Topic: Hard Drive, ZZZ...ZZZ

[joudi]

A question was in my mind long time ago, but never asked it or knew the answer:

From time to time, I hear the hard drive making a ZZZ..ZZZ  noise. (Like scratching). I'm not telling here about an anomaly in it. I just wanted to know what is that for?

Seems to me that it makes self test or analyse. I also thought before, that it must be the anti virus program which does that.

Well, today, I have no antivirus installed on my PC, but it does it though.

It slows considerably the PC while doing it. Even if I switch the PC off, it restarts when I switch it on again.

Anyone knows what's that?

[Sandra]

That sounds like the noise the hard drive makes when its working Joudi, does the hard drive light flash when its doing it ?

[joudi]

Well, it does Sandra, but no more than the usual times.

I said that it's not an anomaly. It's an ordinary thing not only on my PC Sandra. It must happen in all. I'm surprised that you didn't notice that. Seems that your case (tower) is relatively far from your ears.

If it's just the ordinary hard drive sound, why it doesn't do that continuously? Why it does it only from time to time?

[Sandra]

It will only do it as its reading from or writing to the hard drive.
Its the arm holding the bit that reads and writes the data moving rapidly across the disc surface that makes the noise.
The reason its intermittent is that it only moves the arm when it writes or reads something  

[joudi]

Well, it does it even when I'm doing nothing at all.

[Clive]

Joudi, what does it show when you click on
Start/all programs/accessories/perfomance?  I get a graph showing CPU usage so it would be interesting to know what it is when the hard drive is whirring away.  If it's very high, see what happens when you disconnect from the Internet.

[joudi]

Thanks Clive,

I have to wait till it does that again and apply your idea.

But if my memory is good, I used to have that even before having InterNet connection.

[Simon]

It could be something automatically updating, Joudi.  Anti Virus, perhaps?  Or even Windows Updates if you have them set to download and install automatically.

How about some sort of automatic defragger?  You don't have Diskeeper or anything similar installed?

[joudi]

I'm surprised that only me seems to have that phenomenon. Don't really know why others didn't notice it.

Well Simon, to answer your questions:

No antivirus is installed.

Probably it has not any relation to the internet.

But about the diskeeper, I don't know what it is.

Maybe automatic defrag. But I didn't set it as so. I left XP on its' defaults setting.

[Dack]

Do you have the 'indexing' function switched on for the drive? That would cause the symptom.

[joudi]

Do you have the 'indexing' function switched on for the drive? That would cause the symptom.

How can I get there to see?

[Dack]

Start->my computer. Right click on drive C (for instance) and get the properties up. Make sure that "Allow indexing to run on this drive" is de-selected.

[joudi]

Thanks Dack,

Yes, it's checked. Well, I left it as it is. I just wanted to know what that symptom is. Maybe it's that which is causing it then.

Could be more interesting to know all the "Indexing" advantages then. Seems it makes inner search faster. Am I right? Is there any other advantage? And if we uncheck it, what do we get less?

Thabks...

[joudi]

Here's another way to disable the "Indexing Service" on XP. The link will give some more explanation about that service.

Here it is:

http://www.windows-help.net/WindowsXP/tune-18.html

[Clive]

Very useful information.  I discovered that mine was enabled so I have disabled it now.