HD activity - partitions, usb drives

[harmand]

I've been using Rainmeter for a few days now and I'm trying to customize the default skin.
Basically, I'm just trying to find a system monitor tool which proves lighter, smaller (on screen) and a little more customizable than the usual Task Manager and I guess RM, so highly flexible, could be the one.

The first obstacle I have encountered seems to be related to the disk activity meters, because I have two physical disks (an SSD for the OS + a 1TB HDD) but many logical drives, as the HDD is partitioned.
Task Manager, in its Performance tab, shows just two activity graphs: one for Disk0 (C:) and one for Disk1 (G: H: L: M:).
How can such a result be achieved in Rainmeter?

Moreover, I wonder if RM could behave like TM when I connect/disconnect external usb units (a new counter appears as soon as the usb disk is detected and disappears as soon as the disk is removed).
Can that (or something similar) be done somehow?

Thanks for any help or advice.

[balala]

The first obstacle I have encountered seems to be related to the disk activity meters, because I have two physical disks (an SSD for the OS + a 1TB HDD) but many logical drives, as the HDD is partitioned.
Task Manager, in its Performance tab, shows just two activity graphs: one for Disk0 (C:) and one for Disk1 (G: H: L: M:).
How can such a result be achieved in Rainmeter?

The best practice is to have one indicator for each different partition. As each of these partitions has a distinct drive letter, Rainmeter will deal with each partition one by one. If needed further sections can be added to the skin, to show up more then just two disks.

Moreover, I wonder if RM could behave like TM when I connect/disconnect external usb units (a new counter appears as soon as the usb disk is detected and disappears as soon as the disk is removed).
Can that (or something similar) be done somehow?

Yes, definitely possible. You just have to check the total size of the drives. If this size is 0, this means the drive is disconnected and in a such case the related meters should have to be hidden, otherwise the drive is connected, and the meters have to be shown. Not too hard, was done before.

The most important question now is what skin are you working with? "Default" skin means illustro?

[jsmorley]

If you want to monitor read-write activity on a single drive that has many partitions, you might consider using UsageMonitor and the PhysicalDisk counter in perfmon, rather than using the LogicalDisk counter.

[jsmorley]

Code: Select all

[Rainmeter]
Update=1000
AccurateText=1
DynamicWindowSize=1

[MeasureDisk1Read]
Measure=Plugin
Plugin=UsageMonitor
Category=PhysicalDisk
Counter=Disk Read Bytes/sec
Name=0 C:

[MeasureDisk1Write]
Measure=Plugin
Plugin=UsageMonitor
Category=PhysicalDisk
Counter=Disk Write Bytes/sec
Name=0 C:

[MeterRead]
Meter=String
FontSize=11
FontWeight=400
FontColor=255,255,255,255
SolidColor=47,47,47,255
Padding=5,5,5,5
AntiAlias=1
DynamicVariables=1
Text=Read: [MeasureDisk1Read:]

[MeterWrite]
Meter=String
Y=R
FontSize=11
FontWeight=400
FontColor=255,255,255,255
SolidColor=47,47,47,255
Padding=5,5,5,5
AntiAlias=1
DynamicVariables=1
Text=Write: [MeasureDisk1Write:]

https://docs.rainmeter.net/manual/plugins/usagemonitor/


I don't have a physical disk with different partitions as I haven't seen any sense in that for many years, since the slack space caused by cluster sizes became a non-issue with modern hardware, a modern file allocation scheme, and boatloads of space. So I'm not sure what the naming convention is in perfmon for a drive "0" that has partitions for "C", "D", "E" etc. My guess would be that you would have instances of "0 C:" and "0 D:" that would both reflect any reads/writes on the physical disk "0", and so you can just use any one of them. You can simply open perfmon.exe to see what is what on your system.

[harmand]

The best practice is to have one indicator for each different partition. As each of these partitions has a distinct drive letter, Rainmeter will deal with each partition one by one. If needed further sections can be added to the skin, to show up more then just two disks.

I have already managed to add sections and show up 4 disks, each with its own "used" and "total" and "activity" meters, but I'd like to have just one activity meter for the whole disk, as it is actually just one disk. Even that single meter would be enough to me, as I really don't need much keeping an eye on the disks free space. I know I could easily get the 4 activity meters, but before doing that I'd like to know IF a single meter for the whole disk is actually possible (and not too difficult to achieve) or not.

The most important question now is what skin are you working with? "Default" skin means illustro?

Yes, the one I found when I first launched the program (after "installing" it in portable mode).

[harmand]

I don't have a physical disk with different partitions as I haven't seen any sense in that for many years, since the slack space caused by cluster sizes became a non-issue with modern hardware, a modern file allocation scheme, and boatloads of space.

I know disk partitioning is an "ancient" way of using disk space and I also know it does not bring any substantial advantages by now, but I still find it useful and convenient as a way of arranging big amounts of data, programs, virtual machines and so on, instead of doing everything just with folders and subfolders in a single filesystem.
Maybe I'm just... too old? :]

[balala]

but I'd like to have just one activity meter for the whole disk, as it is actually just one disk. Even that single meter would be enough to me, as I really don't need much keeping an eye on the disks free space. I know I could easily get the 4 activity meters, but before doing that I'd like to know IF a single meter for the whole disk is actually possible (and not too difficult to achieve) or not.

Have you read jsmorley's reply above? He has posted a solution to this question, so it's definitely possible.