Hard drive often running constantly

[stephen_33]

Same trouble with me but after much PC perusing by this non-pro, it seems to be a ghost in the system, flitting around spanking systems at random for seconds at a time - Pulling my hair out

Much the same for me but my trouble began last Thursday (10/Aug/17). It seemed as if new downloads were arriving but the frenetic disk activity hasn't stopped since. I was prompted then to allow Rptr (a gaming app I think?) to access my hard drive due to an update but I denied it. I've since uninstalled Rptr successfully but the drive problem persists.
Checking my downloads history, the only Windows download on the 10/Aug was for MS Photo. I tried to uninstall that but the uninstall button seems to be disabled for Windows software elements?
I searched for help & found the advice to troubleshoot & restart your machine but that didn't improve matters for my laptop. The one thing that has worked for me is restarting in 'Safe Mode'. My drive is now quiet & web pages haven't downloaded this fast in a long time! Of course the appearance is rather basic & graphics get stretched.
But this isn't a long term solution & I'm no closer to finding one - any advice please?

 

[stephen_33]

Curiously & after about 5 days of constant disk activity & impaired performance, my hard drive has suddenly stopped its hyperactivity. Why, I don't know but performance is now back to normal.

 

[Revenantsden]

Hi, since installing windows 10, initially fine now recently my hard drive runs constantly even when idle, it slows everything down and is becoming a real pain especially going online! When it is doing this there seems no obvious reason, i.e. it is not downloading updates, running defrag or disc check. Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I'm not a tech head so do not want to do anything drastic to solve this; anyone any ideas on this please let me know

Turn off Autoplay. Worked for me. Settings/Devices/Autoplay/Off. Reboot computer.

 

[Revenantsden]

Turn off Autoplay. Settings/Devices/Autoplay/off
Reboot computer. Worked for me.

 

[Revenantsden]

Turn off Autoplay. Settings/Devices/Autoplay/off
Reboot computer. Worked for me.

Also; unless you are using it, get rid of Microsoft "One Drive". I suspect this is the real problem in this matter.
Start/Apps/Apps and features/ go down list to One Drive/Delete.

One Drive tries to upload files to the internet for internet storage, if you enable it; I suspect it is also trying to check the files, even if you don't use it. I use external save drives, and don't need it. Deleted it.

 

[Revenantsden]

Hi, since installing windows 10, initially fine now recently my hard drive runs constantly even when idle, it slows everything down and is becoming a real pain especially going online! When it is doing this there seems no obvious reason, i.e. it is not downloading updates, running defrag or disc check. Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I'm not a tech head so do not want to do anything drastic to solve this; anyone any ideas on this please let me know

Turn off Autoplay. Settings/Devices/Autoplay/off
Reboot computer. Worked for me.

Also; unless you are using it, get rid of Microsoft "One Drive". I suspect this is the real problem in this matter.
Start/Apps/Apps and features/ go down list to One Drive/Delete.

One Drive tries to upload files to the internet for internet storage, if you enable it; I suspect it is also trying to check the files, even if you don't use it. I use external save drives, and don't need it. Deleted it.

 

[Revenantsden]

Tried this and the Hard Drive is running at 100% all the time. Any other suggestions? Thanks.

Turn off Autoplay. Settings/Devices/Autoplay/off
Reboot computer. Worked for me.

Also; unless you are using it, get rid of Microsoft "One Drive". I suspect this is the real problem in this matter.
Start/Apps/Apps and features/ go down list to One Drive/Delete.

One Drive tries to upload files to the internet for internet storage, if you enable it; I suspect it is also trying to check the files, even if you don't use it. I use external save drives, and don't need it. Deleted it.

 

[misterfish]

I have been experiencing the constant disk activity coupled with a wireless mouse which frequently froze for several seconds. I first used AML disk cleaner to delete thousands of temporary internet files, then switched off indexing on my C drive - this spent nigh on twenty minutes running through all the files on the drive. The disk drive was quiet after that but the mouse still locked up. I changed the mouse battery, and all is now well, for the moment at least.....

 

[denis1304]

i think my HD's spin less time after I change option in "Control Panel\Hardware and Sound\Power Options" from Balanced to Power saver and after they spin up for a reason, then they also spin down fairly quickly

 

[jlb7777]

Hi, since installing windows 10, initially fine now recently my hard drive runs constantly even when idle, it slows everything down and is becoming a real pain especially going online! When it is doing this there seems no obvious reason, i.e. it is not downloading updates, running defrag or disc check. Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I'm not a tech head so do not want to do anything drastic to solve this; anyone any ideas on this please let me know

Go to task manager and stop the superfetch process.

 

[George A]

Stopping dropbox worked for me. One may want to deselect in its setting screen the option of starting with W10 start.

 

[davehc]

The thread is very old. Maybe the posters solved the problems

 

[szore]

I am having same problem; my hard drive is running NON STOP, yet task master shows disk activity to be zero. So, am I under surveillance by the NSA? I did work for the mafia once...

 

[AJK]

My laptop screen is cracked and always made cursor jump around, when touchscreen is enabled. This also caused hard drive to constantly spin away. One of the windows updates enabled the touchscreen and the hard drive went crazy. So disabling the touchscreen interface fixed the hard drive issue in my case.

 

[SlyNation]

I had this problem as well! Turns out, it was a Trojan virus that 2 antivirus programs could not detect. I then ran Windows Defender Anti-Virus and low and behold it found 2 of them. One was called Pho!zy and I cannot remember the second one. I deleted the infected file and now my PC runs like new again. At first, I thought it might be a new Windows bug because that's around the time this problem started occurring, but due to my Hard Drives no longer makes loud noises for hours on end, I am 100% positive these Trojans were the problem. My advice is to run full scans with 2-3 different TRUSTED Anti Virus programs and see what comes up.

 

[arthur brogard]

I think I've got this problem. I've got five hard drives hooked up. How do I know which one it is that is making the noise? There's always something going... I can hear but I don't know which. Task manager shows all of the disks as doing nothing. Something wrong there i guess.
I looked to run windows defender but couldn't find how to do it. My security stuff said everything was fine and didn't give me an option that I could see to initiate a scan.
Found a couple of places on the web showing how to do it but their advice didn't work for me because I didn't get the same screens - perhaps they were talking about a previous version.
I would like to know what's going on
What 'trusted' anti virus would you suggest?