Thursday last week I e-mailed the Swedish mobile carrier "3" to help me out with an issue.
Problem: It seems that the 3Connect software (wilog.exe) to my newly bought HUAWEI E220 USB mobile broadband modem is writing very often to a log file. Once every second, to be exact!
In my opinion such excessive writing to disk can only be argumented for in a very technical support situation, not during normal use. I mean, that's 3600 writes every hour :(
Not only does this excessive writing result in a performance hit on the computer (usually disk I/O is considered a "heavy" operation), but I also worry that it might shorten the life span of my hard disk. Yeah, really! I'm online the most of the day and / or evening (5 hours = 18.000 writes!), so, in order for mobile broadband to compete with WiFi access, I shouldn't, at least, have things like my hard disk life span to worry about. Irony: Swedens best and fastest mobile broadband slows my computer down and is slowly killing my hard disk... hmmm!
I wrote the e-mail to "3" and attached this document(23,34 KB) which explains the whole deal and also suggests what could be done about it in a way that benefits both end-users and "3".
Contrary the fine customer service I received when I bought the modem (it was actually a good experience, no irony here), I haven't gotten any response from the "Kundombudsman", which actully surprises me a little. Not even a confirmation that they recieved my mail or anything - so the issue is really just hanging out there... By the way, I chose to contact her instead of calling ordinary customer service due to the technical character of the issue - I wouldn't know how to explain it in 2-3 minutes ;)
To sum things up, the software and the hardware works like a charm. But please, "3", update the software so that I can turn the damn logging of and save my hard disk! I know you can do it easily, because your software includes an update component!
This issue has caused me to go from supporting and recommending this mobile broadband solution from "3" to not recommending it - at least not until the issue has been resolved in a satisfactory way. Of course, before I noticed the extra hard disk activity, I did recommend this to my father, and he did buy one too - so please, "3", release the software update in Denmark too! ;)
I double checked this on my work laptop (thank you for participating, work!), and the issue is reproduced there too. If you notice similar behaviour on your computer, please let me know by writing a comment below. You can verify this behaviour by looking at the log file, which is located in:
C:\Documents and Settings\[user name]\Application Data\Birdstep Technology\EasyConnect\Logfile.txt
Update: The story continues, as I try to circumvent the logging by using different client software...
Update no. 2: In retrospect, my series of blog entries about this subject continue until some solutions are finally found. You can choose to skip the series and go directly to an overview of the 3Connect logging issue.
Clarification: The 3Connect log file does not grow larger than 3-4 MB. After hitting some upper size limit, the log file is emptied. The problem described in this posting is therefore not about the size of the file, but about the agressive logging frequency and amount written pr. second.
Video of excessive hard disk activity...
(the program used to track file access is Process Monitor)
(For all articles related to 3Connect click here.)
