Why does my hard drive rev up periodically?

[Guest]

Whenever I'm on this pc you can hear the hard drive rev up at random times
and Im not sure if this is normal. I have run adaware se, spybot, yahoo
antispy, avast antivirus and everything is clean. I just want to know if this
action is normal and/or is there a way I can make it stop? This pc is a Sony
Vaio PCV-W30 running Windows XP SP 2. I also have a ton of extra space on
both internal hd's, not sure if that's relevant or not.

 

[Yves Leclerc]

Usually XP will re-do the indexing on the drive.

 

[Sharon F]

Whenever I'm on this pc you can hear the hard drive rev up at random times
and Im not sure if this is normal. I have run adaware se, spybot, yahoo
antispy, avast antivirus and everything is clean. I just want to know if this
action is normal and/or is there a way I can make it stop? This pc is a Sony
Vaio PCV-W30 running Windows XP SP 2. I also have a ton of extra space on
both internal hd's, not sure if that's relevant or not.

Random times, once in a while? Yes, it's normal. As your programs perform
different tasks, they may need to access files that support those
functions. Even if apparently at rest, different housekeeping tasks take
place in the background: virtual memory management, indexing; scanning for
viruses to name a few.

It's also possible that the sound is not hard drives but fans turning on
and off as needed to guard against overheating.

 

[Richard Urban]

Hard drives run at a "constant" speed (5400 RPM, 7200 RPM etc). You should
NEVER hear them change speed. Now, if you have the drive set to sleep after
a few minutes (laptops do this), the drive will wake up and spin at normal
speed when required by the operating system.

Are you sure you are not hearing a CD drive or a DVD drive because you left
a disk in one of them!

If it truly is a hard drive that is changing speed (and not just waking up),
you have very serious problems with it!

--
Regards,

Richard Urban

If you knew as much as you thought you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Guest]

it could be the fan. it's not my cd/dvd drive, there's hardly ever any discs
inside. Thanks for all the replies

 

[Plato]

Whenever I'm on this pc you can hear the hard drive rev up at random times
and Im not sure if this is normal. I have run adaware se, spybot, yahoo

Rev up? Meaning you have it set to go to sleep at 5 minutes and a truck
passes by and the mouse moves a bit and it wakes up?

 

[Mer]

!

Hard drives run at a "constant" speed (5400 RPM, 7200 RPM etc). You should
NEVER hear them change speed. Now, if you have the drive set to sleep
after a few minutes (laptops do this), the drive will wake up and spin at
normal speed when required by the operating system.

Are you sure you are not hearing a CD drive or a DVD drive because you
left a disk in one of them!

If it truly is a hard drive that is changing speed (and not just waking
up), you have very serious problems with it!

--
Regards,

Richard Urban

If you knew as much as you thought you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!