SOLVED Physical Disks Being Accessed All The Time

[SmokeWithFire]

Hi, I have an odd one here. I have a couple of SSD's in my system, and a couple of HD's. I've installed everything on SSD's and am using HD's as data drives - I even went to the extent of installing windows 10 without any HD's plugged in during install, I added them after windows 10 was installed.

A few months later, I'm noticing 'HD' noises (you know the rattle of the head movements as the hunt for the data packets on the surface of the disk) all the time. So I open the Resource Monitor, and have a look at which process is making all that noise. I see NOTHING. Absolutely nothing access my external drives, yet the constantly whine as if they were optimizing or something.

Any one have any suggestions as to source the culprit? I read something somewhere about a Sentinal Service, but I don't have that installed.

 

[Tim Locke]

Indexing? Part of Windows so it might not show in Resource monitor as it only runs when nothing else is happening. Try turning it off and see what happens.

 

[Digerati]

Indexing would not suddenly cause the disks to be accessed all the time months later. The indexing would have started right after you connected them up. And if the data on those drives remained fairly constant, indexing would have finished pretty quick.

I sure would scan for malware.

But you say constant whine - that is not what you hear when a drive is constantly being accessed. Constant whine sounds more like the motor bearings beginning to fail. If a drive is being accessed, you will hear the stepper motor for the R/W head skipping back and forth.

 

[SmokeWithFire]

I got to the bottom of it.. After unplugging physical drives, the noise was still present and after putting my ear in the box turns out the noise is coming from one of the Gfx card fans... Wouldn't have thought a few month old nvidia gtx 970 would do that! Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[Digerati]

Wouldn't have thought a few month old nvidia gtx 970 would do that!

If will within warranty, I would contact the maker and seek a RMA for a replacement. If the fan bearings suddenly started to whine (assuming the fans are just not spinning full speed thus full loudness - suggesting a different problem than worn bearings), then the fan will like seize sooner than later. You sure don't want that.

You should check your GPU temps and make sure the card (and whole computer too) is free of heat trapping dust.

 

[Saltgrass]

Was it the GTX 970s the lawsuit was filed on? I got a notice from Newegg one day but I have 980s so it did not effect me.

 

[Digerati]

Was it the GTX 970s the lawsuit was filed on?

Yes but that was over published specs not matching actual specs. The suit had nothing to do with product reliability or premature failures.

 

[BigFeet]

I feel your pain. I recently had to replace the fans on my AMD hd7950. They started grinding less than a month after the warranty ran out.