my hard drive keeps spinning

[Aleque]

Hi

When my computer is idling the hard drive is working like mad. What is it doing? Can it be file indexing? And if yes, how do I turn it off?

 

[exscentric]

control panel/indexing options should get you there. It could also be defender doing a disk scan or maintenance working if you have either set up to operate.

 

[XweAponX]

AV scan, or it could be optimizing the drive. Does it stop after a while?

 

[Aleque]

I removed the indexing checkbox in the properties of my main partition. However, I didn't find the way to disable Windows Defender autoscan, as suggested earlier.

My HDD lamp keeps blinking. I guess I'm gonna have to learn to live with that. I appreciate the replies. I will let the topic stay open for a while.

 

[XweAponX]

In Defender, you simply shut off "Real Time Protection"

 

[exscentric]

I have had a couple of units lately that have done that. I've tried stopping all programs and some services and nothing seems to help. It usually goes away but comes back now and then. I assume windows is doing something since it comes and goes.

 

[Aleque]

I have had a couple of units lately that have done that. I've tried stopping all programs and some services and nothing seems to help. It usually goes away but comes back now and then. I assume windows is doing something since it comes and goes.

Yes. Mine keeps working as if it is defragging. Not because it is slow. But when there are no obvious apps/processes running in the background it is supposed to stop, right? Is there a good technique or a software that can find the problem and eliminate it? When my laptop is doing nothing, I want it to do NOTHING.

 

[topgundcp]

Few things you can check:

1. go to: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows and look for the file
   Windows.edb and check the size of this file. This is a database file associated with Windows Search feature. If it's too big, sometimes it can grow up to many GB's then it might cause high disk usage when Windows Search trying to rebuild the Search index. You can delete this file but first you need to disable the Windows Search service then re-enable after deletion.
2. Run Task Manager->Startup and disable everything then reboot the PC to see if it fixes the problem then re-enable one by one, reboot until the problem occurs again, then that's the culprit.
3. Run Task Manager->Details, then right click on the Title->Select Columns and put a check on I/O Reads, I/O Writes, I/O read bytes, I/O write bytes then click OK. Click on the Title to sort by I/O Read, I/O Write to find out which process utilizing the Disk I/O most and take appropriate action.
4. Finally, From command prompt(Admin), run: chkdsk C: /r /f and the run sfc /scannow
   Warning: chkdsk will take a while to complete and sometimes appear to be hung. Please be patient.

 

[XweAponX]

I have had a couple of units lately that have done that. I've tried stopping all programs and some services and nothing seems to help. It usually goes away but comes back now and then. I assume windows is doing something since it comes and goes.

If you have a DELL machine, you can get into your BIOS settings, and set the Hard Drive to Quiet mode, that way you wont hear the incessant clicking. I've only seen that on Dell systems though.

 

[Bur1yman]

Go into Task Scheduler and see what task is running recently. Google Chrome and others are constantly looking for updates. As soon as I disabled Google Updater, my hard drive quit spinning when idle (as it's settings say to do). I also had a Cyberlink running at logon of any user. You may have a bunch of these working together to drive your drive "nuts".