Resons why m HDD's red light suddenly stars flickering

[wumply]

It doesn't just flicker--it flickers furiously.

I realize this can easily be because some update from my A-V or my spyware is being downloaded/installed, but those 2 programs indicate this on my monitor. Ditto with MS updates.

But often there is no monitor indication, period! Just the HDD light all by itself. This could well be due to some process, right?

What are some of the processes and what triggers them--I mean such HDD activity doesn't appear to occur on any regular basis.

Are there other sources of this sudden flickering?

[Conan]

It's probably the indexing service.

[wumply]

Conan...so what does that indexing service DO?

[Conan]

Taken from:

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/OptimizeXP.html


3. Disable Indexing Service
The Indexing Service in Windows XP indexes your files presumably to shorten the time needed to search your hard drive if you are looking for a specific file or part of a phrase inside a file. However, the constant indexing of files actually slows down system performance and does not benefit search performance except for extreme complex searches.

Instructions - To disable the Indexing Service go into "My Computer", right-click on all your hard drive partitions one at a time, left-click "Properties". Uncheck "Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching". Select "Apply changes to subfolders and files". If any files cannot be updated select "Ignore All".

[Curio]

Download a program that will tell you what is accessing the disk like filemon from sysinternals or Disk Action from PCMag utilities, it will remove all doubt as to what is accessing the disk. Many softs annoyingly start scanning the disk for malware or indexing it's content when you would rather they didn't.

[wumply]

Conan...thanks. That site "My Webpages" was cool! I bookmarked it and plan to read 90% of it. I disabled the indexing service.

Curio: my thanks to you too for your input. I looked at Disk Action but apparently it is only for 98 and ME. I didn't see one for XP. I'd be interested in your impressions of Vista if you've had it long enough to form opinions..

[Curio]

Disk Action for 2000/xp - http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1944800,00.asp

Vista is cool especially if you have a widescreen monitor, there are lots of things in it which will make it a good seller for business and home users. It's a shame about the boot loader though - editing boot.ini was so simple

[egghead]

Download a program that will tell you what is accessing the disk like filemon from sysinternals or Disk Action from PCMag utilities, it will remove all doubt as to what is accessing the disk. Many softs annoyingly start scanning the disk for malware or indexing it's content when you would rather they didn't.

FILEMON
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Filemon.html

cannot locate a trial for disk action and it sounds pretty darn good

Egghead

[Curio]

PC Mag Utilities costs $19.99 for a year subscription and you can download all of them for the year - that's the whole current library plus one new one a month as they are released over the next 12 months. Some are good some are not but for £12-ish you can't really moan about it as there are many which justify it on their own.

[egghead]

Microsoft bought filemon

get it here
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/filemon.mspx

regmon,
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/regmon.mspx

And now Microsofts new offering Proccess monitor,
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/processesandthreads/processmonitor.mspx

Must have ultillities...

Dam my active desktop calendar really uses my hard drive more than anything... strange

[Coffee]

Thanks for the replies you guys. WinSysinternals create great apps and have used these before :D However what they dont do is show port access on filemon or files or files on tcpview. Would be nice if someone came up with an easy to understand and simple interface for something similar and works just as effective though :D

Thanks.