I've got a fresh Windows 7 install with NIS 2010 and I am monitoring which programs cause a large number of writes to disk using Process Monitor to ensure nothing is causing excessive writes to the SSD drive (which is C:\).
Currently NIS 2010 is sitting at the top of the list for making writes to the C drive. I've disabled the 'Idle Time Optimizer' and 'Pulse Updates' but it still writes way more to disk than anything else when the PC is just idle.
Are there any other settings I should change or will I have to resort to using junctions to relocate the Norton logs and certain data files elsewhere?
I've got a fresh Windows 7 install with NIS 2010 and I am monitoring which programs cause a large number of writes to disk using Process Monitor to ensure nothing is causing excessive writes to the SSD drive (which is C:\).
Currently NIS 2010 is sitting at the top of the list for making writes to the C drive. I've disabled the 'Idle Time Optimizer' and 'Pulse Updates' but it still writes way more to disk than anything else when the PC is just idle.
Are there any other settings I should change or will I have to resort to using junctions to relocate the Norton logs and certain data files elsewhere?
Thanks for you reply. I don't think there's anything wrong with my install as a test install in a virtual machine behaves the same.
Although Windows 7 knows how to optimize certain activities for SSD use, as NIS keeps writing to it's data files there is little that Windows 7 can do to help.
I would like to leave the Pulse updates on, but they do generate a log of extra writes (over a wide range of areas within various files) hence why I've disabled them. Ideally I would like to be able to configure the interval.
The added wear for all the NIS file writes isn't going to kill and SSD anytime soon, but the fact that it's writing way more than anything else on an idle PC makes it stand out as possibly needing some thought in the software design to reduce file I/O not just for SSD use, but general performance optimization (I have to do this in the applications I write)
Note: Trim is not relevant here as that is just the optimization of blocks no longer required (deleted files) so that time is not lost when free space is needed for writing new data. SSDs have a certain life for (commonly 10,000 re-writes for non enterprise drives) so continually writing to disk shortens the life even with the wear levelling feature built into the drives' controllers.
The interval of Pulse Updates is fixed. It cannot be changed when on. Expect an update every 5-15 minutes.
As for thought in the Software Design of NIS, you could twist this to say that more thought needs to be put into the overall design of SSD devices. As much as I like SSD's, they are still in their formative stages, (IMO) and have a ways to go in the areas of MTBF, Access Time (I/O) and Capacity. I'm sure that in time, like anything else, these issues will be surmounted.
The fact that SSD drives have a more limited life than traditional mechanical drives doesn't change the fact that NIS 2010 has written 5 times more data to my C drive than all the other applications and system processes put together in the last 4 hours since I booted the PC. And that is after disabling performance monitoring, pulse updates and idle time optimisation.
If this cannot be easily improved then at least there should be an easy way of relocating the data/log files to other drives. Overall I like NIS, much more so than several other products I've used in the last few years, but this is one area that needs a bit of thought.
Incidentenally, SSDs don't need much improvement in the access time department
The process making the writes is the usual ccSvcHost.exe which is hosting many of the Symantec dlls.
I decided to relocate the entire Norton application data (ie. C:\ProgramData\Norton on Vista/Win7) to a mechanical drive. I've done this at the top level of the Norton data folder rather than on applicable sub folders as that would require numerous junctions as the frquently written files are in several different sub-folders. Once relocated in safe mode (with access rights carefully maintained at the new location) it's seems to be working fine and I've now re-enabled pulse updates.
Not an ideal thing to have to do, but given how much was being written and how regularly (so the Windows write cache cannot help greatly) then I think it was a good plan.
> I find it quite weird that the default installation of NIS on the SSD would function in the manner previously described
Well I can assure you it does. I develop software for a living and used all the applicable development and debugging tools to analyse the behaviour. I see the same behaviour on all my other PCs (I have quite a few licences for NIS 2009/2010) and in a test virtual machine. For example the PC I'm using now (not the one with the SSD) has 1GB of writes by NIS in the last 3 hours.
NIS isn't not doing anything that odd, it just logs a lot of events (performance, scanning, file hashes/details, update history etc) and for the complete product which covers a lot of functionality this all adds up to a lot more writing than I would like on an SSD when the PC is otherwise idle.
"I see the same behaviour on all my other PCs (I have quite a few licences for NIS 2009/2010) and in a test virtual machine. For example the PC I'm using now (not the one with the SSD) has 1GB of writes by NIS in the last 3 hours."
1 GB? Even with LiveUpdate active, that appears to be excessive, IMHO.
I would need to run some tests on my own systems with Process Monitor to see if the results are the same.
One question - are you running any other real-time security software in conjunction with NIS?
> One question - are you running any other real-time security software in conjunction with NIS?
No - all PCs in question have only ever had NIS installed. Some of my older PCs may have had more than one version of NIS, but I see similar behaviour on all anyway (I've just never investigated it before)
kmp, there is an other thread about continous disk reads. The problem seems to be resolved by disabling tamper protection, could you, for testing purposes only, disable tamper protection and see if that is the culprit for the high number of disk writes?
Reese, a quick test doesn't appear to make any difference to the writes (more info below), but on one of the two machines I have running at the moment I certainly have the read issue mentioned in the other thread:
From task manager for a PC running for 6 hours (mostly idle, no scheduled full scans etc): ccSvcHost.exe: Read Bytes: 70,412,782,090 Write Bytes 570,735,931
The read value goes up about 8KB per second but slows down to a much lower rate when I disable tamper protection. I've not checked what type of I/O reads they are yet so they could be something cached or non file related, although the other thread indicated continual drive noise so that doesn't seem to be the case. Note: This PC is running NIS 2009, whereas the other one I am using at the moment is using NIS 2010.
File Writes:
On both machines I have running at the moment the writes are not as bad as the read issue above, but heavier than expected and especially so for SSD drives (lots or random access writes), i.e: in one hour NIS 2010 has written five times more data than all the other processes put together on an idle PC.
I've just run Process Monitor for a few minutes and the summary figures are in the attached cvs file (renamed as .log for upload). NIS uses a lot of data files and I really think you really need to consider some optimisations and more options for users to tune their installs accordingly.
I have the same concern. SSDs by nature have this wear-out problem. However, software can help remediate it. Windows 7 is smart enough to not defrag SSDs automatically. However, NIS optimizer seems to do that regardless. If optimizer is in action, I can see defrag writing to files on my SSD drive. I consider that as a bug. Don't you agree? Even after I turn off Idle Time Optimizer, I still find optimizer listed as Yes to Ran During Idle in Norton Tasks. Can that be another bug?
I'm also interested in knowing how to safely move Norton ProgramData to a regular HDD as I am thinking of doing it too. Would it be sufficient to manually move the Norton directory and change all corresponding registry entries (how many of them in total?)? I would appreciate it if NIS offers finer-grained configuration for things like this.
Relocating Norton ProgramData needs to be done in Windows Safe Mode as the files are always open normally and it's difficult to shutdown all of the applicable processes. Rather than change registry entries I used an NTFS junction for the relocation
Therefore what I did was basically:
Whilst in Windows after a standard boot, I created a folder for the Norton ProgramData folder on a mechanical and copied the security settings of the original folder.
Rebooted into Safe Mode with command line only.
Used XCopy to copy the Norton program data to the new location with the existing access rights.
Removed the source folder.
Created a junction using the Window mklink command (i.e. used "/J" option) from the existing location to the new one.
Rebooted normally.
I haven't looked at the defragmention issue other than stopping the idle time optimizer, but I will do in due course!
Thank you, kmp. It's very insightful. I'll try it.
I turned the idle time optimizer setting on and off, to make sure it's off and then left my computer on over night. Again, the optimizer ran at night. Can someone explain why, please?
I do have defrag scheduled for regular HDDs, monthly, on the first, so it can’t be the root cause of the 6 min 13 sec run on Jan. 3. Can you help make sure switching idle time optimizer does disable defrag once and for all? Thank you.
