon )

 

 

[ANUBIS]

Ok, now - sorry for the delay, i have been very busy with travelling and work lately.

I noticed the bug again and this time i made the sreenshots as promised. I made one image with both screenshots - ok and not ok. I also added Logical Drives on both.

As you can see - logical drives and serial numbers are reported correctly on both occasions but physical drives are different and some of them are not corresponding to their logical drives.

[Fiery]

19 hours ago, ANUBIS said:

Ok, now - sorry for the delay, i have been very busy with travelling and work lately.

I noticed the bug again and this time i made the sreenshots as promised. I made one image with both screenshots - ok and not ok. I also added Logical Drives on both.

As you can see - logical drives and serial numbers are reported correctly on both occasions but physical drives are different and some of them are not corresponding to their logical drives.

 

Maybe the issue is due to the two 2TB Toshiba drives are reveresed in the "NOT OK" case?  Without the drive serial number it's hard to tell which one is which.  However, since the issue affects the disk activity sensor items as well, it would be logical if it was simply an ordering issue of physical drives -- as opposed to an issue of logical drives association with physical drives.

I'm not sure however how and why those two 2TB drives change places in the order of physical drives.  Other than hot-plugging causing Windows to rescan and possibly reorder physical drives, I don't have any other tips

[ANUBIS]

Just to clarify - i am talking about computer internal drives.

Sometimes these are other disks that are mixed up, sometimes more than two. I never hot plug or change any internal hard drive once i have installed OS.

Since this thing occurs only sometimes, i can not replicate this behaviour at will. I do not know what causes it.

It has been bugging me a long time - with different windows install sources, motherboards, different disks and configurations.  Thing that is certain - multiple hard drives get mixed up sometimes in Aida64.  (I use Windows 7, but i have not noticed any odd behaviour with my drives from Windows 7 side, everything works ok)

I do not understand why logical drives remain correct while physical drives change (when i plug and unplug different external drives, they change drive letters , but that is expected behaviour.) When this bug occurs, all my internal drive letters (logical drives) remain the same, as you can see on the picture, meaning that physical drives do not change really - they only appear changed. This should not be possible.

 

I added my drives with serial numbers - maybe it can help somehow ? (These are all internal drives)

C   =   Disk 5 =  Disk  6  in Aida64        NVMe  Force  MP500 (Corsair 120GB M.2)
X   =   Disk 2 =  Disk  3  in Aida64        TOSHIBA  DT01ACA200  (Y3RU3GDKS)
Y   =   Disk 1 =  Disk  2  in Aida64        TOSHIBA  DT01ACA300 (Z64MSH3AS)
Z   =   Disk 0 =  Disk  1  in Aida64        TOSHIBA  DT01ACA200  (34KN497GS)
W  =   Disk 3 =  Disk  4  in Aida64        TOSHIBA  DT01ACA300 (Z64MUY4AS)
V   =   Disk 4 =  Disk  5  in Aida64        KINGSTON  SVP200S37A120G (50026B733103712C)
 

[Fiery]

On ‎2017‎. ‎08‎. ‎31‎. at 6:24 PM, ANUBIS said:

Just to clarify - i am talking about computer internal drives.

Sometimes these are other disks that are mixed up, sometimes more than two. I never hot plug or change any internal hard drive once i have installed OS.

Since this thing occurs only sometimes, i can not replicate this behaviour at will. I do not know what causes it.

It has been bugging me a long time - with different windows install sources, motherboards, different disks and configurations.  Thing that is certain - multiple hard drives get mixed up sometimes in Aida64.  (I use Windows 7, but i have not noticed any odd behaviour with my drives from Windows 7 side, everything works ok)

I do not understand why logical drives remain correct while physical drives change (when i plug and unplug different external drives, they change drive letters , but that is expected behaviour.) When this bug occurs, all my internal drive letters (logical drives) remain the same, as you can see on the picture, meaning that physical drives do not change really - they only appear changed. This should not be possible.

Well, it all comes down to how Windows manages physical and logical drives internally. And drive re-scanning and potentially re-ordering as well can occur by a number of reasons, not just when you connect an external drive.  It's very difficult to diagnose this issue, unless you are able to find out what triggers it to go wrong.  Maybe when you connect an USB device, like a printer or headphones?  Maybe occasionally you connect/disconnect a different kind of external drive, like a flash drive that you don't expect to be monitored?

[ANUBIS]

1 hour ago, Fiery said:

Well, it all comes down to how Windows manages physical and logical drives internally. And drive re-scanning and potentially re-ordering as well can occur by a number of reasons, not just when you connect an external drive.  It's very difficult to diagnose this issue, unless you are able to find out what triggers it to go wrong.  Maybe when you connect an USB device, like a printer or headphones?  Maybe occasionally you connect/disconnect a different kind of external drive, like a flash drive that you don't expect to be monitored?

I do not know what triggers this bug, i only know how to correct it. (with restart)

One thing is certain - it only occurs (sometimes) when computer starts. Never when I am logged into Windows. If i log in and drives are correct - they stay correct, no matter what i connect or disconnect into USB. My monitoring arrangement in Aida64 is built so that two extra drives are also monitored, in case i connect any eternal disks. These external drives have no fixed drive letters, just activity bars (with used space), that appear if any drive is connected. These bars can have different letters and they appear in the order i connect external drives. (this is expected behaviour and not related to this bug that occurs with internal disks.) The bug occurs even when i have not connected/disconnected anything into USB for a long time. (sometimes weeks) So i guess it is not USB related, but almost certainly SATA related. And one more thing in common - every system i have had, has been built on Asus motherboard. (for example: Asus Sabertooth Z77, TUF Z270 MARK 1)

I have tried to identify and repair this issue a long time... and i have just one certain solution to ensure that this bug will not happen - use only one disk.   But since it occurs only sometimes, i can live with it. I would call it a minor annoyance.

You have said on some topic (over a year ago) that Asus motherboards may have some kind of issues, because Asus is not sharing necessary information about their boards. Can it be the reason ?

 

 

[Waxinator]

AIDA64 monitoring presents a mix of Logical and Physical data from activities and sensors. If there where an option to choose between sources, then one could just select to monitor the logical drives (just like Windows present them). If a physical drive ends up in several logical drives, the temperature would just be the same for a couple of logical drives...

 

[ANUBIS]

2 hours ago, Waxinator said:

AIDA64 monitoring presents a mix of Logical and Physical data from activities and sensors. If there where an option to choose between sources, then one could just select to monitor the logical drives (just like Windows present them). If a physical drive ends up in several logical drives, the temperature would just be the same for a couple of logical drives...

 

Yeah, but all my physical drives contain one logical drive.

[Fiery]

On ‎2017‎. ‎09‎. ‎06‎. at 8:16 PM, ANUBIS said:

You have said on some topic (over a year ago) that Asus motherboards may have some kind of issues, because Asus is not sharing necessary information about their boards. Can it be the reason ?

No, it's more like some deep secret or issue in the "bowels" of Windows.  It's definitely software related, but quite frankly, I have no idea what could cause it

[ANUBIS]

7 hours ago, Fiery said:

No, it's more like some deep secret or issue in the "bowels" of Windows.  It's definitely software related, but quite frankly, I have no idea what could cause it

Hmm,  is there any more information I could provide, that would help to identify the reason of the bug ?

[Fiery]

On ‎2017‎. ‎09‎. ‎08‎. at 7:10 PM, ANUBIS said:

Hmm,  is there any more information I could provide, that would help to identify the reason of the bug ?

I'm afraid I've run out of ideas on what to check  

[ANUBIS]

On ‎10‎.‎09‎.‎2017 at 6:58 PM, Fiery said:

I'm afraid I've run out of ideas on what to check  

I know a "solution", but i guess you would not implement this: if Aida would scan only logical drives instead of physical, then this kind of bug could not be possible.

(maybe give a choice - scan physical or logical drives activity, read/write and temperature = two sections: one has physical drives, other has logical drives - and same info could be read from both of these.)

 

 

 

[Fiery]

On ‎2017‎. ‎09‎. ‎14‎. at 4:51 PM, ANUBIS said:

I know a "solution", but i guess you would not implement this: if Aida would scan only logical drives instead of physical, then this kind of bug could not be possible.

(maybe give a choice - scan physical or logical drives activity, read/write and temperature = two sections: one has physical drives, other has logical drives - and same info could be read from both of these.)

The problem with that is the same old issue about Windows: some system parameters/status can be detected for only logical drives, like free drive space.  While some other parameters can only be detected for physical drives, like disk activity, disk temperature, SMART attributes, etc.

[ANUBIS]

On ‎18‎.‎09‎.‎2017 at 12:30 PM, Fiery said:

The problem with that is the same old issue about Windows: some system parameters/status can be detected for only logical drives, like free drive space.  While some other parameters can only be detected for physical drives, like disk activity, disk temperature, SMART attributes, etc.

Ok, thanks.