Hard drive is always being accessed

[InfoPlease]

I can't delete it, because it's being used. But the second is what I did when both min and max were at 2046. I've rebooted a number of times since then. Also, as I mentioned, on my old machine, Win 2k, which I've had for years, I never once thought about the page file or whether it was fragmented. Again, this problem occurs even in Safe Mode, with both XP and Vista, on brand new drives, so I'm not sure the page file is the issue. Sorry to keep shooting you down. But if this were simple, I wouldn't have had to post here. I'm starting to wonder if it's the way the PC has been engineered, though I'd hate to think so: the disposable hard drive. Run it continuously for a year or so till it crashes, toss it, and put in a new one (hopefully having had the foresight to image it regularly to a backup--if not, tough luck).

[erico]

Having watched my hdd led on my ASUS box for a while, I also see the access at a a fairly high rate. I believe this is normal and think you are reading more into it than there is. Unless you are hearing odd sounds from your hard disk or noticing some odd behavior in your operating system's behavior, why worry about it. Your hard disk does have a warranty. You can back up your entire hard disk as an image to an external drive. If your hard disk craps out just clone the image to a new hard disk. With a backup image you have everything, OS included, protected. Now that is just my own humble opinion.

[InfoPlease]

"why worry about it." Because the disk is always thrashing, which will cause premature failure and presumably indicates either something wrong or poor engineering. Does anyone from HP engineering monitor these boards?

[erico]

There are many steps you can take.

1) The most severe action to minimize disk access is to turn off drive indexing in Services,

2) Since you have a third party firewall you can disable Windows Defender.

3) You can disable Superfetch in Services.

4) in Virtual Memory management uncheck automatically manage paging file size for all drives. Set your paging file size to 3GB (ib both minimum and maximum)

[InfoPlease]

1) I turned off unnecessary services (mentioned in my first post), using BlackViper's recommendations (http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm), though I'm not sure turning off Indexing is severe.

2) Already did that.

3) I'm using XP, so no Superfetch.

4) It recommended 4413, so I set it to that. Also tried shutting it off. Makes no difference.

I think we're covering the same ground again, but thanks anyway--you gave it a good try.

[RoyalSerpent]

Some optical drives will poll the hard drive at regular interval.  Disable auto load may fix your problem. 

XP should not poll the HDD if it's a clean install (zero format) and the power setting is set to Minimal Power Management.  The only other variables are the BIOS and other add-on proggies.

I'd defrag the whole disc to see if the problem re-surface.  All my programs run well without a page file.  This main rig is equipped with XP Pro and 1GB RAM...no pagefile via conservativeswapfileusage switch.

Test only with the boot drive.  If okay, then add the 2nd drive.

[InfoPlease]

Thanks. I hadn't heard of the optical drive autoloading. Where would I find it? I don't see anything in Services (except LightScribe labeling, which I'd turned off) or msconfig.

I did do a clean install on a blank HD, but it happens both with XP and the Vista HD it came with, even in Safe Mode, so I think it's something outside the usual suspects--possibly the way it was designed, though I hope HP engineers wouldn't do that. What do you mean by minimal power mgmt? I have it set to turn off the monitor after 10 mins and the HD after an hour (same settings as on my Win2k box)--that's it. No standby, no hibernate. But even setting them to Never doesn't change the HD accessing.

I had defragged the disk--was surprised to see that it was 17% fragmented after a clean install on a new disk, with defrag recommended. But it didn't help.

From what I've read, running without a pagefile is not a great idea, but I've tried it all three ways--none, fixed, and system managed. No change.

I only have one drive on this.

[RoyalSerpent]

http://www.windowsreference.com/windows-xp/disable-autoplay-cddvd-in-xp/

Some programs may balk without a pagefile.  If you don't have any problem with your proggies and the conservative pagefile switch, then there is no need to waste space with a pagefile.

XP's Power Options (control panel) should include a setting for mininal power. 

Perhaps this is a unique quirk with this HP board/BIOS.  I've seen similar behaviour with some DELL PCs.

I've worked with Abit, Asus, MSI, ASRock, Biostar, DFI, XFX, EVGA, Soltek, Gigabyte, ECS, Foxconn, and Intel boards.  None will page the hard drive after a clean install.  You may want to strip the board bare, except for mouse, keyboard, RAM, and hard drive.  If problem persists, then you have a funky board.

[InfoPlease]

OK, thanks. I disabled autoplay--didn't help.

I found the setting for minimal power in the dropdown list--again, no help.

erico mentioned in a post above that he saw this with his Asus box, so maybe it is by design, though I can't imagine HP's engineers allowing it intentionally.

This is an ECS board, and it came with only a fax modem card--with or without, still does it, even in Safe Mode.

[Bob_Heath]

I have the same problem with the hard drive constantly reading and/or writing.

I have used ProcessExplorer but see nothing untoward.

I would like to try the pagefile manual setting proceudre.  However, I cannot delete pagefile.sys as it is always being used by another program.

How do I get around this problem to delete the file and set the pagefile size manually?

Thank you