You need to find the specific process or application that's runs every
periodically that causing the hard drive activity.
You can do this with Windows Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del key), select the
Processes Tab,
Next, click on the CPU column twice, this should bring the System Idle
process to the top (as long as you are not using any other applications).
Then when the disk is active you should another process float to or near the
top of the list.
For more exploratory detail, download and try Process Explorer:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/SystemInformation/ProcessExplorer.mspx
Once you have Process Explorer installed and running:
In the taskbar select View and check 'Show Process Tree' and 'Show Lower
Pane' options.
(This will provide the detailed info you need)
Next click on the CPU column to sort processes by %CPU usage.
Then click on the process of interest that's listed in the CPU % column,
once it's highlighted, right click and from the options listed select:
google
This should display what out there on the web about that process.
Note: some entries like Explorer and svchost may need to be expanded to show
the detail,
(sub processes), in this case click on the + located to the left on the
entry.
Still another tool is What's Running
http://www.whatsrunning.net/whatsrunning/main.aspx
JS
