harddisk working like mad after some idle time; what is it?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Wolfgang
  • Start date Start date
W

Wolfgang

Hardware/software:
Laptop, XP with Servicepack 1 and all patches installed

Sometime ter my laptop has been idle for some time (without any user
program running), the harddisk always starts working away like mad. I
usually become aware of it by the sound of the drive and the drive
light coming on. As soon as I move the mouse or touch a key, the
harddisk will stop working.

My suspicion is that the system is doing some "routine work" it
consideres necessary, such as disk defragmenting or building some
index, but I really don't know.

What is it doing? Does anyone out there know what this is about, or
how I could go about diagnosing it (nothing unusual shows up in the
task manager process list) .

Thanks,
Wolfgang
California
 
My suspicion is that the system is doing some "routine work" it
consideres necessary, such as disk defragmenting or building some
index, but I really don't know.
Click to expand...

That is done in such idle phases, also the index service may re-scan
the drive if the Indexing Service is up and running and you set up
Windows to index your drives (setting in the Properties of the
drives).
 
On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 22:52:49 GMT, (e-mail address removed) (Wolfgang)
Hardware/software:
Laptop,
Click to expand...

May also mean OEM underfootware, then
XP with Servicepack 1 and all patches installed
Click to expand...

All patches not including SP2, then? :-)
Sometime ter my laptop has been idle for some time (without any user
program running), the harddisk always starts working away like mad. I
usually become aware of it by the sound of the drive and the drive
light coming on. As soon as I move the mouse or touch a key, the
harddisk will stop working.
Click to expand...
My suspicion is that the system is doing some "routine work" it
consideres necessary, such as disk defragmenting or building some
index, but I really don't know. What is it doing?
Click to expand...

Possibilities that come to mind:
- screen saver ot code hooked into that, e.g. some av
- building prefetch info to guide future Defrag
- XP's indexing service, which is off by default
- System Restore housekeeping
- activity initiated by or related to a peripheral, e.g. printer
- activity initiated by or related to network or Internet
- active malware
- other 3rd-party software

--------------- ----- ---- --- -- - - -
Click to expand...
Never turn your back on an installer program
 
Back
Top