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Thread ID: 95326 2008-12-02 09:18:00 Hard Drives pulsing read activity sbowness (14287) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
725115 2008-12-02 09:18:00 I've had Vista running for about 4 weeks. I have three SATA hard drives. A few days ago the second and third hard drives began a constant cycle of a short pulse of read activity for about half a second every 1.5 seconds. It starts shortly after the Vista desktop comes up and never stops. The disks won't power down as part of their power saving setting. This doesn't happen in Safe Mode.

I have run virus checks with Norton 360 V2 and Kaspersky Online and found nothing. Adaware can't find anything either.

I've tried disabling the Superfetch and Indexing services and defrag is not set to run. None of these make a difference.

I'd be grateful for any suggestions.
sbowness (14287)
725116 2008-12-02 10:52:00 Kill indexing / right mouse on the hdd / properties Speedy Gonzales (78)
725117 2008-12-02 13:58:00 Speedy, he's already tried disabling Indexing and it hasn't helped. beeswax34 (63)
725118 2008-12-02 18:39:00 This might be something that sata drives do. I have had a a new computer since July running XP Home SP3 and it has a sata drive. Ever since it has been in there the drive light flickers on about every second. Has not caused any problems.
:)
Trev (427)
725119 2008-12-02 19:00:00 Thats true, I have noticed his SATA hdd flickers quite a bit

Its probably one of the services communicating with something. Or depending on whats installed, its updating something

Is SP1 installed?
Speedy Gonzales (78)
725120 2008-12-02 20:31:00 Yes, SP1 is installed.

It's not just a flicker, it's a significant read that takes about half a second.
sbowness (14287)
725121 2008-12-03 07:29:00 the red light is good news:
your hard drive still can power an LED for half a second
pcuser7895 (12979)
725122 2008-12-03 08:17:00 I have run virus checks with Norton 360 V2

Norton might be running something in the background some previous versions had these characteristics.
stormdragon (6013)
725123 2008-12-03 08:26:00 Have you got enough RAM? mzee (3324)
725124 2008-12-03 16:59:00 I have 4GB of RAM with Vista x64, so that should be plenty. sbowness (14287)
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