Constant HDD activity

By Kenji
in Hardware Hangout

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Kenji

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As of recently, one of my HDDS has been constantly active. It does not effect the performance of my PC but the noise drives me up the wall. Both my HDDs are fully defragged and I cant seem to find what is making it do this. HDD tune reports that my hdds are healthy (one has a warning due to a broken cable a while back but its fine now). Ran a full system scan and nothing shows up.

I dont know what to do and I dont really want to format my system, that would be a last resort as I dont have the time to do that.

Anyone got any ideas?

I have a ST3320820AS and ST380011A. I am not sure what one is making noise.

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Grand Master

temple_treefrog

Posted
Posted

Monitor the S.M.A.R.T. status of your hard drives.

In the past several years I owned two hard drives which failed. The same set of circumstances occurred with each drive, both had a high amount of 'activity noise' even though the system was idle. After two-three weeks of hard drive issues, the S.M.A.R.T./PFA detected a potential failure and recommended to replace the drives.

You might wish to consider isolating each drive you own, to find out where the noise is coming from. If I were you, I'd then backup any essential data.

Good luck! :)

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Grand Master

temple_treefrog

Posted
Posted

CPU usage is around 0-2% when it happens. Currently the thrashing has stopped so I cant do anything else. Indexing is off and as i said, my drives are healthy.

The previous hard drives I mentioned were healthy too. Always zero to little fragmentation, well maintained OS etc. Ironically they were both Seagate as well (ST31000528AS).

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