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Hard Drive Constantly Thinking? Which Process could it be?

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Amoroso

Member
Joined
Dec 11, 2004
Location
Phoenix, AZ
Okay, first off Id say I posted this on here, with no luck.

Then I posted this on another forum with no luck as well.

This time Im going to include a snapshot of my proccess. Can someone single out which process is making my HD LED blink every 2-3 seconds when Im idling my computer. Id be laying on my bed and Ill see the HD LED blink every 3 seconds... It drives me nuts when I try to sleep thanks guys.

upload_43befc04a99f9.jpg
 
Well, the first thing you could try is to disable indexing (open Windows Explorer | Right click each volume and select "Properties" | "General" tab | Uncheck "Allow Indexing service to index this disk for fast file searching" | In the "Confirm attribute changes" dialog that opens, make sure the "Apply changes to subfolders and files" radio button is selected.

XP runs a number of housekeeping chores when the system is idle. It creates System Restore points, defrags the HDD, populates the Prefetch folder all while your system is idle. Take a look at this article, near the bottom of the page...

Idle Task Scheduling: The ProcessIdleTask API
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/sysperf/benchmark.mspx#EDAA

Open Task Manager and note the processes that are running. Start | Run | Type... Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks, and click OK | Go back to Task Manager and notice the additional processes that are running. Those are some of the processes that start when your computer has been idle for 15 minutes.
 
In addition, AOL "keeping your system secure" may also mean constant background filescanning, probably a resident antivirus or somesuch.
Geez, AOL is using 40 megs when your system is idle? Ouch.
 
you don't need to guess, sysinternals has a tool that lets you see what processes are accessing the disk subsystems in realtime, along with other useful information.

Filemon
 
When in task manager and the processes tab, go to view>select columns.
In there, check off the I/O writes and I/O write bytes. As well as the I/O reads and I/O read bytes.
I have indexing disabled on my rig, but the 2 processes
lsass.exe and csrss.exe are constantly doing small reads or writes. It's not enough to hear seeking, but the LED does blink every so often.
 
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