Very Busy Disc While Idle

[David E. Ross]

Windows XP SP2

My current power scheme has the following settings:
"Turn off monitor" after 20 minutes
"Turn off hard disks" atfer 25 minutes]
"System standby" after 30 minutes

If I walk away from my PC and return about an hour later, I hear one of
my hard drives whirring away at a very high speed.

I have two physical hard drives; I don't know which one is doing this.
If I jiggle my mouse, it stops. Thus, I can't use the Performance
Monitor to determine which drive.

Why is this happening? Can I do anything to prevent it?

--

David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>.

Don't ask "Why is there road rage?" Instead, ask
"Why NOT Road Rage?" or "Why Is There No Such
Thing as Fast Enough?"
<http://www.rossde.com/roadrage.html>

 

[Don Phillipson]

If I walk away from my PC and return about an hour later, I hear one of
my hard drives whirring away at a very high speed.

I have two physical hard drives; I don't know which one is doing this.
If I jiggle my mouse, it stops. Thus, I can't use the Performance
Monitor to determine which drive.

Why is this happening? Can I do anything to prevent it?

1. It is always useful to run the manufacturer's hardware
diagnostics on the drives -- which should be idenfied in the
Device Manager. Most can be downloaded free.
2. If both drives test equally sound, you can test whichever
houses your C: drive by unplugging the other (its power
cable alone would suffice) and running the PC as normal.
If no new drive noise recurs, the trouble is in the other HDD.
3. Theoretically some defect in the motherboard might
activate drives -- but this is very rare.

 

[Guest]

David,

Is the antivirus set to scanning whilst idle?

 

[1PW]

Windows XP SP2

My current power scheme has the following settings:
"Turn off monitor" after 20 minutes
"Turn off hard disks" atfer 25 minutes]
"System standby" after 30 minutes

If I walk away from my PC and return about an hour later, I hear one of
my hard drives whirring away at a very high speed.

I have two physical hard drives; I don't know which one is doing this.
If I jiggle my mouse, it stops. Thus, I can't use the Performance
Monitor to determine which drive.

Why is this happening? Can I do anything to prevent it?

Hello David:

If you install Mark Russinovich's Process Explorer from:

<http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx>

and launch it before you know your system will have some idle time.

Then when you see that your system's HDD is showing activity, you can
bring Process Explorer to the forefront where you can slew your mouse
pointer to the activity graphs for the previous few seconds where you
will gain a small window showing the processes that were taking place
then.

The theory of others that antimalware is scanning is a good one I believe.

XP SP2 David? Service Pack 3 goes well with PGP sir.

Good to see your posts,

Pete

 

[David E. Ross]

David,

Is the antivirus set to scanning whilst idle?

No. I'm using AVG 8.5 freeware, and I've diabled that feature.

--

David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>.

Don't ask "Why is there road rage?" Instead, ask
"Why NOT Road Rage?" or "Why Is There No Such
Thing as Fast Enough?"
<http://www.rossde.com/roadrage.html>

 

[Craig Coope]

Windows XP SP2

My current power scheme has the following settings:
"Turn off monitor" after 20 minutes
"Turn off hard disks" atfer 25 minutes]
"System standby" after 30 minutes

If I walk away from my PC and return about an hour later, I hear one of
my hard drives whirring away at a very high speed.

I have two physical hard drives; I don't know which one is doing this.
If I jiggle my mouse, it stops. Thus, I can't use the Performance
Monitor to determine which drive.

Why is this happening? Can I do anything to prevent it?

Is it set to run spyware or to defrag?

 

[1PW]

No. I'm using AVG 8.5 freeware, and I've disabled that feature.

Other antimalware scanners, a defragmenter, system housekeeping,
indexing of the whole HDD or some directories...

 

[David E. Ross]

Other antimalware scanners, a defragmenter, system housekeeping,
indexing of the whole HDD or some directories...

I have no other anti-malware scanners. I have not scheduled a defrag;
my only defrag tool is Disk Defragmenter, which came with Windows XP. I
don't have any housekeeping applications. I think I disabled the
Windows XP version of the FindFast indexing tool by removing its
shortcut from [C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start
Menu\Programs\Startup\].

The question is: If any of these started running while my PC is idle,
would it not continue running when I jiggle my mouse to wake-up my PC?

--

David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>.

Don't ask "Why is there road rage?" Instead, ask
"Why NOT Road Rage?" or "Why Is There No Such
Thing as Fast Enough?"
<http://www.rossde.com/roadrage.html>

 

[David E. Ross]

Windows XP SP2

My current power scheme has the following settings:
"Turn off monitor" after 20 minutes
"Turn off hard disks" atfer 25 minutes]
"System standby" after 30 minutes

If I walk away from my PC and return about an hour later, I hear one of
my hard drives whirring away at a very high speed.

I have two physical hard drives; I don't know which one is doing this.
If I jiggle my mouse, it stops. Thus, I can't use the Performance
Monitor to determine which drive.

Why is this happening? Can I do anything to prevent it?

Is it set to run spyware or to defrag?

See my answer to 1PW's second message.

--

David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>.

Don't ask "Why is there road rage?" Instead, ask
"Why NOT Road Rage?" or "Why Is There No Such
Thing as Fast Enough?"
<http://www.rossde.com/roadrage.html>

 

[Craig Coope]

Other antimalware scanners, a defragmenter, system housekeeping,
indexing of the whole HDD or some directories...

I have no other anti-malware scanners. I have not scheduled a defrag;
my only defrag tool is Disk Defragmenter, which came with Windows XP. I
don't have any housekeeping applications. I think I disabled the
Windows XP version of the FindFast indexing tool by removing its
shortcut from [C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start
Menu\Programs\Startup\].

The question is: If any of these started running while my PC is idle,
would it not continue running when I jiggle my mouse to wake-up my PC?

No it would not. Because scanning for viruses and defragging will use
the hard drives a lot, it is the reason why you can schedule them to
happen when your PC is idle. - Obviously it would slow your PC down if
you were trying to use it for other tasks that require the hard drive
at the time, therefore the action is paused when you want to use the
PC yourself.

Many years ago at an old work place my PC used to annoy me because
whenever the screen saver came on the hard drive would go. I used to
have the 3D Pipes screen saver and I used to refer to them as the
noisy pipes! It wasn't until I did a bit more digging that I realised
that the PC was doing a full virus scan when idle.

 

[Bob I]

Other antimalware scanners, a defragmenter, system housekeeping,
indexing of the whole HDD or some directories...

I have no other anti-malware scanners. I have not scheduled a defrag;
my only defrag tool is Disk Defragmenter, which came with Windows XP. I
don't have any housekeeping applications. I think I disabled the
Windows XP version of the FindFast indexing tool by removing its
shortcut from [C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start
Menu\Programs\Startup\].

The question is: If any of these started running while my PC is idle,
would it not continue running when I jiggle my mouse to wake-up my PC?

Windows XP Indexing setting would be found by R-clicking the drive icon
selecting properties, you will see it at the bottom. Uncheck this for
each drive.

 

[David E. Ross]

David E. Ross wrote:

On 8/25/2009 2:11 PM, SPAMCOP User wrote:

David,

Is the antivirus set to scanning whilst idle?

No. I'm using AVG 8.5 freeware, and I've disabled that feature.
Other antimalware scanners, a defragmenter, system housekeeping,
indexing of the whole HDD or some directories...

I have no other anti-malware scanners. I have not scheduled a defrag;
my only defrag tool is Disk Defragmenter, which came with Windows XP. I
don't have any housekeeping applications. I think I disabled the
Windows XP version of the FindFast indexing tool by removing its
shortcut from [C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start
Menu\Programs\Startup\].

The question is: If any of these started running while my PC is idle,
would it not continue running when I jiggle my mouse to wake-up my PC?

Windows XP Indexing setting would be found by R-clicking the drive icon
selecting properties, you will see it at the bottom. Uncheck this for
each drive.

Thank you. While Indexing was off for my C-drive, it was on for my
D-drive.

However, I'm beginning to think the problem is within my screen saver.
It's not a Microsoft item but something I imported (and, yes, checked
for viruses) over 10 years ago. It's somewhat memory intensive, thus
possibly causing memory swaps to disc. However, I would think it would
terminate when my PC goes to standby.

First, I'll see if disabiling D-drive indexing helps. If it doesn't,
then I try a simpler screen saver.

--

David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>.

Don't ask "Why is there road rage?" Instead, ask
"Why NOT Road Rage?" or "Why Is There No Such
Thing as Fast Enough?"
<http://www.rossde.com/roadrage.html>