periodic hard drive access

  • Thread starter Thread starter Andy White
  • Start date Start date
A

Andy White

I'm running WinXP sp2 and I've noticed that the hardrive will access
briefly, what seems to be every 30 seconds or so, when I let it sit idle.
What is this from, and is it bad for the life of the HD? Thanks.
 
This is probably the indexing service which allows you to search for files
faster. I doubt it will cause you any issues with hard drive life, but if
you want to stop it, try turning off the indexing service. you can do this
by right clicking on your hard drive, clicking properties, then unchecking
the box for the indexing service.
 
This can be due to a number of reasons.

1. The hard drive is being optimized as per the prefetch layout.ini

2. The Windows indexing service

3. A third party defragmenter that automatically optimizes your hard drive

4. Any desktop search application that you have installed on your computer.
These include those from Microsoft, Google, Yahoo as well as some that are
supplied by others.

5. Your computer has been compromised and has been taken over by others. It
could be that it is being used to spew out viruses, spam and trojans to
other unsuspecting people. It may also be used as a file repository for
others to distribute illicit files and photos.


Don't ever go clicking things just because a web site, e-mail, popup or
rogue desktop tells you
to! If you are not 101% certain what an action will do - don't perform that
action.


Is your computer fully protected? I would suggest the following if you do
not already have them:


Download, install, update and run the following in that order:

If you don't have any antivirus installed, AVG Antivirus (free) from
http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5

Ad-Aware (free) from http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

SpyBot Search and Destroy (free) from
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html

Microsoft Anti Spyware (free) from
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx

And continue to control your clicking finger!


--
Regards,

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard :-)

If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
Thanks for the help. I'd be inclined to think it's probably 1 or 2 since I'm
a cautious net user and I do regular scans of all sorts on my system to make
sure it's clean. Thanks.
 
If you happen to use Picasa from Google, this will cause your hard drive to do this. Picasa optimizes the pic files every 30 seconds to a minute.
 
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