Disk usage

[SolidSnake]

Hello developers!

I'm not 100% sure, but seems GWCtlSrv.exe extensively use disk (many write operations as well as read operations). I have SSD system drive, and i would like (at least) be able to change database location.

Otherwise, you can use process monitor utility to check what happen and maybe you find that some disk activity can be optimized.

[DyingJedi]

could you paste into we're we users would find this file and I'll make a solution using either Hardlink or Symlink command for everyone like us using SSD's.

Hi5 for catching this

Justin Cram
DyingJedi

[SolidSnake]

It's not single file and i'm not sure that files has same name on every PC.
It looks like:
C:\ProgramData\GlassWire\service\stats\glasswire_stats_1sec_1478908800.db-wal

There is a lot read and write operations with different files (not only database files), that's why i created thread. I'm sure developers should check that issue or clarify their point about disk activity.

Here is official utility from MS:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/processmonitor.aspx

[GlassWire]

GlassWire logs IP addresses and apps that use your network to create the graph on your hard drive so you can see the data. If you don't want to write any data to your hard drive go to the top left GlassWire menu and choose "incognito mode" so no data is logged.

We are looking at adding a secondary mode to GlassWire so users can choose to log only app data, but no host data.

If you use Bittorrent GlassWire will write significantly more data than normal because Bittorrent contacts thousands of hosts simultaneously. The solution is to switch to Incognito mode with GlassWire while using Bittorrent if you don't want to see detailed network data.

[SolidSnake]

Originally posted by GlassWire:

We are looking at adding a secondary mode to GlassWire so users can choose to log only app data, but no host data.

Why not just add log location field in settings?

[GlassWire]

Good question. You can move the log to another location with GlassWire.

To move your database please create a "glasswire.conf" file in notepad with these two lines only (the lines in quotes):
"# db_file_path=\glasswire.db
db_file_path=d:\glasswire\glasswire.db"

This file should be copied to the c:\programdata\glasswire\service folder
The database path is set to D:\glasswire\ folder in the file sample, but you can change the path to something else.

You should restart the GlassWire service when the file is copied.

[SolidSnake]

Ok, sounds good) Thx.

[SolidSnake]

Done, i copied few more files, looks like everything works.
glasswire.db
glasswire.db-shm
glasswire.db-wal
stats\

[GlassWire]

I'm glad it works! A user requested this awhile back in our website forum so we added this feature for everyone.

[Britannicus]

I installed GlassWire (free, so far - and non-Steam) onto my non-boot HDD (boot is SSD), but it still put its logs onto the boot drive along with pretty much every other application. Only a few have behaved themselves.

1. Presumably I should use the commands detailed above to move it?
2. How do most programs manage this issue, and allow their AppData to be moved to another drive/directory? I have managed to move Chrome's data to my HDD, but this only works with a specific shortcut, and the 'default browser' whenever I click a link opens a new instance using the AppData on C:\.

This is a problem that app developers appear to have ignored, as users move to using SSDs - that have limited write cycles - as their boot drive and store data on another more durable drive.

[GlassWire]

Britannicus,

Yes, please use the instructions above to move GlassWire to another drive.

I think most programs don't support moving their files/databases to different drives so I'm not sure how it could be done with Chrome for example.

Our whole team runs GlassWire on our SSD and we have done so since launch with no problems so far.

There is a difference between I/O read\write operations and actual read\write operations.

Any process can read\write to disk to store or load data.

Also any process can read\write data to the network connection when it wants to receive or send data to another host. And a process can read\write data to a device driver for driver interaction.

Writing and reading operations are called Input\Output (IO) operations. So ProcessExplorer's "IO read bytes" or "IO write bytes" stats are about the total amount of bytes transmitted as IO operations. In other words 8GB of "IO write bytes" means that the total amount of bytes written by GlassWire to a network connection or to disk or to a device driver is 8GB, but it does not mean that GlassWire has written 8GB to disk.

We tested this ourselves with ProcessExplorer and we estimated with heavy network usage GlassWire might write about 200MB to disk over a 7 day period while GlassWire is sending around 7.8GB of data from its user interface to its driver (not writing to the SSD).

If you want to see the real amount of data written to the SSD you should check the "Disk Write Bytes" column of ProcessExplorer.

With GlassWire 2.0 we plan to have a setting in the future to disable host monitoring if you don't want to write to your SSD at all.

And of course you can also move your GlassWire database to another HD as mentioned above.