# What could be hitting my hard drive so hard **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 24, 2009, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-hitting-my-hard-drive-so-hard/482735 "2009-01-24T00:03:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-hitting-my-hard-drive-so-hard/482735/1 "2009-01-24T00:03:08Z")
My computer sits up on the desk and I can hear the hard drive churning nearly all the time. I checked and my Anti-virus is not running a scan. I checked and it appears as if the indexer is turned off on both the C and the D drive. I don’t know what else it could be. Anyone else have any ideas? ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-hitting-my-hard-drive-so-hard/482735/2 "2009-01-24T00:07:46Z")
Have you checked your Task Manager(Ctrl,Alt +Del) to see what processes are being used? Anything taking up excessive memory usage? ---
**Author:** ![not\_alice](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/not_alice/32/7283_2.png) [@not\_alice](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/not_alice)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-hitting-my-hard-drive-so-hard/482735/3 "2009-01-24T00:08:29Z")
You haven’t mentioned the operating system, the file system, or other pertinent details, but complaints like this are often due to a fragmented and nearly full disk. ---
**Author:** ![Westrogothia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/3ab097/32.png) [@Westrogothia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Westrogothia)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-hitting-my-hard-drive-so-hard/482735/4 "2009-01-24T00:18:55Z")
have a google on “superfetch”. [disclaimer] allthough turning it off might impact your computers performance. [/disclaimer] ---
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-hitting-my-hard-drive-so-hard/482735/5 "2009-01-24T00:27:30Z")
A failing drive will thrash around a lot. ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-hitting-my-hard-drive-so-hard/482735/6 "2009-01-24T00:31:41Z")
The OS is XP. There seems to be no processes taking up too much memory or CPU (System Idle is at 99) The disk is has 444 gigabytes free. The OS was reinstalled last Wed so it should not be badly fragmented. It \*may \*be failing because even relatively new hardware can fail - but the machine is less than a year 6 months old. I’ll have a look at superfetch. ---
**Author:** ![Westrogothia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/3ab097/32.png) [@Westrogothia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Westrogothia)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-hitting-my-hard-drive-so-hard/482735/7 "2009-01-24T00:35:48Z")
if your running xp then forget superfetch… thats a vista program. (i think it was called prefetch in xp) ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-hitting-my-hard-drive-so-hard/482735/8 "2009-01-24T00:37:49Z")
> [@Westrogothia](#): > > if your running xp then forget superfetch… thats a vista program. > (i think it was called prefetch in xp) I found a site that says you can turn it on - they’re bitching that Vista presents it as new and it isn’t - by changing the registry key from a 3 to a 1, but my key is set to a 3, so it isn’t on. ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-hitting-my-hard-drive-so-hard/482735/9 "2009-01-24T01:11:37Z")
I forgot, there is 2.75 GB of ram and the performance monitor is showing very low usages. ---
**Author:** ![Terraplane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/74df32/32.png) [@Terraplane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terraplane)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-hitting-my-hard-drive-so-hard/482735/10 "2009-01-24T02:50:18Z")
I thought I had a similar problem once. I kept looking for some background process that was causing the issue but couldn’t find anything. I even started backing up some files (that I should have backed up beforehand anyway). It turned out to be a fan. It sounded exactly like a hard drive spinning, and it was mostly constant but had occasional quiet moments, just like a busy hard drive. I felt very dumb and very relieved. It might be something worth checking. ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-hitting-my-hard-drive-so-hard/482735/11 "2009-01-24T04:14:22Z")
It isn’t the fan, unless the fan makes the hard-drive light lightup too. Besides, the fan sounds like a jet taking off - it is loud. ---
**Author:** ![Philster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/13edae/32.png) [@Philster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Philster)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-hitting-my-hard-drive-so-hard/482735/12 "2009-01-24T04:24:16Z")
My LT-60 Lenovo dual core Centrino, 1 gig RAM, Windows XP with most of the hard drive free does the same thing. HD spins so much I shut it down when not in use so I don’t hear it or see the HD light going. ---
**Author:** ![Bolt\_the\_Nut](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bolt\_the\_Nut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bolt_the_Nut)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-hitting-my-hard-drive-so-hard/482735/13 "2009-01-24T04:29:23Z")
Do you have indexing service turned on? This is a Windows feature that performs a background indexing of your hard drives, supposedly to allow for faster searches. Google Desktop search does this as well. Also, you may want to check if you have any type of defragmentation software installed. All three of these typically run when your computer is idle (or at low resource utilization), so there will often be a lot of disk activity at seemingly strange times. Also, I strongly recommend getting an external hard drive and backing up your system. If your drive is failing, it will be the best $100 you ever spent. ---
**Author:** ![DWMarch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dwmarch/32/1010_2.png) [@DWMarch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DWMarch)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-hitting-my-hard-drive-so-hard/482735/14 "2009-01-24T06:18:24Z")
Lots of things thrash the disk, especially after a fresh format. Did you install Itunes or Google Earth or Adobe Reader or any other program that automatically updates itself? Windows Media Player’s default settings will download album art and update information on your music in the background. Antivirus software updates itself daily or even hourly depending on which program you choose. Most AV programs have scheduled scans and those happily thrash the disk while they examine every single file on your machine. Windows Defender runs scheduled scans by default. Et cetera. Almost every program out there nowadays wants to chirp “quality control” results back to its corporate HQ, be it Microsoft, Apple, Google or little third party vendors no one has ever heard of. Are all your Windows updates in order? They can download in the background thanks to a service called “Background Intelligent Transfer Service”. So if you just installed WinXP with SP2 (and default settings) Windows will slowly download SP3 without telling you that it’s doing so until it’s done. Don’t shut this service off- Windows Update will stop working if you do. Last but not least your disk _is_ fragmented after a fresh install. The install process does not leave things in a nice linear fashion on the disk. And the more programs you install the worse it gets. I recommend the free AusLogics Disk Defrag over the XP defragmenter because instead of just saying “Done” at the end, it actually tells you how many files were fragmented and how much speed you’ve gained. ---
**Author:** ![spinky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@spinky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spinky)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-hitting-my-hard-drive-so-hard/482735/15 "2009-01-24T09:49:53Z")
You can also track this type of thing down sometimes by running task manager and turning on the various IO-related columns in the Processes tab. The absolute numbers don’t tell you much but if you sort by a particular column and watch it for a minute you can get a feel for which processes are increasing their IO numbers the fastest. Sometimes this is helpful, sometimes it’s not. ---
**Author:** ![yoyodyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/a9a28c/32.png) [@yoyodyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yoyodyne)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-hitting-my-hard-drive-so-hard/482735/16 "2009-01-24T18:25:15Z")
[Process Monitor](http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx) will show you what’s being accessed and what’s doing it. ---
**Author:** ![Bongmaster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Bongmaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bongmaster)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2009, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-hitting-my-hard-drive-so-hard/482735/17 "2009-01-26T19:30:51Z")
Hit Ctrl+Alt+Del to bring up the Task Manager Go to View, Select Columns, then add I/O Reads and I/O Writes Go back to the task manager and sort by I/O Reads, note the application Do the same for I/O Writes If its not a failing drive you should see the app responsible for all the reading and writing there. If the drive is failing and its simply reading (or trying to read) from a dying drive you shouldn’t see a huge difference between the app using the most I/O and the least (though there will of course be some). ---
**Author:** ![Bongmaster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Bongmaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bongmaster)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2009, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-hitting-my-hard-drive-so-hard/482735/18 "2009-01-26T19:38:46Z")
> [@ntucker](#): > > You can also track this type of thing down sometimes by running task manager and turning on the various IO-related columns in the Processes tab. The absolute numbers don’t tell you much but if you sort by a particular column and watch it for a minute you can get a feel for which processes are increasing their IO numbers the fastest. Sometimes this is helpful, sometimes it’s not. Some day I will resolve to read ENTIRE POSTS before duplicating very good info, sorry! ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2009, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-hitting-my-hard-drive-so-hard/482735/19 "2009-01-26T19:45:40Z")
> [@Bongmaster](#): > > Some day I will resolve to read ENTIRE POSTS before duplicating very good info, sorry! That’s okay; step-by-step instructions are good, too. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2009, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-hitting-my-hard-drive-so-hard/482735/20 "2009-01-26T21:10:23Z")
In addition to antivirus, have you run anti-spyware software? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-could-be-hitting-my-hard-drive-so-hard/482735.md?page=2)