hard drive access every second

[bjlockie]

I have WinXP home on a laptop and something is accessing the harddrive every second. :-(
The computer has 2GB of RAM so I don't think it is swapping.
I turned off system restore and fast file find but it still does it.

 

[Rottie]

it depends on what is running on background such as anti virus or defragmentor etc

 

[CoasterGuy]

I went crazy trying to fix this on my PC and finally figured it out.

I tried turning off everything there is - superfetch, search, readyboost, and any other service I thought I didn't need and as it turns out, my computer was polling the DVD-Rom drives. Every second my hard drive light would blink and NEVER stop.

After disabling autoplay, it stopped. I am positive this is your problem.

This registry setting fixed all four of my computers.

http://www.ntcompatible.com/faq-21.html

 

[bjlockie]

thanks

 

[soonerproud]

Originally posted by: bjlockie
I have WinXP home on a laptop and something is accessing the harddrive every second. :-(
The computer has 2GB of RAM so I don't think it is swapping.
I turned off system restore and fast file find but it still does it.

On XP you might want to disable indexing as it is almost useless on XP. Indexing also hits on your drive quite frequently for little benefit due to search being lackluster. (Indexing is vastly improved on Vista as is the search function so it is not as much of an issue.)

Click My Computer, right click on each drive and select properties. There will be a little check box at the bottom that says "Index this drive for faster searching". Deselect that and when the dialog box comes up just select "yes to all". (It might say "ignore all" instead but still select it.)

After that, hit the Windows+R keys and type services.msc in the run dialog box. When the services window opens, browse it for "indexing service". Right click on indexing, select properties and change it from "Automatic" to "Disabled". Now reboot and indexing will no longer thrash your drive.

If you make image based backups regularly of Windows with Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image, then you could safely disable "system restore" to prevent even more thrashing of the drive. I only recommend this if you have another backup solution or you don't mind using the repair option on the XP cd. If reinstalling doesn't bother you, then turning off system restore is ok in that instance too.

Disabling these two things usually gets rid of almost all thrashing of the drive on XP. Do note that these tips are not recommended for Vista.