New
#1
disk running for no reason
I've used this PC constantly several years. This problem only started about 5 weeks ago, and happens many times a day now. If you have any ideas on fixing it, let me know.
Problem: I hear a "thunk" every 1 to 2 seconds, forever. It sounds like the hard drive going from one ring to another far-away one. It's not normal disk activity, which is a bunch of little sounds. This is dead quiet except for the repeating "thunk". Too irritating to ignore, so I turn off the PC (many times a day).
More details:
It happens when I'm not doing anything using the drive - times when it would be quiet, until last month.
Running Win7 home premium 64bit.
The drive is only 1% fragmented, gets auto-defragged every week.
I stop it by putting the PC into Sleep - but only if I wait 20 seconds before waking it. If I restart within 5 seconds, it keeps going. Also, Sleep seems to take a lot longer than in the past (maybe subjective).
Once quiet, it seems to only start again if I have some website open. Not every site, but many of them. I thought it might be a new update of Firefox, so went back to 30.0 - no help.
Once it is going, closing all browsers (and every other program) doesn't stop it happening. Only turning off the PC.
Disabling net access (I pull out the wifi, which is a USB thing) doesn't stop it once it's going.
I've turned off DropBox and anything else I could identify that runs in the background. But of course there are dozens of Services.
I worry that something on the net is using my PC for something.