HDD noise - endless activity

[StrangerParadis]

Hello,

Sry to bother you with this but I've tried many things to solve my problems and I don't know wich way to go, after hours of endless talking with Dell support people (which seem to be quite competent but...) and going through fora all the web. I've also covered the first 5 pages of this Vista forum but did not find info (If I have skipped THE post, will you please just direct me to it?).

So the problem is this : each time I launch the PC, the 2 HDD (raid 0) start running as usual but dont stop after (seemingly) all applications are loaded. The caracteristic brr-brr do not stop for 25 minutes at least. In order to refrain this I have :

Disactivated the index (runs only on a small directory in my documents)
Put the quiet mode on in the bios (thanks to dell people, palliative)
Disactivated the anti-virus (avast - in msconfig, still HDD activity)
Disactivated all services in msconfig (seems no longer HDD running - so which service is buzzying my PC?)
Disactivated automatic defrag (once a month), UAC.
Disactivated Google desktop thing

I tend to thing that there's no hardware fault (HDD diagnostic ok on both drives) but that a service/programm is reorganising my whole HDD's. When I experience this HDD problem, the drive monitor in the resource monitor displays 10 Mo/sec (changing) and 100% maximal activity time (when HDD are idle : ~1%). There's a file (name automatically generated) in the directory "volume system information" that's being written at more than 100.000.000 bytes/min.

I'm not sure, sometimes it runs also after the lunch pause (but it can be the defrag thing, no idea). The only thing for sure : 25 minutes HDD activity each time I launch the PC.

I dont want to loose your time here, tia for all usefull information. I hope I did not break any forum law in doing so.

SiP

[jtdoom]

hi

welcome to CTH.
I would re-enable avast if I were you.
Do you have anything similar to Raxco ISR, or Acronis, or Ghost GoBack installed?

[StrangerParadis]

Hello and thanks for your rapid answer.

Avast is reactivated.

The only special programs I had were Everest Home edition & Vista Boot Pro - all deinstalled since.

I tried to list all the programs I have - this is the result - there must be a text way to do this but I don't know how. Switched to icons to have them all on a single page.

http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/1005/programmesvo9.jpg

Never tried to install a recovery/ghost software - who knows what lurks in the depths of my dell computer?

Maybe a hijackthis report could help? It's all Chinese to me.

Tia,

SiP

[KroneckerDelta]

First, eliminate malware, if any, from playing dirty tricks on your system.

If I am not wrong, Vista does the drive indexing and superfetch/prefetch in the background quite often, especially if it's a new install. Thats probably why the drive is always busy. If it has no impact on performance it's best to leave it alone since superfetch is supposed to improve performance in the long run (after a week or so).

And don't disable critical stuff like anti-virus and useful services!! It's best leave them running!

Same goes for the defragmenter- dont turn it off unless you are bothered by the HDD activity. While Vista's defragmenter is not really that effective, it's concept is sound: smart automatic defragmentation in the background at no cost to system performance. Unfortunately, it never seems to really finish defragmenting, unlike third party auto defraggers.

[Miz]

Try disabling Google Desktop. I've read (somewhere, don't remember where) that its indexing of the drive can take hours. If that's the case, its trying to "re-index" on startup may be the culprit.

[StrangerParadis]

Hi all,

Thanks for your help.

@ krone : made a full system scan ad-aware, only cookies deleted. My system is now months old but the problem increases (or am I just fed up with?). I did limit the indexing to a small directory (my translations) as I dont need the index for the rest. When I type index in "Rechercher" I always read the indexation is done - so I don't think the system is indexing at this time. As you say, it has no impact on performance but it is very annoying during my work. I did reactivate all services as I dont know the one who's bullying me. As to defrag, it should only work once a month according to my presets, and the HDD's are brrr-brrr each time I launch the PC.

@ Miz : I thought I had disactivated it, now it's completely deinstalled. Yet the brr-brr goes on.

Thanks for your kind help, all I can do is sit down and try to relax... Brrr... Brrr...

SiP