Constant Disk Activity - Vista x32

My notebook has little blips of disk activity constantly going on, causing my disk to never fall asleep, thus probably slurping my battery more then it should.

Ive already stuck a knife in the indexing service, and even with my A/V scanner turned off and no other software running (checked in taskmanager) the constant activity keeps going, so im placing the blame square on vista.

Does anyone know how to see what is causing disk activity to occur, or perhaps some tips on how to stop vista from nibbling my disk somuch?

 

It's probably drive indexing. It could also be automatically defragmenting.

 

Make sure you have SP1 installed... it helps a bit.

Main causes of disk activity in Vista are:
- Superfetch. You can search for plenty more info. Can be disabled in Services.
- Defender scans. Scans once a day by default. You may want to set it to once a week.
- Defrag. Runs once a week by default. I find the auto-defrag useful but you may want to look at the schedule and maybe adjust it if you like.

Search indexing doesn't add much except for the first few hours while it indexes your drive... I'd turn it back on, it's really useful IMO.

 

Ah yes, Windows defender is a good one to check for too, good call. Superfetch definitely reads from the hard disk but it improves load times if you open and close a lot of apps. It depends on your usage style. I'd have said the other way around, leave superfetch on and turn indexing off (it does use your drive in the background even after the first boots but can be tamed by indexing fewer locations).

 

Yeah you can search and find threads debating superfetch endlessly... it has its pros and cons so I don't want to turn this thread into a big superfetch thread... but it definitely does add disk access, especially at bootup and when you close programs. I suggest trying it both ways and seeing what works for you.

The disk access from search indexing is mostly up front while it's first indexing your drive... then not that much after that... while with superfetch, the disk access continues anytime you boot up or exit programs. Superfetch does improve program load times though, so it's a tradeoff.

I should mention that getting a fast and quiet hard drive can improve the situation... see the hardware forum if you're interested in that.

Oh yeah... how much RAM do you have installed?

 

As mentionned in first post, already covered that bit as its been chewing on my other machines before.

Ill look into this one, I figured vista was doing that on its own now since all manual defragmenting seems to have dissapeared. Thanks!

Ive checked, it seems to be factory installed with SP1.

Looked it up, It seems to be speeding up program load time, but it also has a nack of stuffing up alot of memory. Not sure what to do with this thing. Most tests say it only differs a mere fraction of a second on load time though, so not sure its usefull.

I hate windows babying me. Defender is shut down along with the whole security circus. Running NOD32 now.

I was wondering, is its possible to tie some maintenance tasks like virus scanning and defragmenting to when a mains powersource is detected?

I have an intense hatred towards the vista search engine. It failed me to such levels that Ive simply installed a 3rd party disk searching tool (Agent Ransack). Even when I direct vistas search to the directory I KNOW contains the file I need, it still blindly stumbles past it telling me it doesnt exist. Its done this several times on several machines actually. So any effort it puts in that search is wasted IMHO.

Ive tried this before, dont see much of a difference to be honest.

Ive been contemplating installing a 500gb 7200RPM drive, but ive heard this could result in some nasty heat problems. Im also not quite sure how to migrate the factory installed recovery partition, as I think it is a bit of a vital part of the notebook incase something seriously breaks down.

Im running with 4gb or RAM on it, although I think it might actually just be 3.12gb due to a x32 platform.

 

You can clone the recovery partition using free software such as DriveImageXML... no big deal.

Nasty heat problems? Well... it may depend on your laptop I guess, but the vast majority can handle it fine... no problems here w/ my 160gb 7200rpm Hitachi drive.

I forgot to mention you could also have third-party programs contributing to disk access. Press ctrl-shift-Esc to bring up Task Mgr... then go to the Performance tab and click on Resource Monitor... then click on the Disk section to expand it and it should show you what files are being accessed and what processes are accessing them and how much data they're reading and writing.