WatchNut

Hello All:

My hard drive (Seagate 500 MB SATA drive, about 2 weeks old in a new computer) seems to run constantly. That is, the little drive light on the from panel of my computer flashes roughly once a second, and I can actually hear the drive clicking away as though some reading or writing is taking place.

Is this normal? Should the drive run all the time like this, or do I have another problem here? Is there software I can download that will show me what is causing that drive activity, and whether or not it is expected activity.

My computer has been thoroughly scanned for Malware and other nasties using HiJack This, AVGS, PC-Cillin, AdAware and Spybot S&D.

Thank you all so much in advance, and thanks for this wonderful site and resource.

Regards,

Michael

Done_Fishin

Do you have indexing enabled?
How much data have you stored on the drive?
Check in taskmanager to see whether your CPU is working continually

WatchNut

Hi DoneFishing:

Yes...indexing is enabled. When I disable indexing on C, I get some alerta that it cannot be disabled for certain files. Is this OK? Also....I'm assuming I need to apply to all files on each of my drives? When I do so, it starts the process running of changing the attributes on each file. Is that normal?

Total data on my machine is all on one 500MB drive that has been partitioned into 4 separate drives. The total amount of data (it's a new machine) is roughly 35GB.

Taskmanager shows the CPU under very low load (System idle process at 98 or 99%) when I'm not using the machine actively.

Thanks so much.

Michael

WatchNut

Whoops.....just found I could disable the service in Control Panel, and have done so.

Drive is still flashing about once a second or so.

Regards,

Michael

Done_Fishin

Indexing is one of the causes of random / repetitive disk action and it's up to you if you want o use it or not.I personally don't because it means that something is working inthe background taking time and space away from other applications.
Is it by chance only happening when you are connected to the net? It could just be overhead from accessing and maintaining your Line.

WatchNut

Hi DoneFishin:

Yes....I have a cable modem connected to this machine through a Linksys router, and it it online.

Is there any software available (hopefully free) that will actually let me monitor the drive activity and let me see more exactly what it's doing?

Thanks again for your time and patience.

Regards,

Michael

hwm54112

drive monitoring software would actually cause that symptom-perhaps you have something like norton goback or a drive optimizer running in the background? couldn't hurt to run the manufacturer's utility on the drive