Continual Disk Activity & major slowdown

[theory of nine]

Hey Guys,

This is my first post & I am having real trouble with my media workstation.

I've had the computer for about a year, a custom build...it's been working fine, then all of a sudden the problem started & now I'm suffering serious lag & slow down even with the most simple tasks (like clicking on the start icon) the HDD light is on continually & I can hear the drive clicking away. It never stops. (Starts when the windows loading screen comes on)
Boot time is also incredibly slow around 10 minutes to boot up.

I've just done a clean install of Windows 7 pro x 64 and the problem still persists...no other software installed other than my graphics & sound card drivers.
The workstation isn't connected to the net I use a laptop for all that/this.

On Task Manager my CPU is 0% & my Memory 6% which is fine....but my Disk activity is going crazy!
Serious peaks as a constant all on my C: drive.

The drive is a Seagate Barracuda 500gb 7,200 SATA II.

The programs causing this are mostly with-in "System" & SVChost" processes on the HDD.
For example:
Windows service profile
RtBackup
NTFS free space map
NTFS master file table
Winevt logs


I have read many threads about these type of problems but with never any clarification.

Can any one add any wisdom & help?
I've got a ton of work to do...and I cant even open control panel under 1 minute right now.

Any help much appreciated!!

Cheers.
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Update--

I've turned off Disk indexing & I tried turning off Search...Search did'nt help so I put it back on. Disk Indexing hasn't helped either...I thought that would be a no brainer for this type of problem...but alas, no.

 

[JimLewandowski]

Right-click the taskbar to get context menu, then left-click TASK MANAGER.

Click on the PERFORMANCE tab at the top.

Then click on the RESOURCE MONITOR on the bottom of the screen.

Once that opens, click on the DISK tab at the top. Then use the vertical "slider" to make the DISK window vertically large enough.

See what bubbles to the top (will show most active files at the top). The PID will also be listed for each file being accessed.

 

[Solidwave]

Since you've mentioned that some of this flurry of activity is concentrated on the event logs, what, if anything, is being written to the event logs?

 

[theory of nine]

added info

Hey Guys,

Thanks for your interest.

As this problem is very strange I wanted to add some new information...as it could help diagnose the problem. I am stumped!

As you know, the issue happens on boot and seems to be centered around drive/disk activity.
To try and diagnose the problem I decided to disconnect all my SATA II drives from the motherboard all except the C: drive obviously.
I booted up & it worked real fast..perfect.

Okay, so I thought this has to be a drive or cable issue then. As it happens it isn't!

I systematically added each drive back in to the system again using the cables I new worked..until I added them all back in to the system, each time shutting down, powering off, re-adding a drive then re-booting etc.
Each time the machine booted quick & worked as it should.

Even when all of the drives were re-connected...so I thought maybe there was some dust in a cable connection.
I continued using the computer again as usual that day, shutdown at the end of the day.

Booted up again the next morning...same problem!!

So each morning I have to boot up...incredibly slow. Then shutdown, remove once drive cable (SATA II) boot up...nice & fast, shut-down, re-connect drive...and it works.:huh:

I then tried the same by removing my firewire audio interface and it booted up fast.
The next time tho, I booted up after being switched off for some time...with it removed it didn't work and so I had to remove the SATA cable and go through the set-up as described once again.


This all points to a chipset or driver issue doesn't it?

Any suggestions cos I'm totally confused.


Thanks again in advance.
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