How can I find out what is wearing out my hard disk(s)?

[Steve Hayes]

I'm running Windows Professional XP, SP 3 on my desktop machine with two 500
gig hard disks.

For the last week I've noticed that there is a regular tick-tock noise coming
from the speakers, and that the disk activity light flickers in time with the
noise. It seems to do this all the time when I'm running Windows XP.

When I first noticed it I was worried that it might be a virus, but scans have
come up negative.

It does not appear to be linked to any attempt to access the Internet.

Is there any way I can find what programs or processes are running that might
cause this, and any way of stopping them if they are found?

[Irwell]

Post by Steve Hayes
I'm running Windows Professional XP, SP 3 on my desktop machine with two 500
gig hard disks.
For the last week I've noticed that there is a regular tick-tock noise coming
from the speakers, and that the disk activity light flickers in time with the
noise. It seems to do this all the time when I'm running Windows XP.
When I first noticed it I was worried that it might be a virus, but scans have
come up negative.
It does not appear to be linked to any attempt to access the Internet.
Is there any way I can find what programs or processes are running that might
cause this, and any way of stopping them if they are found?

Back everything up right now, then investigate before the drive crashes.

[Char Jackson]

Post by Irwell

Post by Steve Hayes
I'm running Windows Professional XP, SP 3 on my desktop machine with two 500
gig hard disks.
For the last week I've noticed that there is a regular tick-tock noise coming
from the speakers, and that the disk activity light flickers in time with the
noise. It seems to do this all the time when I'm running Windows XP.
When I first noticed it I was worried that it might be a virus, but scans have
come up negative.
It does not appear to be linked to any attempt to access the Internet.
Is there any way I can find what programs or processes are running that might
cause this, and any way of stopping them if they are found?

Back everything up right now, then investigate before the drive crashes.

I'd perhaps be concerned if the tick-tock was coming from the drive,
as in an usual mechanical noise, but I wouldn't be concerned about the
drive if the sound is indeed coming from the speakers. So for me, one
of the first steps would be to confirm the source of the sound.

[Sjouke Burry]

Post by Steve Hayes
I'm running Windows Professional XP, SP 3 on my desktop machine with
two 500 gig hard disks.
For the last week I've noticed that there is a regular tick-tock noise
coming from the speakers, and that the disk activity light flickers in
time with the noise. It seems to do this all the time when I'm running
Windows XP.
When I first noticed it I was worried that it might be a virus, but
scans have come up negative.
It does not appear to be linked to any attempt to access the Internet.
Is there any way I can find what programs or processes are running
that might cause this, and any way of stopping them if they are found?

Do you have disk-indexing/compression switched on?
For XP: rightclick under mycomputer disk C:(or any of the
other drives, at the bottom of the properties window,
it shows compression and indexing, two rather useless features
on a fast computer/disk.
If those are "on", it will produce almost continuous disk access.
If not , you might have virus problems.

[Steve Hayes]

Post by Sjouke Burry

Post by Steve Hayes
I'm running Windows Professional XP, SP 3 on my desktop machine with
two 500 gig hard disks.
For the last week I've noticed that there is a regular tick-tock noise
coming from the speakers, and that the disk activity light flickers in
time with the noise. It seems to do this all the time when I'm running
Windows XP.
When I first noticed it I was worried that it might be a virus, but
scans have come up negative.
It does not appear to be linked to any attempt to access the Internet.
Is there any way I can find what programs or processes are running
that might cause this, and any way of stopping them if they are found?

Do you have disk-indexing/compression switched on?
For XP: rightclick under mycomputer disk C:(or any of the
other drives, at the bottom of the properties window,
it shows compression and indexing, two rather useless features
on a fast computer/disk.
If those are "on", it will produce almost continuous disk access.
If not , you might have virus problems.

I did have disk indexing on, and removed it, but it made no difference.

But someone sent me the solution by e-mail, and I'm posting it here in case
someone else has a similar problem.

Windows was checking to see if there was a disc in the optical drive.

I had put in a bootable DVD to upgrade Linux a few days ago, and when I had
done so I removed the disk because I didn't want to boot from the optical
drive, and did not replace it with another one.

So the drive had no disc in it, and Windows was checking every two seconds.

I put a disc in the drive, and now there is peace, blessed peace.

Thanks to everyone who offered possible solutions, but that is the one that
worked.

[VanguardLH]

Post by Steve Hayes
But someone sent me the solution by e-mail, and I'm posting it here in
case someone else has a similar problem.
Windows was checking to see if there was a disc in the optical drive.
I had put in a bootable DVD to upgrade Linux a few days ago, and when
I had done so I removed the disk because I didn't want to boot from
the optical drive, and did not replace it with another one. So the
drive had no disc in it, and Windows was checking every two seconds.
I put a disc in the drive, and now there is peace, blessed peace.

You have a process that keeps accessing the optical drive (and the hard
disk access is to run that program). You shouldn't normally have to
leave a disc in the drive to keep it quiet. That just means the drive
will still be doing the media accesses but you no longer hear the
grinding for the heads trying to find the media.

Creative Labs, a long time ago, include a utility that ran in the
background to extend the spin time for the optical drive. The idea was
to keep the drive spinning for longer so the next access would find the
disc was still up to full speed instead of having to wait for it to spin
up. I remember that causing lots of problems and had to get rid of it.

Avira has had an over 3 year long problem with removable media but it
only affects very few users and Avira hasn't bothered to address the
problem. Whenever any program uses SMART to gather stats from a drive,
Avira gets triggered and starts polling all removable media. Not only
may it repeatedly poll the optical drives but may also poll the
floppyies (if you have them) which makes a grinding noise when accessed
but there's no floppy in the drive. This polling occurs at 1-minute
intervals and continues until you reload Windows - but will reoccur the
moment your SMART software goes around polling your drives to see which
ones provide SMART data which then triggers Avira into its 1-minute
polling of removable drives. Avira has never addressed this problem
because they claim that they cannot reproduce it but it really appears
like they never even tried or didn't try very hard. I ran into this
problem when using Speedfan to control the speed of my case and CPU fans
(to make it quieter until more cooling was actually needed) which
included SMART collection and that triggered Avira into its 1-minute
polling of removable media, but other SMART capable utilities also
triggered this bug in Avira.

So you probably still want to address what is constantly polling your
removable drives rather than leave in the media to end up with it
getting repeatedly but more quietly accessed. It probably isn't Windows
doing the polling but some app that you installed or some ancilliary
software that came with it.