NTFS background scheduled activity

fruh · Apr 24, 2022

Hi, is it possible to configure in some way NTFS activity like system volume information gathering, available space scanning, scanning for drives and anything NTFS does randomly in background, or anything NTFS related? I have tried looking on the web but found nothing. I'd assume those activities follow some schedule but of course I can't find anything in Task Scheduler either.

Thanks to anyone who will try to help :)

Berton · Apr 24, 2022

NTFS isn't actually a program but the formatting of the drive that the OS and programs get installed on. Other types of PC formatting of drives are FAT32 and exFAT, there's more available such as used on Mac OS X and the newer macOS and Linux. Once a drive is partitioned then formatted it doesn't get changed to another type format without completely wiping the partition clean first.

fruh · Apr 25, 2022

Berton said:
NTFS isn't actually a program but the formatting of the drive that the OS and programs get installed on. Other types of PC formatting of drives are FAT32 and exFAT, there's more available such as used on Mac OS X and the newer macOS and Linux. Once a drive is partitioned then formatted it doesn't get changed to another type format without completely wiping the partition clean first.

Thanks for the explanation though I know what a file system is, you completely missed the point.

I'm trying to find out if there is something to do about windows storage management stuff scheduled activity or whatever, which is related to NTFS since windows uses NTFS and is shown as System-NTFS activity in resource monitor.

davewin11 · Apr 25, 2022

fruh said:
Thanks for the explanation though I know what a file system is, you completely missed the point.

I'm trying to find out if there is something to do about windows storage management stuff scheduled activity or whatever, which is related to NTFS since windows uses NTFS and is shown as System-NTFS activity in resource monitor.

Is this on Disk tab? I have nothing referring to NTFS anywhere on Resource Monitor
Dave

fruh · Apr 25, 2022

davewin11 said:
Is this on Disk tab? I have nothing referring to NTFS anywhere on Resource Monitor
Dave

Yes, occurs from time to time on disk tab.
I think you can easily find "System Volume Information" followed from "NTFS file master table" etc, though it runs periodically.

I do thing that things like NTFS logfile writes are just a consequence of other stuff happening on a particular disk, though some activity is just windows doing stuff on its volumes

glasskuter · Apr 25, 2022

fruh said:
is it possible to configure in some way NTFS activity

We can not control every aspect of the way windows works. The OS does random tasks in the background all the time that are not on a schedule. As long as these tasks are not throwing out errors, don't worry about them.

johnlgalt · Apr 25, 2022

Can you grab a screenshot of it doing so on your system?

I've never seen an NTFS item in task manager, ever. I have seen NFSclnt.exe which is a completely different animal.

fruh · Apr 25, 2022

glasskuter said:
We can not control every aspect of the way windows works. The OS does random tasks in the background all the time that are not on a schedule. As long as these tasks are not throwing out errors, don't worry about them.

I have asked if anyone knows something about this so thank you for that, I haven't asked about doing or not doing something though.

johnlgalt said:
Can you grab a screenshot of it doing so on your system?

I've never seen an NTFS item in task manager, ever. I have seen NFSclnt.exe which is a completely different animal.

Unfortunately I have only photos taken with my phone (so that I could be faster and not to interfere with disk activity), I hope the one I'll attach is readable enough. I think I've seen NTFS stuff only in Resource Monitor so far, not in Task Manager, as this type of activity appears under "System" (PID 4).
The volume I'm interested into is D: (which is a secondary data only disk)

cereberus · Apr 25, 2022

fruh said:
Hi, is it possible to configure in some way NTFS activity like system volume information gathering, available space scanning, scanning for drives and anything NTFS does randomly in background, or anything NTFS related? I have tried looking on the web but found nothing. I'd assume those activities follow some schedule but of course I can't find anything in Task Scheduler either.

Thanks to anyone who will try to help :)

I think you are asking the impossible. Windows does many low level tasks (run services.msc) in the background and you have no control over them other than starting, stopping, set to automatic, manual or disable.

Task Scheduler will not help as it is (in essence) a program that sits on top of Windows, to run high level tasks, but it does not manage low level tasks.

Why are you wanting to do this - what can you possibly hope to achieve?

fruh · Apr 25, 2022

cereberus said:
I think you are asking the impossible. Windows does many low level tasks (run services.msc) in the background and you have no control over them other than starting, stopping, set to automatic, manual or disable.

Task Scheduler will not help as it is (in essence) a program that sits on top of Windows, to run high level tasks, but it does not manage low level tasks.

Why are you wanting to do this - what can you possibly hope to achieve?

I see what you mean and I think it's likely to be that way too. I haven't really found anything useful in Services, and many Services listed as "running" in Task Manager do not even show up in Services (though might be because of my limited knowledge). Thank you for the explanation provided anyway.

I have a spinning drive in my PC which is used only for data, which to me means that it should be activated only when I need stuff stored on it. Apparently, Windows doesn't think so, hence I'd like at least to learn how this background, hidden, misterious stuff works. Having some control over it would be even better but it's already difficult to learn about it so here I am.

Maybe something in the Registry can be useful?

glasskuter · Apr 25, 2022

Maybe it's indexing Search indexing in Windows 10: FAQ

PerpetualCycle · Apr 26, 2022

Indexing most likely, which you can disable. Also, background virus scanning is a possibility.

fruh · Apr 26, 2022

Thanks to you both for your suggestions.

Indexing is disabled in any possible way, so it shouldn't be that.
I have excluded D: from Windows Defender scans and I have even disabled the Scheduled Scan task in Task Scheduler so I don't think it should be that either.

Isn't there any way to make Windows explicitly tell what activity is "System" doing? Seems like a very basic level of transparency to me

cereberus · Apr 26, 2022

fruh said:
Thanks to you both for your suggestions.

Indexing is disabled in any possible way, so it shouldn't be that.
I have excluded D: from Windows Defender scans and I have even disabled the Scheduled Scan task in Task Scheduler so I don't think it should be that either.

Isn't there any way to make Windows explicitly tell what activity is "System" doing? Seems like a very basic level of transparency to me

No matter how often you ask, the answer will never change i.e. no.

fruh · Apr 26, 2022

cereberus said:
No matter how often you ask, the answer will never change i.e. no.

I think that's the first time I ask that question, anyway thanks for your opinion I guess.

To me, trying to approach a problem in different ways can help understanding it. It's fine if it's not your jam though

johnlgalt · Apr 27, 2022

As mentioned by many people here - Windows does things in the background that you have to let it do. a lot of these processes are automated, and even if you are only using a drive for data 'storage' that drive still needs to be accessed.

However, a few more things you could check would be pagefile for individual drives, System restore for individual drives, and hibernation file location.

But, at the end of the day, no matter what, if a drive is active in Windows, there is going to be activity. Among other things, like your Reliability Monitor picture, Windows is also logging every single thing that is being done on the computer- that includes verifying the reliability of the drive itself through monitoring. You can't just look at a HDD / SSD to find out if all is well, you have to poll the drive's hardware for reports, with modern drives typically using the SMART reporting system to monitor drive health and statistics. But ther eis even more, including, but not limited to, file backups, volume shadow copies, and even defragmenting for non SSDs.

So, basically, if you want no activity on the drive, you'll have to 1) turn off Windows, 2) disconnect the drive.

NTFS background scheduled activity

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