I installed Chia in my Windows drive C: but given the lack space there i mklink /J the ./chia folder to another HDD drive D:. Now when plotting I use a temp drive (SSD) G:\ and destination external HDD drive F:. Looking at task manager i can see my D: drive has oscillating active time from 100% to 20% and so on whereas the temp drive G: has minimal utilisation 3%? does this mean we should have the plot temp folder in the same drive where Chia is installed? I don’t get why D:\ has lot of active time?
You should be getting a lot of I/O on the temp drive (and none on the destination until the plot is copied), although one plotting process isn’t constantly using the disk to its fullest (which is one reason why you should always plot in parallel).
Your D: utilization definitely doesn’t come from the plotting process, that doesn’t involve your .chia at all.
If you’re running a full node (and if you’re using the GUI, you are), that’s going to write to its database fairly often, especially during the initial sync of the whole blockchain. Maybe that’s what you’re seeing. (I get very little utilization from my node - but it’s all synced up and on a fast SSD, so I don’t have your situation here.)
Many thanks for the reply. actually i’m still syncing so that should explain the D: utilization.
I’m still not able to have a sucessful plot. First time tried parallel and few hours in got BSOD. Second attempt with single plot I got an exception ( Matches do not match with number of writes entire) and plot stolled at 16%. This is my third attempt, single plot, still in progess at 19%… let’s see.