Constant hard drive activity?

[gridsystems]

Hi,

I installed Windows 7 RC. When ever I am booted into Win7 one of my hard drives (probably not system drive - sounds like my secondary storage drive) is constantly working. Not very much but still making sounds.

I have completely turned off indexation, there is no automatic defrag going on. I have set a constant size to the paging file and there is no antivirus activity going on. The hard drive is making noise even when the system is idle for a long time and also when I am using it.

The processes tab in the task monitor shows no process that is using CPU.

What can this hard drive activity be?

Thanks!

 

[torrentg]

Windows Search service perhaps?

 

[esteban]

I get this same problem sometimes as well.

 

[BeechV35Pilot]

When I had this question recently I installed SysInternals (a group of talented MS programmers) free Process Monitor to see the disk access and responsible processes in real-time. Perhaps this might be of help in your case:

SysInternals Process Monitor

 

[gridsystems]

I have disabled WSearch as well so it is not Windows search.
I will try SysInternals Process Monitor.

 

[SJMX]

Ill be interested in what you find to be the cause of this. I too have the same issue. I always have my PC on and overnight when im not using it, it seems to go busy, sometimes just for a few moments, other times all night. Odd thing is though is when i start doing something it noise stops...

 

[johnhoh]

Others have posted about this only to conclude that it is a mystery and the only solution is a solid-state drive. So let us know if you solve it.

 

[BeechV35Pilot]

Others have posted about this only to conclude that it is a mystery and the only solution is a solid-state drive. So let us know if you solve it.

That is bizarre. In those threads did the others admit that the problem went away when a SSD was installed in place of the disk-based HD or just that it wasn't noticeable?

Assuming the activity were caused by an OS process and not by virtue of the device type I would be even more eager to search for the cause if I had an SSD installed. Aren't SSD lifespans limited by a finite number of read/write cycles or is that just rumor?

 

[johnhoh]

Others have posted about this only to conclude that it is a mystery and the only solution is a solid-state drive. So let us know if you solve it.

In those threads did the others admit that the problem went away when a SSD was installed in place of the disk-based HD or just that it wasn't noticeable?

The conclusion was that it does not go away, so your only choice is to silence it by removing the moving parts which make noise.

 

[SJMX]

System idle process on XP was silent... could it be that its that just being noisy?

(yes im picking at straws, but it may jolt some good ideas)

 

[BeechV35Pilot]

The conclusion was that it does not go away, so your only choice is to silence it by removing the moving parts which make noise.

Ah... if you cannot address the cause, address the symptom.

 

[logicearth]

System idle process on XP was silent... could it be that its that just being noisy?

(yes im picking at straws, but it may jolt some good ideas)

System Idle Process does nil with the HDD. System Idle Process is only concerned on the CPU.
Have any antivirus of "tweeking" type application (like disk-defragment) installed?

 

[SJMX]

Anitvirus is Avast and that isnt set to go off unless I ask it too.
Defrag doesnt start unless set either.

 

[gddeluca]

OK, I have the same problem. And its not physical noise that's bothering me, I have a monitor running and it shows my C: drive flat out 100% busy all the time, confirmed by the CPU case light flickering steadily.

It's not Defrag, It's not Indexing. I'm using the Windows Security essentials and it says its not scanning right now. Task Manager doesn't show anyone using any real CPU.

How do I tell what process is driving this I/O?

 

[BeechV35Pilot]

How do I tell what process is driving this I/O?

Two things:

1) Did you install the Sysinternals Process Monitor mentioned above and see if it identifies what the activity is?

2) When you pulled up the Task Manager did you check the option to "Show process from all users"?

 

[satchmo]

This has been discussed to death in Windows Vista. It's the same for Windows 7.

Don't worry about it. It won't hurt your HDD or your computer. Just let it be.

No matter what I did, it did not go away with Vista. So I won't bother with it anymore.

 

[jfar]

Install Malwarebytes and let it scan your machine, just a thought I'm having.

 

[MilesAhead]

See if there is any program that has a setting to notify it when files are changed. I did everything I could to quiet Vista before SP1. Seemed like I got it fairly tamed, but now and then it would just go off for minutes at a time for no apparent reason. Turned out I had locate32 set to automatically update file system changes. After I copied a bunch of files to my external drive, it would get all these notifications for 15 minutes afterward. I switched to Everything Search which hooks into the NTFS journaling system to be updated rather than using the WinAPI. Now both my Vista and Windows 7 drives are quiet.

The only time the drive runs on and slows down other tasks is if I'm copying big files over the Gb network card.

Turn off Windows Search
Use Everything Search

turn off anything that gets autoupdates from the file system

 

[BMN]

Just turn off superfetch! That's why vista had so much hdd activity, and it's probably why win7 does too.
Start>services>superfetch>disable...

 

[patrickt]

I had this problem on day one, didn't figure out what was causing it, reinstalled W7 and didn't have the problem.

I just remembered. I think it had something to do with setting the number of processors and min. memory in MSCONFIG.