disk constantly working, activity spikes

saphia · 01 Feb 2014

Some time ago I've noticed that the hard drive on my laptop is constantly doing something in short bursts even when I'm not doing anything at my computer. The resource monitor showed a series of short duration spikes with the disk going from no to 80-100% activity every few seconds. When I'm running multiple programs these spikes are causing a bit of lag, nothing major but enough for me to notice.

Picture (this is while idling):

Defrag was performed.
I've ran the anti-virus - nothing found.
Ran chkdsk - no problems detected.
Ran memory diagnostic too - no problems with the memory.
The system isn't new.

so I am not sure what is causing this?

and could these constant bursts of activity cause disk failure eventually?

saphia · 06 Mar 2014

bump! still haven't found a solution to this

ignatzatsonic · 06 Mar 2014

Have you tried to correlate the spikes with the various processes running on the PC at that same exact moment?

If nothing else, there ought to be something in Event Viewer that correlates to the spikes.

Have you run anti-malware as well as anti-virus?

Do these spikes occur even with a bare minimum of startup programs running? I'd at least turn off all the startup stuff and see if the spikes continue.

windude99 · 06 Mar 2014

To do what ignatzatsonic suggested about startup items, go to start, type in msconfig, and press enter. Enter in your administrator password (if applicable) and then click yes. Then, go to the startup tab and uncheck everything except your antivirus, java auto updater (if applicable), and Adobe Reader and Acrobat Manager. Once you have done that, click on Apply and then click on OK. It will prompt you to reboot your computer. Save all open documents etc. and click on Restart.