hard drive continues to run for exteneded time

[PAB]

I have an HP 6030 computer that for the last two months seems to run the
hard drive even though there is nothing that is supposed to use the drive.
This is the first computer that has done this and I have owned many home
computers since 1984. When I check performance from the Task Manager, There
are a series of spicks up to 4% every minute of so. The hard drive light is
going constantly during this time.
Sometimes the light goes out and stays out even though I have not done
anything on the computer.
It comes with the standard software that HP installs plus a program to keep
track of my DVDs that I run only once a day.
Is there some program that HP installs that should cause this lengthy
running time.
Just now, after 40 minutes it finally turned off - and I have my Windows
Mail program open and nothing else.
That is the way it works all the time now. Is there something that needs to
be reset?
Thanks.

 

[Steve Thackery]

There are lots of things in Vista that exercise the hard disk even when you
are not using your computer.

1/ Indexing is one, as brink pointed out.

2/ Every so often Vista shuffles some files around to speed up the startup
time.

3/ Once a week Vista kicks off a defrag of the hard disk, which runs in the
background, backing off when you are using your computer (and thus running
mostly when you are not).

4/ Every so often Vista preloads files into memory in anticipation that you
will want to use them (based on your usage patterns to date) - which speeds
up the response times.

This is all good stuff and the sort of thing any good OS should be doing. I
recommend you ignore it - it doesn't mean anything is wrong.

SteveT