Constant hard drive access

[theeldergeek]

Just built myself a new work PC, which is all fine and dandy - nice high spec etc, but I have this VERY irritating problem.

 

The hard drive sounds like it is constantly being accessed.

 

The HDD light only flicks on and off occasionally during idle, but the hard drive sounds like it's being defragged!!

 

I have turned off indexing, I have unchecked "optimise drive" in TweakUI, I have uninstalled any software that I thought could be accessing the drive (AV for example) but the problem remained.

 

I am at my wits end! It's one of those things that once you notice it, it does your head in!

 

Only one other significant thing - a couple of times, the PC has stopped at POST, and a message, "a problem has been detected with your hard drive, press enter to continue" has flashed on the screen. I press enter, and WinXP loads fine. I ran CHKDSK /R and no problems were reported.

 

I have disabled SMART in the BIOS, and the error message no longer appears, but the drive still has this 'access' noise all the time.

 

Any ideas?

 

A point to note is that it doesn't do it when sitting at the login screen, only when XP loads, and then for all users.

 

Could I have a dodgy drive that is doing what it needs to, but is likely to be a candidate for early life failure?

[Arthur]

What make/model is the hard disk? I would try running the HDD manufacturers diagnostic program to see if that says your drive is faulty. UBCD has all of them on one disc.

[3s-gtech]

You built a new PC with a nice spec, and put XP on it?!

 

Try the HDD in a different SATA channel, and possibly with a different cable, to eliminate the slight possibility of issues there. It does sound like the drive is faulty though.

[irsprint84]

have you got sccm?

[SYNACK]

If you are getting SMART errors the hard drive is stuffed and should be replaced under warrenty or otherwise. A SMART fail is perfectly good grounds for a warrenty claim as it is the hard drive itself is saying its stuffed. Use something like the SMART tab in SpeedFan to see what is cooked:

 

http://www.ofzenandcomputing.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/speedfan-smart.png

http://www.almico.com/speedfan443.exe

 

I agree in questioning the choice of XP, Vista or 7 would have come out and told you all this automatticly without the need for troubleshooting.

[theeldergeek]

You built a new PC with a nice spec, and put XP on it?!

 

Yeah, why not? It works perfectly well enough for what I want, i.e. work.

[theeldergeek]

What make/model is the hard disk? I would try running the HDD manufacturers diagnostic program to see if that says your drive is faulty. UBCD has all of them on one disc.

 

Downloaded SeaTools for Seagate drives and that confirmed the drive was indeed faulty. Many thanks.