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Hard Drive - Heavy Usage/Access/Grinding When Idle

U

UaVaj

Golden Member
have a Seagate 7200.7 80GB SATA drive and if left idle (not sleep) for ~5-10 min. it would start grind like it was heavy reading/writing/coping.

task manager shows heavy disk usage when grinding.

a quick move of the mouse or a tab on the keyboard will stop the grinding only to repeated if left idle too long again.

if the computer is constantly being used (htpc duties or web surfing duties or gaming), hard drive operate normally throughout.

leaning toward the firmware of the hard drive.





any other ideas what could be causing this?
 
Last edited:
I wouldn't waste time/energy trying to debug this, the drive is probably dying. Replace it, and RMA it if it is still under warranty.
 
UaVaj said:
have a Seagate 7200.7 80GB SATA drive and if left idle (not sleep) for ~5-10 min. it would start grind like it was heavy reading/writing/coping.

task manager shows heavy disk usage when grinding.

a quick move of the mouse or a tab on the keyboard will stop the grinding only to repeated if left idle too long again.

if the computer is constantly being used (htpc duties or web surfing duties or gaming), hard drive operate normally throughout.

leaning toward the firmware of the hard drive.

any other ideas what could be causing this?
Click to expand...

I disagree. If you are seeing high disk usage on the host system, then this is not the firmware of the drive that is doing that, it's being initiated by Windows.

Possibly idle-time defrag? Indexing service?

The fact that it stops when you move the mouse, indicates strongly that Windows is causing this.
 
the drive is good. been using it like this, on and off for years on end. should it die today. no big deal. all that on it is win8.1.

if not for the "constant" usage grinding noise during idle (this particular drive has always been this loud during normal access/usage). would have not even notice it.

***something is making the drive work constantly when idle?

fresh install of win8.1 does not cure it.
moving the drive to another win8.1 computer. the grinding follows it.
perhaps the culprit is win8.1.

perhaps the next step is to see if this unnecessary excessive disk access stops with win7 or with xp?
 
VirtualLarry said:
I disagree. If you are seeing high disk usage on the host system, then this is not the firmware of the drive that is doing that, it's being initiated by Windows.

Possibly idle-time defrag? Indexing service?

The fact that it stops when you move the mouse, indicates strongly that Windows is causing this.
Click to expand...

Agree 100%. This seems like a background process doing some disk-intensive activity when it thinks the system is idle.

I would open up the Resource Monitor, go to the Disk tab, sort the first and second panes by total disk usage, and let it sit there. When you see grinding, check to see what process is showing as having high disk usage.
 
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