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Something is constantly accessing my hard drive

T

thaugen

Senior member
Drive light flashes almost every second or twice a second and I can hear the drive clicking. No scans are running so I don't that's the cause. This happens the entire time the computer is on. Old Vista box. I looked at processes and the following are being accessed over and over in no particular order: services.exe, svchost.exe (many instances running), dwm.exe, WmiPrvSE.exe, rundll32.exe, spoolsv.exe and several others.

Thanks in advance for any good advice. (buy a newer one is not an option.)
 
Maybe try disabling Windows Update then rebooting? You might need to kill a few tasks of those tasks before it lets you.
 
Many things will always force data reads:

Windows Update
Antivirus - when no interaction happens on user end then a no activity script is run and virus update happens or hard drive scan while you are away.

Screen saver could be starting up.
Your instant messengers have maybe tiny advertisements in them and they are refreshing for new ads.

You left an internet browser open with ads on them also refreshing for new ads.

Your pc is unloading executables in memory that are no longer being used. Most often used apps are used in precaching to speed up interaction with pc user.

The swap file is shrinking because no heavy usage. so hard drive is gaining space back.

Apps are phoning home back to their servers when connected to the internet and getting new content.
 
inachu said:
Many things will always force data reads:

Windows Update
Antivirus - when no interaction happens on user end then a no activity script is run and virus update happens or hard drive scan while you are away.

Screen saver could be starting up.
Your instant messengers have maybe tiny advertisements in them and they are refreshing for new ads.

You left an internet browser open with ads on them also refreshing for new ads.

Your pc is unloading executables in memory that are no longer being used. Most often used apps are used in precaching to speed up interaction with pc user.

The swap file is shrinking because no heavy usage. so hard drive is gaining space back.

Apps are phoning home back to their servers when connected to the internet and getting new content.
Click to expand...
This.
 
One of the more common causes of disk activity is indexing. Whether or not that is disabled is a personal choice based on usage.
 
corkyg said:
One of the more common causes of disk activity is indexing. Whether or not that is disabled is a personal choice based on usage.
Click to expand...

This is the biggest one for Vista. You can uncheck the option on hard drive properties, and you can uncheck locations that you don't want indexed from the control panel.

Check your hard drive's fragmentation and tell us free space you have on your drive.

I assume this is a new problem, so think about what may have changed between now and when you first noticed it.

If you did the above and are still having issues, go ahead and give it a good virus scan and malware scan.
 
It also wouldn't hurt to run 'sfc /scannow' from an elevated command prompt to check for corrupt system files as well.
 
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