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    VAIO Z HDD always in operation..!!!

    Discussion in 'VAIO / Sony' started by bonbooni, Aug 29, 2009.

  1. bonbooni

    bonbooni Notebook Consultant

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    Hi, all

    I asked this before I bought it as you told me it does not have its HDD always running. I suffer from the same problem in my TZ and my FW and now the Z. I hear the HDD drive all the time working and its LED access flashing. Even when I am not doing anything. What is that ? Is it something with all VAIOs. My third VAIO now and the same thing. What can I do to reduce or cancel that. I have other laptops(other brands I mean) none of them does that. :confused:
     
    bonbooni, Aug 29, 2009
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  2. reaborg

    reaborg Notebook Consultant

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    Well, you should see some background activity when you're not using your laptop (when its idle). Its either 1) windows indexing, 2) windows update downloading/installing, 3) windows defender checking, 4) other background processes that kicks in when you go idle.
     
    reaborg, Aug 30, 2009
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  3. TDO

    TDO Notebook Consultant

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    What OS are you using?

    And no this is not normal.

    TDO
     
    TDO, Aug 30, 2009
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  4. bonbooni

    bonbooni Notebook Consultant

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    Ok, it is not normal but I am having this with three VAIO laptops I bought them over two years. The last of them a few days ago. I am having VISTA on all.
     
    bonbooni, Aug 30, 2009
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  5. reaborg

    reaborg Notebook Consultant

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    Vista does lot more background processing than XP, so not sure what you are considering abnormal as that is relative, but would probably help if you quantified how often the HDD is in operation, and for how long each time and circumstances surrounding them.
     
    reaborg, Aug 30, 2009
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  6. TDO

    TDO Notebook Consultant

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    A good start for finding out what is causing the hd activity is perfmon.exe.
    There you can see what process is accessing your hd.

    TDO
     
    TDO, Aug 31, 2009
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  7. ScuderiaConchiglia

    ScuderiaConchiglia NBR Vaio Team Curmudgeon

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    Another good tool for finding out what is REALLY accessing the drive is the SysInternals process explorer. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

    It is like task manager with LOTS of extras. One of the columns you can sort on is the Disk IO counts. It will point you to the source of what you are seeing. You are likely to get all sorts of advice about turning off indexing, prefetch etc. etc. Ignore such advice until you determine the actual source.

    Gary
     
    ScuderiaConchiglia, Aug 31, 2009
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  8. fast Lane

    fast Lane Notebook Enthusiast

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    If you have SSD turn of auto defragmenting and indexing. They run all the time and are not really needed on an SSD.
     
    fast Lane, Aug 31, 2009
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  9. ScuderiaConchiglia

    ScuderiaConchiglia NBR Vaio Team Curmudgeon

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    I understand not needing auto defragmented on an SSD. (Although you are wrong to say it runs all the time, it runs ONLY when the machine is inactive for a certain period of time and then stops if the machine becomes active.)

    But why not have the indexing. It improves the speed of searches even on an SSD and after the initial index runs ONLY when a new document is added or an existing one is changed in the directories that are under index control. (Not the entire disk BTW.)

    Gary
     
    ScuderiaConchiglia, Aug 31, 2009
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  10. fast Lane

    fast Lane Notebook Enthusiast

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    oh. I thought indexing was running all the time! I guess I disabled it as much because I never use the search tool and to save power (one less thing running). Also I thought the access times were very low so searching would be a snap even without indexing.
     
    fast Lane, Aug 31, 2009
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  11. ScuderiaConchiglia

    ScuderiaConchiglia NBR Vaio Team Curmudgeon

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    The service is loaded all the time but paged out until a document is added or changed (so it doesn't really save any appreciable or even measureable amount of power). Access times are low, but searches will still be faster with the index, even on an SSD.

    Gary
     
    ScuderiaConchiglia, Aug 31, 2009
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