Physical Disk Activity Page
The Disks | Physical Disk Activity page shows information about the logical disks on this system. It includes I/O information, as well as disk space usage.
To open the Logical Disk Activity page
- Select the Spotlight on Windows connection in the Spotlight Browser.
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Click Disks | Physical Disk Activity.
To view charts on the Physical Disk Activity page
Right-click the Physical Disk Activity page and select View as Chart.
Notes:
- Each disk is represented by a single line on the chart, and by an item in the legend at the right of the chart.
- Click an item in the legend to highlight its series (line) in the chart. Click a second time to return the series to its normal appearance.
- Move the mouse pointer over an item in the legend to view the current value for that series within the chart.
| Chart | Description |
|---|---|
| Disk Reads |
Shows a recent summary of the rate at which read requests have been sent to each physical disk. |
| Disk Writes |
Shows a recent summary of the rate at which write requests have been sent to each physical disk. |
| Disk I/O |
Shows a recent summary of the rate at which read and write requests have been sent to each physical disk. |
| Disk Queue |
The Disk Queue chart shows the number of I/O requests that were queued for each physical disk. Disk queue length indicates how heavily loaded a disk subsystem is. High queue lengths mean the disks are struggling to process the I/O load being put on them. |
| Transfer Time |
The Transfer Time chart shows how long it is taking for data to be transferred between disk and memory, and includes both Disk Reads and Disk Writes. If disk transfers are taking consistently longer than 50 ms, a disk bottleneck may be developing. |
| Disk Load |
Shows how busy overall the individual physical disks are. |
To view the Physical Disk Activity page as a table
Right-click the Physical Disk Activity page and select View as Grid.
In table (grid) mode, the page displays the information contained in the charts, plus additional information in the following columns:
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
| KBs Read per sec | The rate (in kilobytes/s) at which data is read from the specified physical disk. |
| KBs Written per sec | The rate (in kilobytes/s) at which data is written to the specified physical disk. |