T61 with Vista Ultimate - over active hard drive?

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Greg Gebhardt · #1 Post by **Greg Gebhardt** » Sat Jun 02, 2007 10:58 am

Even after long periods of doing nothing, my hard drive keeps running and running. System Idel Process stays arounf 80-90%. I am running the latest version of Norton cuase it is all that I foiund that will do Vista.

Anyone know what is going on?

rmendoza · #2 Post by **rmendoza** » Sat Jun 02, 2007 11:13 am

Indexing?

Why Norton? Why not Avast, or AVG? They both work with Vista, they are free, and Vista's own firewall is pretty good. Just my opinion.

Tholek · #3 Post by **Tholek** » Sat Jun 02, 2007 12:05 pm

Norton = bloat.

AVG is my choice. Kerio firewall too.

Greg Gebhardt · #4 Post by **Greg Gebhardt** » Sat Jun 02, 2007 12:15 pm

Sorry but I prefer Norton's latest suite and it was free. Many people say the same thing and the Norton is bloated but I have found it to work well and has protected me and my office network for years without any problems.

I have several friends who have not faired as well as I.

I think the "indexing" answer is a winner. The laptop is new and today was the first time I used for 4-5 hours and the hard drive has gone to normal activity and is only blinking every once in a while when I am not using.

#5 Post by **Kyocera** » Sat Jun 02, 2007 12:16 pm

Indexing most likely, you can change the way vista performs indexing, search for indexing.

SHoTTa35 · #6 Post by **SHoTTa35** » Sat Jun 02, 2007 1:13 pm

yeah, just go to start then type index and it'll pull up "Indexing Options" and you can see the status of the indexing. On a new machine it'll index for a while and especially with you keep adding new files (probably from an older machine)

kay.one · #7 Post by **kay.one** » Sun Jun 03, 2007 2:19 pm

I had the same problem, i would say its the supperfetch not indexing usually stops when you are interacting with the computer.

#8 Post by **jdhurst** » Sun Jun 03, 2007 3:36 pm

Two things (amongst numerous possibilites):
1. System Idle (on my machine) commonly runs 97 percent with all else 0 when the machine is idle. I don't think System Idle affects the hard drive.
2. Norton (Retail) likes to check Instant Messenger all the time (I had that happen). I disabled that checking (I don't use IM) and disk usage went from "all the time" to "not much at idle".
... JDH

ibmguy · #9 Post by **ibmguy** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 5:18 am

The neverending hard disk activity is a real show stopper why I do NOT upgrade to Windows Vista. It was a bad decision not to allow users completely disabling indexing.

It sucks battery, makes noise and not everybody needs fast searching.

--

Norton? O my god. This answers the question itself. if you want to screw up your system, just take the yellow pill

IBMGuy

#10 Post by **RonS** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 10:22 am

Norton IS the virus. Using nothing is better than using Norton.

#11 Post by **Kyocera** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 2:46 pm

I did find on my Vista Ultimate that if you are running Diskeeper it does periodically defrag so maybe that is part of the HD activity.

#12 Post by **jdhurst** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 4:24 pm

RonS wrote:Norton IS the virus. Using nothing is better than using Norton.

That would be foolish, indeed. Norton is not the best product, and I don't use the retail version. However, I have set it up for people, and when I set it up properly, it does not interfere with systems. I don't recommend it particularly, but if it is there and properly set up, it is better than nothing. ... JDH

#13 Post by **ryengineer** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 4:45 pm

I agree with JD, the latest version of Norton (2007) is good and if properly set up then it's a treat, I've seen it in action on one of my co-workers machine. However NOD32 is what I like/prefer/use and it doesn't let me slip away to any other antivirus system.

SHoTTa35 · #14 Post by **SHoTTa35** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 4:54 pm

ibmguy wrote:The neverending hard disk activity is a real show stopper why I do NOT upgrade to Windows Vista. It was a bad decision not to allow users completely disabling indexing.

It sucks battery, makes noise and not everybody needs fast searching.

--

Norton? O my god. This answers the question itself. if you want to screw up your system, just take the yellow pill

IBMGuy

Even if you don't use "fast searching" (who doesn't? Hello!) why would you want to turn off a great feature such as that. Indexing can be disabled however and superfetch too.

Indexing runs for the first few hrs or longer depending on how much stuff you have and how long you are using the machine (You just got a brand new T61, HELL NO you aren't just gonna sit there and let it index) So you play with it and add stuff and as soon as you're done you turn it off or put it to sleep, it can't index when it's sleeping so the next time you're using it (probably adding more files) it continues indexing and therefore has the HD light going.

Superfetch will start up each time the machine reboots. So if you give it a few minutes (or just put the machine to sleep or even hibernate) you wont have to deal with SuperFetch. Depending on the amount of RAM you have it will take longer as it caches more and more data to the RAM instead of just having it sitting there idle. Those programs such as "Free RAM XP" are of 1995 erra where you'd want to free RAM for usage, RAM is so cheap these days (especially DDR2, you lucky [censored] get 1GB for $40 while us DDR1 people pay close to and over $100 for slower RAM) So get some RAM, let the system use it and stop complaining when it does.

Yandar · #15 Post by **Yandar** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 6:48 pm

I see you have a T61, lucky $%^&"*¬

. It may be that Vista is still working it way through things. I have 3 machines with Vista, and in each case a new install take a week or two of use to settle down. It appears to be SuperFech learning your habits that flogs your HD.

Just a thought

foofightrs777 · #16 Post by **foofightrs777** » Tue Jun 26, 2007 1:27 pm

Yandar wrote:I see you have a T61, lucky $%^&"*¬ . It may be that Vista is still working it way through things. I have 3 machines with Vista, and in each case a new install take a week or two of use to settle down. It appears to be SuperFech learning your habits that flogs your HD.

Just a thought

I was just about to mention this. Also, if you have a low amount of RAM, say 1 gig or less, you can expect frequent HD activity.

T61 with Vista Ultimate - over active hard drive?

T61 with Vista Ultimate - over active hard drive?

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