Vista Heavy Disk Access....

xxmakoenergyxx · Aug 8, 2007

So I thought that Id give Vista a shot what with all the negative and positive, well, mostly negative hype and I actually love it except for one thing. Know I know vista indexes the boot drive but Ive had it installed for about a week now and its constantly accessing my hard drive and the HD LED blinking is getting really annoying, and the sound of my hard drive constantly being accessed is getting to me too! Its doing it as I type this.... only firefox is open..... grrr

Is this normal or does Vista enjoy annoying me?

BTW im using Vista Ultimate 32-bit, I have 4 Hard drives (all SATA), 2GB ddr2-800, e6750 @ stock

SeasonalEclipse · Aug 8, 2007

It doesnt sound normal, Have you crashed it or anything?.. If so, and even if not so id defragement and see if that helps any.. if it doesnt it sounds like it could also be a background program, not vista.

xxmakoenergyxx · Aug 8, 2007

Nope, no crashes ever, its actually very stable which suprises me. Im actually Power Defragmenter right now so hopefully that will help. In the past I installed a few other versions on different drives and it did the same thing, could vista be indexing ALL of my hard drives? Because thats about 1.5TB of indexing to do?

Automata · Aug 8, 2007

xxmakoenergyxx said:
Nope, no crashes ever, its actually very stable which suprises me. Im actually Power Defragmenter right now so hopefully that will help. In the past I installed a few other versions on different drives and it did the same thing, could vista be indexing ALL of my hard drives? Because thats about 1.5TB of indexing to do?

Well, if it is indexing, it does all the drives

jstutman · Aug 8, 2007

Sounds like another program, I have had ultimate installed for some time and never noticed any heavy disk access unless Im making it do that.

redduc900 · Aug 9, 2007

Vista's Search function is indexing all your personal files silently in the background; while SuperFetch is taking data from your HDD(s), storing it in available RAM and making it readily accessible to the processor.

Windows SuperFetch

A new memory management technology in Windows Vista, Windows SuperFetch, helps keep the computer consistently responsive to your programs by making better use of the computer's RAM. Windows SuperFetch prioritizes the programs you're currently using over background tasks and adapts to the way you work by tracking the programs you use most often and preloading these into memory. With SuperFetch, background tasks still run when the computer is idle. However, when the background task is finished, SuperFetch repopulates system memory with the data you were working with before the background task ran. Now, when you return to your desk, your programs will continue to run as efficiently as they did before you left.

Windows Defender is also running with real-time priority to scan all your disks for malware.

Windows Defender Real-time protection

Scanning can remove existing spyware, but to help protect against new or unknown threats, Windows Defender includes monitoring agents for real-time protection. Several security agents monitor critical areas of the computer that spyware might attempt to modify: autostart, system configuration, Internet Explorer add-ons, Internet Explorer configuration, Internet Explorer downloads, services and drivers, application execution, application registration, and Windows add-ons. These critical areas of the computer represent the common entry points for spyware.

In addition the Disk Defragmenter is running as a scheduled job, and also runs silently.

Automatic disk defragmentation

Infrequent disk defragmentation leads to an inefficient layout of files on the hard disk, which can slow PC performance. Windows Vista includes a new disk defragmenter that runs in the background and automatically defragments the hard disk as need arises. The new disk defragmenter no longer needs to complete its work in a single session—it can defragment incrementally, whenever the computer is idle.

And one other thing, Vista is checking your CD/DVD drive(s) for the presence of disks.

Go to Start | Type in Performance --> select 'Reliability and Performance Monitor' at the top | In the RH pane expand the 'Disk' and 'CPU' sections to see what processes are accessing what files.

quadcore86 · Aug 9, 2007

I shut off superfetch, readyboost, disabled indexing, disabled windows defender. I don't need any of these cause I use a raptor and it's fast enough (I notice no difference between superfetch being enabled or disabled). The only thing I leave enabled is Windows Defragger.

I would disable all these services...it puts alot of stress on the harddrive. Before I disabled these services, my raptor was thrashing around, very annoying.

deathman20 · Aug 9, 2007

Indexing is a huge one that hits the HDD's all the time. I know I've disabled it. Windows defender I'm thinking about disabling as well and just run it when I need to type thing.

Jod · Aug 9, 2007

I changed indexing to include all drives and almost all files. It's quite convenient to have everything @ the start search, but my drives NEVER shut up. It's been almost 3 months and they go nuts all day long.

xxmakoenergyxx · Aug 9, 2007

YAY!!!! Windows Defender was the culprit. I turned off that ******* and now the only noise i hear is silence :clap:

(i love my tuniq tower), then i defraged over night and everything is awesome. Thanks

grunjee · Aug 11, 2007

Glad I came across this thread, as I've been having the same problems with Vista and suspiciously constant hard drive access.

The worst was during a lan party a couple weeks back... I got fragged 3-4 times on CoD2, not because I was outskilled, but because Vista decided to defrag or index my drive right in the middle of a game. Not just once mind you, but multiple times. It was like I had a gf2mx or something.

Vista Heavy Disk Access....

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