Why is HD accessed?

[il barbi]

I wonder why my HD is frequently accessed in idle condition - I hear the HD
heads ticking with a frequency of some 4-5", then it stops for a while, then
it restarts - I don't know what the HD is doing - any ideas?
il barbi

 

[Gary Walker]

I wonder why my HD is frequently accessed in idle condition - I hear the HD
heads ticking with a frequency of some 4-5", then it stops for a while,
then it restarts - I don't know what the HD is doing - any ideas?
il barbi

Barring the presence of virus, all OSs have files that are
critical to system health/operation.

If you have the components necessary to run an increm-
ental backup, that will at least show those files that are
being updated FBO the OS.

You would need to run one incremental backup, and then
run a second immediately. The files that are selected for
the second backup(there will be few) will reflect those
files in constant change.

Gary

 

[Rock]

I wonder why my HD is frequently accessed in idle condition - I hear the HD
heads ticking with a frequency of some 4-5", then it stops for a while,
then it restarts - I don't know what the HD is doing - any ideas?

Open task manager and see what processes are running when that happens. It
could be the indexing service. Unless you otherwise need it disable that
through start | run | services.msc.

Or get filemon from here to see the low down on what's being
accessed/written to on the drive.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/FileAndDisk/Filemon.mspx

 

[Ron Martell]

I wonder why my HD is frequently accessed in idle condition - I hear the HD
heads ticking with a frequency of some 4-5", then it stops for a while, then
it restarts - I don't know what the HD is doing - any ideas?
il barbi

Many possibilities, depending on what you have installed on the
computer and what applications are open at the time.

The indexing service will frequently check your hard drive so as to
keep the file indexes up to date. Not a necessary service for most
users.

Sometimes email software is configured to check for new mail at
frequent intervals. This will also result in some network/Internet
activity.

"Phone home" software, such as automatic updates (windows itself,
antivirus and antispyware software, many printer drivers, and a number
of other programs and utilities all check for new updates
periodically, and sometimes the interval between checks is very short.

Windows may be doing some pre-emptive paging, identifying memory pages
that could be moved to the page file if there was a requirement for
additional RAM for some other purpose and then taking advantage of
idle time on the computer to put a copy of this RAM content into the
page file so as to expedite things should the memory requirements
materialize.

Hope this is of some assistance.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."