Using PerformanceCounters to target specific drives

Question

Guys, I have the following code:

using System.Diagnostics;

private PerformanceCounter diskRead = new PerformanceCounter();
private PerformanceCounter diskWrite = new PerformanceCounter();

diskRead.CategoryName = "PhysicalDisk";
diskRead.CounterName = "Disk Reads/sec";
diskRead.InstanceName = "_Total";

diskWrite.CategoryName = "PhysicalDisk";
diskWrite.CounterName = "Disk Writes/sec";
diskWrite.InstanceName = "_Total";

This code keeps track of Disk Reads per second and Disk Writes per second and it works fine. My question is, how do I keep track of reads and writes of one specific drive? I have 3 hard drives in my computer and right now its returning a total of all 3 drives combined. How can I specifically chose which drive I want to monitor?

Answer 1

You should replace "_Total" with the appropriate drive number:

  diskRead.InstanceName = "0";

Should've checked that. You need to specify the name like "0 C: D:". Yikes.

Edit 2:

You can get the names with

    var cat = new System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounterCategory("PhysicalDisk");
    var instNames = cat.GetInstanceNames();

And it is probaly safe to filter out the names that start with a number. (_Total is also in the list).

Answer 2

Use a specific InstanceName, not _Total. Use Perfmon.exe to find the instance names.