Hard drive activity

[Alan]

Hi,
Not sure if this is anything to do with Vista or not.
I bought a new Packard Bell machine from PC World in the UK about a month
ago. The hard drive never stops working. Even as I'm typing this, the HD is
going berserk as if I were number crunching for NASA.
I can close all applications and leave it idle with nothing but the desktop
showing and it will whir and buzz like crazy for about twenty five minutes
before it begins to reduce its activity.
Any ideas as to what could cause this? Apart from driving me mad listening
to it, the drive will clearly not last long like this.
I've e-mailed PC World a day or so ago, no reply. They want 75p per minute
to get help so I'm not going down that road if I can avoid it.
If anyone has any advice it will be much appreciated,
Regards,
Alan.

 

[Sascha Jazbec]

Vistas Search function is indexing all your personal files silently in the
background.

Windows defender is running with real-time priority to scan all your disks
for malware.

If you have only 512 - 1024 MB on System Memory then Vista swaps a lot
virtual memory on the disks.

Automatic Disk-Defragmenter is running as scheduled job and runs also
silently.

What else autostarting programs might be running visible or hidden on your
machine you alone or the OEM knows..

These are the major "disk-activity-makers" in a Vista PC.

SJ /germany

 

[Cymbal Man Freq.]

I'd turn the indexing off, or put it on a schedule.

| Vistas Search function is indexing all your personal files silently in the
| background.
|
| Windows defender is running with real-time priority to scan all your disks
| for malware.
|
| If you have only 512 - 1024 MB on System Memory then Vista swaps a lot
| virtual memory on the disks.
|
| Automatic Disk-Defragmenter is running as scheduled job and runs also
| silently.
|
| What else autostarting programs might be running visible or hidden on your
| machine you alone or the OEM knows..
|
| These are the major "disk-activity-makers" in a Vista PC.
|
| SJ /germany
|
| | > Hi,
| > Not sure if this is anything to do with Vista or not.
| > I bought a new Packard Bell machine from PC World in the UK about a month
| > ago. The hard drive never stops working. Even as I'm typing this, the HD
| > is going berserk as if I were number crunching for NASA.
| > I can close all applications and leave it idle with nothing but the
| > desktop showing and it will whir and buzz like crazy for about twenty five
| > minutes before it begins to reduce its activity.
| > Any ideas as to what could cause this? Apart from driving me mad listening
| > to it, the drive will clearly not last long like this.
| > I've e-mailed PC World a day or so ago, no reply. They want 75p per minute
| > to get help so I'm not going down that road if I can avoid it.
| > If anyone has any advice it will be much appreciated,
| > Regards,
| > Alan.
| >
|

 

[Michael]

Alan
For the curious as to what the disk drive is doing ...

www.sysinternals.com has a bunch of utilities (owned by Microsoft) FileMon
is particularly useful.

Michael

 

[Adam Albright]

Hi,
Not sure if this is anything to do with Vista or not.
I bought a new Packard Bell machine from PC World in the UK about a month
ago. The hard drive never stops working. Even as I'm typing this, the HD is
going berserk as if I were number crunching for NASA.
I can close all applications and leave it idle with nothing but the desktop
showing and it will whir and buzz like crazy for about twenty five minutes
before it begins to reduce its activity.
Any ideas as to what could cause this? Apart from driving me mad listening
to it, the drive will clearly not last long like this.
I've e-mailed PC World a day or so ago, no reply. They want 75p per minute
to get help so I'm not going down that road if I can avoid it.
If anyone has any advice it will be much appreciated,
Regards,
Alan.

If you didn't say you had it for a mouth it would sound like Vista is
indexing one or more of your hard drives. You can just ignore it and
sooner or later it catches up and stops or greatly slows down how
often it does it or you can turn it off from Windows Explorer. Right
click on the drive letter, properties and uncheck. Just doing that
will cause your drive to grind on for awhile too.

Another cause could be your drive is badly fragemented. Another is you
don't have enough memory for what your asking your computer to do and
it needs to constantly swap files between your physical and virtual
memory which is on your hard drive. Also if your hard drive is nearly
full (over 85%) your drive may be having a hard time finding sectors
to write too and be churning away. Twenty five minutes seems way
excessive though. Try disconnecting from your ISP. If the disk stops
churning away within a few seconds after, post again.