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Decent Workaround for 100% Disk Usage Issue on WIN10 (no more crashes).

ChunkyToads
Honored Guest
Hey guys for anyone else having the issue with 100% Disk Usage (on WIN10) when running the Oculus home software.... I was able to find a decent workaround, at least until Oculus fixes the problem.  

  1. With only 8GB of DDR3 Ram, I was able to use Asrock's FASTram program to create a RAMDISK (and set at 3GB).  *You can also use any other available program for creating a typical RAMdisk.
  2. I then proceeded to download aomei's free 'vrBackupper' program (http://www.aomeitech.com/oculus-backup.html) to transfer the Oculus files off my main HDD to the RAMDISK 
  3. Now you will need to format the RAMDISK to an NTFS format, before attempting to move anything, or vrBackupper won't do it! Also you may want to open Oculus Home and click 'finish install" for any games that need it, only took a few minutes.  This keeps things from stalling out during the file move. 
  4. Close Oculus Home after you are finished repairing any games if necessary. 
  5. Then use vrBackupper to move the files easily over to the RAMDISK.

EVERYTHING launches smoothly now, no freezes or crashes, and disk usage stays under 50% the entire time now, no matter what game I run.  I know this workaround requires some free ram, but honestly let's face it 8GB is bare minimum for running WIN10 these days, so it's something that should work for almost anyone. I also use iobit's Advanced System Care for easily keeping ram usage down, IF that ever becomes an issue... but it's usually not.  NEways, I HOPE THIS HELPS 🙂 Good luck with the CPU issue, I didn't run into that. 

IMPORTANT NOTE: Since by their nature RAMdisks wipe and reset everytime you power down your PC, I found it best to simply drag and drop the complete 'Oculus' Folder from your RAMDisk (once everything has been setup correctly as listed above) and onto whatever USB flashdrive you've got hanging around... That way if/when it wipes out at some point, you can drag and drop the files from the USB back onto the NFTS formated RAMdisk, and will all run as before (only takes a few seconds).  A slight pain in the butt for now, but hey it works, without crashing your game or PC every few minutes 🙂
6 REPLIES 6

dougchism
Expert Protege
Why dont you just buy more RAM? 


ChunkyToads
Honored Guest
@dougchism That was my first thought as well, but the main culprit isn't really a lack of RAM.  Seems like it's some sort of bug that makes the HDD shoot to 100% usage in less than a minute, once Oculus Home & server are launched, but RAM usage is low at the time the problem is occuruing. 

The RAMdisk solution, is sort of a gerry rigged version of a SSD, where operations are more instantaneous... so it seems to soothe the problem.  I only mention the 8GB ram, because creating a RAMdisk takes away some of your formerly freed up RAM one might want to have available for other stuff.  But I have been able to get basically smooth non-freezing game play after going this route, minus the hassle of having to redo the last step everytime I shut down my PC... and launching Oculus Runtime from the folder instead of the desktop app.  I'm sure they'll work the underlying issue out eventually.

flexy123
Superstar
I have never heard of this and certainly would know about excessive HD usage..since Oculus Home is basically ALWAYS running. I am 0% (!) disk usage when I start OH. Makes sense because there is no reason whatsoever why just starting the Rift would need to access the HD/SSD.

I suspect something else going on w/ your PC/Windows, not related to Oculus

Rather than pondering over a workaround for a bizarre problem (100% HD usage for me means the same as the PC basically becoming useless/stuck, would be 100% in-acceptable for me) is not the solution here, ESPECIALLY if it requires to take another 3GB of memory away from what is already not excessively lots of ram. You really should look into WHAT causes the problem first. With tools like processmonitor or other means. Could also be a AV/security software or whatever. What OS you running?

*** even seeing 40% or 50% disk usage for me would be worrisome, in ANY scenario unless a game/app is just loading. But there should never be 40-50% disk usage just from running Oculus etc...doesn't make any sense. Also..8GB *in general* should be ok. It's not a lot, but it's "ok". So I don't suspect a lack of ram there and some massive pagefile access, UNLESS some weird thing is running in your PC taking up memory or causing the HD access. Malware is thinkable too. Whatever it is, it is NOT normal at all.

ChunkyToads
Honored Guest
@flexy123 It is strange, but malware is unlikely as I'm running a fresh install of Win10 (64bit) and ran a 'clean all' on the HDD prior to install, which should clear anything even outside the OS.  The issue definitely sparks up when OVRserver_64 launches, at least according to what I can view from the resource monitor and info in task manager.  It's possible there is some conflict with Bitdefender 2017, I have thought about a complete uninstall... and so far only attempted exceptions/shutting off various aspects of the service, to no avail.  It does seem to be a rare issue but there is mention of it from another user (link see Baccus), as well as some mention in just general google search.  I'll give the processmonitor a look, thanks for the advice.  

Constellation
Expert Protege
I'm seeing my C: drive pegged at 100% active time quite often. From the Resource Monitor I can see that OVRLibraryService.exe is doing a bunch of work and all the Disk Activity is with files that are within the Oculus directory. This is without the client running, just the services running in the background. I have Automatic App Updates turned off in the client settings so I'm not sure why it's doing all this work.

Are others still having this issue?

LZoltowski
Champion


I'm seeing my C: drive pegged at 100% active time quite often. From the Resource Monitor I can see that OVRLibraryService.exe is doing a bunch of work and all the Disk Activity is with files that are within the Oculus directory. This is without the client running, just the services running in the background. I have Automatic App Updates turned off in the client settings so I'm not sure why it's doing all this work.

Are others still having this issue?

Even though auto updates might be disabled, this does not apply to the core updates, those happen in the background, regardless of the auto-update setting.
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