Constant Hard Disk Activity T400 Win XP

[wwwalker2]

I have a new T400 running Win XP. The hard disk pulses on and off at about 1 second intervals. Forever. Even when booted in Safe Mode. Lenovo's repair was to re-install VISTA. That worked for the disk, but not for me. When I reinstalled XP, the problem resumed.
Passes all diagnostic tests. The only think that turns off the hard disk is disabling or removing the DVDRAM drive. I tried updating the DVD driver and firmware for that but no updates were available. Any suggestions?

[ryan1212]

Do you have windows desktop search installed and indexing your hard drive? What about virus protection?

[Harryc]

As a test, try disabling autorun on your optical drive.

[wwwalker2]

File indexing is turned off.

I tried disabling autorun in the registry but that didnt help.

In the install/unistall list, I found an application called 'drag & drop to disk'. I uninstalled that and the disk seems to have quieted down. Not sure what that app does or whether I will miss it. Unfortunately, I also got rid of rescue/recovery at the same time so that might have been the culprit. I wasnt planning to use r/r anyway.

[pipspeak]

I had a simlar problem on my T61 and by viewing which processes were accessing the drive (through task manager, for example) I narrowed it down to some of the wireless networking-related processes (csrss.exe and lsass.exe). I can't remember the fix but I found it by googling. The HDD still pulses every 5-10 seconds but I suspect that might be down to AV, firewall, and RnR software.

I understand how infuriating it can be.

[basketb]

If you haven't turned it off, it could also be that the HD is being defragmented while your computer is idle.

[pipspeak]

how do you turn continual defragmentation off? I never knew it could be turned on... I simply run a full defrag every month or so.

[Marin85]

how do you turn continual defragmentation off? I never knew it could be turned on... I simply run a full defrag every month or so.

It is not continual, it´s scheduled. Check scheduled tasks or, alternatively, Disk Defrag under System Tools and disable "Run on a schedule" (you could also change the schedule).

Hope this helps

Marin

[basketb]

how do you turn continual defragmentation off? I never knew it could be turned on... I simply run a full defrag every month or so.

There is probably an easier way than what I describe here (but I wouldn't know). What you need is TweakUI from MS. It allows you to set many things that otherwise can only be changed by modifying the registry directly. Within TweakUI, there is a section called "General" and then there is a check box for "Optimize hard disk while idle", which is checked by default. Uncheck that check box. BTW: as far as I know, this is different from the defragmentation that you can schedule with the Windows scheduler.