disk running for no reason

dojibear · 24 Oct 2014

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.

Layback Bear · 24 Oct 2014

First off you should not be able to hear your hard drive work. The amount of noise a good hard drive makes will be covered up by other things like fans running in your system.

You could check things like auto update of anything on your computer and check scheduling to see if anything is scheduled to run.

To me defragging once a week is to often. Windows 7 doesn't fragment much. When I used hard drives I would check how much fragmentation their was and if it was 10 % or less I didn't run defrag. Defraging is hard work for a hard drive. If it's a big drive it could take forever.

You can also use msconfig/Startup and NoN Microsoft Services and see what is running in the background that doesn't need to be.
Very little needs to be running in the background in most cases.

Take a read through these tutorials by Brink.

Optimize Windows 7

Startup Programs - Change

The next thing that comes to mind is a infection like a botnet running on your system.

Could you install your complete system specs in the lower left corner of your post.

gregrocker · 24 Oct 2014

In addition work through the Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7 which might uncover the problem after testing your hardware, checking for overheating, establishing a Clean Boot, and the other steps to go over your install thoroughly.

Boozad · 24 Oct 2014

Layback Bear said:

First off you should not be able to hear your hard drive work. The amount of noise a good hard drive makes will be covered up by other things like fans running in your system.

Except for some WD Caviar Blacks, all of mine grind like troopers. You can hear them over the TV.

lehnerus2000 · 24 Oct 2014

DWM likes to thrash my HDD when it "thinks" I'm not looking.

Also the Windows Defragger tool will often start up if Windows decides that you aren't using your PC (you can turn that off).
If you aren't running something like Process Explorer you won't see it running, as it turns itself off when you touch any controls.

Indexing is another tool that will give you HDD a workout if Windows decides that you aren't using your PC (you can turn that off).

Some programs also include an auto-defragger function (e.g. Glary Utilities).

PwnFrnzy · 24 Oct 2014

Boozad said:

Except for some WD Caviar Blacks, all of mine grind like troopers. You can hear them over the TV.

If you think the Caviar Blacks are loud, you should check out the Hitachi drives in general, mine being the 1TB Deskstar (otherwise known as the 'Deathstar' when they first launched). You can hear that bugger reading and writing a mile away, but I don't mind it since I do find the reliability of Hitachi drives to be pretty darn good.

Boozad · 24 Oct 2014

PwnFrnzy said:

Boozad said:

Except for some WD Caviar Blacks, all of mine grind like troopers. You can hear them over the TV.

If you think the Caviar Blacks are loud, you should check out the Hitachi drives in general, mine being the 1TB Deskstar (otherwise known as the 'Deathstar' when they first launched). You can hear that bugger reading and writing a mile away, but I don't mind it since I do find the reliability of Hitachi drives to be pretty darn good.

The sound doesn't bother me either to be fair, it bothers the wife. She bothers me.

dojibear · 08 Jan 2015

My disk drive is silent in normal operation. I've had it for a few years and never heard it. Okay, I hear it but it's soft.

The annoying noise has only happened the last 3 months, just a thump once a second. The disk sound but a little louder. Makes me think that, once a second, it's accessing some other part of the disk for a moment.

And it's not all the time. It usually doesn't happen until I've run Firefox and looked at a few websites. When it happens, I reboot the PC to stop it. Sleep sometimes stops it, sometimes not.

disk running for no reason

disk running for no reason

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