unexplained hard drive activity... Vista 64

[Slade]

I'm trying to pinpoint why my hard drive, specifically my system drive is VERY active for no apparent reason at random times.

Defrag is not scheduled to run.

Indexing is supposedly off (I just removed the items from the indexing wizard)

Virus scan is set to run at 4 am

Defender is set to run at 6 am

My swap file is on another drive, no swap file on the system drive.

Is there anything else that will have the hd do something that I'm not aware of?

 

[zacdl]

SuperFetch???
The next obvious thing to me would be you didn't actually disable Indexing SERVICE- but just some options inside it. My guess is the OS is still going to index some content.

This is not abnormal for Vista at all, and depending on usage it can take 2-4 weeks (or longer if seldom used) for hard drive activity to slow down. By disabling the services that do this initially, you will be costing yourself extra time in the long run.

 

[Catweazle]

Is there anything else that will have the hd do something that I'm not aware of?

Shitloads of stuff, actually. Unlike XP Vista actually works to look after you. The hard drive activity isn't impacting on any performance, unless you are running a rig which has too little RAM.

There are only two real reasons to be concerned about the drive activity:

• The LED flashing annoys you.
• Your drive is a noisy one.

Both easy problems to overcome. The first only needs the HDD LED lead unplugged from the mobo, the second only needs replacing the inadequate drive with a quieter running one.


But yeah. Prefetch. Defragging. Indexing. All sorts of stuff is happening. It steps aside when you need to use resources to do stuff, so there's no need to worry about 'eliminating' the activity.

 

[feek]

yeah, could be a lot of other things. i don't think you can disable superfetch. but why would you disable all those other things?

 

[fri2219]

For what it's worth, Vista will defrag the MFT at idle, even if you haven't scheduled a defrag.

 

[Slade]

I prefer to defrag on my own accord when I know I've made major downloads/deletes to the file system. I keep a single drive as my download drive and only that one needs a defrag which I run myself whenever I know it's needed.

I run 4 hard drives in the system. The system drive is a raptor, not known for it's silence (especially compared to the other 320GB WD drives I have in the system). It's distracting to be working on something only to hear major activity going on when you aren't doing anything that is warranting the system drive to be going nuts.

I keep things fairly organized the way I want, search is a function I rarely use on my own system.

I've had vista on this box since august and have not noticed it "speed" up itself since install. It's half assed attempts to streamline the experience are actually wrecking the experience.