W500 Hard Drive Running Constantly

[arrmo]

Hi,

My apologies up front, as this is going to sound like a strange problem - but it really does seem to be reproducible ... unfortunately!

I am finding that the HDD on my new W500 starts running almost constantly, and when it does it bogs down the machine terribly. It seems that I get into this mode when I dock / undock, or when I have been running for a time with a bunch of disk access (like installing a large application for example). The fix seems to be - going into standby, and then just resuming, with the same configuration (i.e. dock, network connection, display, etc). Then the disk activity returns to normal ... for a while at least.

Any suggestions or thoughts?

Thanks!

[ZaZ]

What OS are you using and how long have you had it?

[arrmo]

Hi,

I'm using Win XP Pro, and it's a new laptop - have only had it for ~ 1-2 weeks.

Thoughts?

Thanks!

[Marin85]

The issues you describe in your first post remind me pretty much of my experience with the Lenovo XP image that came preinstalled on my laptop long time ago. The solution for me turned out to be simple: clean install of anything except for XP and never looked back... Having said that, your issues are definitely not typical for a healthy Windows XP installation! I would suggest you
1) Check for malware (use some decent AV as well as some good anti-malware like Malwarebytes Anti-Malware or Spybot S&D);
2) Check the filesystem for errors;
3) Testing the HD won´t hurt (or for that matter a complete hardware test by PC-Doctor or a similar program won´t either);
4) Download process explorer from Microsoft sysinternals and look up what processes take up the most I/O after performing some of the problematic tasks you describe above;
5) Take a look into the scheduled tasks (like windows restore points, shadow copies, Rescue&Recovery backups, defrag, AV scans, etc);
6) Turn off windows indexing for a while and how that makes the machine behave;
7) AV software can sometimes cause increased HD/CPU activity after plugging new devices (rather cpu here), installing large programs, unpacking archives or similar;

Good luck,

Marin

[dlo]

Arrmo,

Were you ever able to resolve this?

I have the exact same problem with my hard drive spinning(noise is very noticeable) even though there is no increased disk activity being reported.

Like you it seems to start happening after the system has been up for a while and goes away for a whole if you just put the machine to sleep for like 15 seconds.

Seems like I have seen a couple of people reporting this issue but no one has a resolution.


W500
Windows 7 64Bit

[Greg Gebhardt]

I have had three W500 Thinkpads and every one exhibited alot of hard drive activity during the first week of so of use. I though maybe indexing.

They "calmed down" after about a week or so.

[Marin85]

I have had three W500 Thinkpads and every one exhibited alot of hard drive activity during the first week of so of use. I though maybe indexing.

They "calmed down" after about a week or so.

But all of them were loaded with Vista, right?