Hello, you techie guys, I have tried to meddle around with this for a while now, but can't seem to find the bottleneck of my issue.
OK, I am running Windows XP Pro, on a laptop. It has a SATA hard drive, and all software is up-to-date. When I ran it with the original drive installed, it used to spin down the disk, for power management. About a year and a half ago, I installed a bigger hard drive, which also was supposed to work some quicker - due to it's being 7200 rpm. But the drive does never seem to spin down, even if the setting in the power scheme under the Control panel tells it to do so, after a few minutes. Searching the net, I found some old posts, telling that not all disks support this kind of spin down. But since my disk is only a few years old, I thought it would support the thing. What I have noticed, is that if I leave the computer alone for a periode of time, the hard disk does make small working sounds, every so often. This afternoon, I did notice something new. I have turned off a couple of processes, and also uninstalled some old software. And now, after the set time, the hard disk will spin down, and then spin up after only one or two seconds. So, I do hold this to prove the disk does support the power managing spin-down. I am about to believe there might be some processes still running on my computer, which do attempt to create disk activity more or less stedily, and therefore the disk would now spin down, but the process then will require new activity the next second, causing the disk to spin up again. Only, I can't figure which process it would be. My first guess was security software. I am running MS Essentials, SuperAntiSpyware, and Malwarebytes. Yet, all of these securities, I am running on my other system, and there the disk spins down, and stays idle till it will be woke up by some activity which I can relate to, like me opening new windows or the like. Well, I wondered if anyone might have an idea as to which process to check out? Some webpages told me to turn off the task scheduler, and although I didn't have any schedules that would be running more than every 8th hour, I did try to disable that one. With no further results. Is there a way, maybe built-in with Windows itself, or with some other software, for me to trace all disk activity for a periode of time. I.e, something that maybe would create a disk activity logfile, which I could browse to see exactly which processes attempt disk access at for a periode of time. My idea would be, to try to trace which process keeps my disk running continously, or close to that. Sure, the disk does not make too much noice, but it drains some battery power, and it is totally useless for it to run, all the time the computer might be left on but unused, for long stretches of time throughout the day. Besides, it does produce a good amount of heat, causing the fan to spin quite frequently, and the fan does make some sound. :) All ideas and feedback are welcome, and sorry for the off-topic posting. If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original sender only. If your reply would benefit others on the list and your message is related to GW Micro, then please consider sending your message to [email protected] so the entire list will receive it. GW-Info messages are archived at http://www.gwmicro.com/gwinfo. You can manage your list subscription at http://www.gwmicro.com/listserv.
