Why is Vista hammering my harddrive?

I am running Vista Business 64 Sp1. I have 4 GB of memory. Vista starts up pretty quick but I notice that my hardrive light is going on or is on continuously like crazy for like 5 to 6 mins. I have looked at various solutions to this issue. My virus scan is not running and the disk doesn't look to be defragging. I also went through some of Les's tweaks and shut off drive indexing. But even with all this my hardrive looks to be getting pounded upon boot into Vista. The drive is an 80 GB 5400rpm Fujitsu drive. Any ideas what could be causing this? Is it that the drive is just too low rpm wise? I want to do a 7200 rpm drive eventually. Thanks.

 

I believe that's SuperFetch. At least it stopped doing this after I disabled the service.

 

SuperFetch, Indexing, and Shadow Volume Files.

Which would be stupid to disable, as you might as well use XP if that's what you wanted.

 

Lithus said it all.System restore too may be.

 

That's why I have Indexing off.

 

I have indexing off too.

Look at your task manager and see the running applications.

 

It's mostly caused by the gimmicky "Superfetch". If you disable it in your "services", all the nonsense you described stops, and you'll probably never notice the difference opening your programs.

 

Windows Defender is another possibility. I set mine to scan weekly instead of daily. If you use a different spyware scanner, you can just shut it off.

Search indexing isn't much of an issue once it gets all your files indexed, which should probably only take a few hours. So I recommend leaving indexing on.

Superfetch is a trade-off. Faster program load-times, but the cost is more disk access at other times. It's just a matter of whether it's worth it to you or not.

 

Thanks everybody. It looks like shutting SuperFetch did the trick. Even though I had shut off indexing, restore points and windows defender, it seems that Superfetch made the most noticable impact in regards to hardrive access. All that hardrive access can't be good for the drive. Lithus is right, if you shut everything off that makes Vista, Vista, then you might as well use XP. Maybe that is telling me something In any event I bought Vista since I wanted a Windows license and wanted to play with the latest Windows. I will be using Linux most of the time anyway.

Anyways, Vista x64 with 4 GB of ram and tweeked seems real fast. I still haven't done the clean install, which I believe will make my system even faster. Thanks again. Love seeing the hardrive light off

 

Is the light constantly off now?

 

Vista isn't half bad once you turn off all the useless crap that's included with it. Seriously, I doubt Superfetch is doing any harm, but it is annoying, and I noticed little, if any, benefit of keeping it loaded. If anything, my system boots quicker without it.

 

Including UAC.. Useless Account Control.

The VIRUS came and destroyed my comp including IE7 & UAC couldnt do anything...

Norton 2008 was as useless that day..

Now i am not passing my opinion but my Experience