Lies, damn lies, and statistics - Benjamin Disraeli

There are literally thousands of counters available in Windows. Counters are specified based on four criteria.

• Computer - Specify that the data will come from the local computer or a remote computer
• Object - An object such as a processor or disk drive can be monitored.
  • Every computer will have a number of core objects such as memory and processes.
  • Extended objects represent additional software such as the Internet Information Server.
• Counter - For each object, there are many counters. For example, the memory object has counters; pages/sec, cache bytes, available bytes, etc.  Use the Explain button to get a description of each counter.
• Instance - Some objects have multiple instances.
  • Individual processors can be monitored in multi-processor systems
  • If you have multiple volumes such as the C: drive and the D: drive, each can be selected as a separate instance.
  • Each network interface can be monitored.
  •  Individual processes and threads can be monitored.

By default, Logical Disk counters are disabled.  They can be enabled with the DISKPERF command.