USB hard drive constantly being accessed.

Does anyone have a guess as to what might be accessing my USB
external harddrive? It's the second drive on my computer, which is
a Dell Studio XPS 9000 running Windows 7 x64. It seems like every
five minutes something is accessing the drive to catalog or search
it, or whatever.

It will chug away for several minutes, then it dumps everything in
a long series of chuggs and is quite for a while. Then it starts
up again. I've got Avast as my antivirus but it doesn't seem to be
running when the drive is accessed.

-Al-

"Al Smith" <> wrote in message
news:6nR3n.59698$Db2.34312@edtnps83...
> Does anyone have a guess as to what might be accessing my USB external
> harddrive? It's the second drive on my computer, which is a Dell Studio
> XPS 9000 running Windows 7 x64. It seems like every five minutes something
> is accessing the drive to catalog or search it, or whatever.
>
> It will chug away for several minutes, then it dumps everything in a long
> series of chuggs and is quite for a while. Then it starts up again. I've
> got Avast as my antivirus but it doesn't seem to be running when the drive
> is accessed.
>
> -Al-

Do you have disk indexing turned on or something like that

Gilgamesh wrote:
>
> "Al Smith" <> wrote in message
> news:6nR3n.59698$Db2.34312@edtnps83...
>> Does anyone have a guess as to what might be accessing my USB external
>> harddrive? It's the second drive on my computer, which is a Dell
>> Studio XPS 9000 running Windows 7 x64. It seems like every five
>> minutes something is accessing the drive to catalog or search it, or
>> whatever.
>>
>> It will chug away for several minutes, then it dumps everything in a
>> long series of chuggs and is quite for a while. Then it starts up
>> again. I've got Avast as my antivirus but it doesn't seem to be
>> running when the drive is accessed.
>>
>> -Al-
>
> Do you have disk indexing turned on or something like that


I took another look at disk indexing, and the USB external drive
is not checked.

-Al-

Al Smith wrote:
> Gilgamesh wrote:
>>
>> "Al Smith" <> wrote in message
>> news:6nR3n.59698$Db2.34312@edtnps83...
>>> Does anyone have a guess as to what might be accessing my USB
>>> external harddrive? It's the second drive on my computer, which is
>>> a Dell Studio XPS 9000 running Windows 7 x64. It seems like every
>>> five minutes something is accessing the drive to catalog or search
>>> it, or whatever.
>>>
>>> It will chug away for several minutes, then it dumps everything in a
>>> long series of chuggs and is quite for a while. Then it starts up
>>> again. I've got Avast as my antivirus but it doesn't seem to be
>>> running when the drive is accessed.
>>>
>>> -Al-
>>
>> Do you have disk indexing turned on or something like that
>
>
> I took another look at disk indexing, and the USB external drive
> is not checked.
>
> -Al-
Guesses are easy to come up with, it is the actual diagnosis that can tend
to elude one...

Possibly a hard drive defragmenter program that was told to run in the
background mode.

A 3rd party monitoring program, checking drive temperature or drive
condition.

Synchronizing or mirroring software that is trying to keep a folder or file
on the USB drive identical to another one.

A virus or Trojan horse program looking for a place to hide or just slowly
spreading it's infection. Run a scan using another brand of anti-virus
software. Not saying Avast is bad, just that I don't trust any anti-virus
program to be 100% effective all of the time.

Try booting into the safe mode and see if the condition persists as that
would eliminate most 3rd party programs and user configurable options.

Try booting one of the Live Linux CD's found at: http://www.livecdlist.com/
.. If the problem persists using a version of Linux, like Puppy Linux, then
the problem has been pinned down as a hardware issue of some kind, if not
then yes, there is a software program somewhere in your "normal" system that
needs to be identified and delt with.

GlowingBlueMist wrote:
> Al Smith wrote:
>> Gilgamesh wrote:
>>>
>>> "Al Smith"<> wrote in message
>>> news:6nR3n.59698$Db2.34312@edtnps83...
>>>> Does anyone have a guess as to what might be accessing my USB
>>>> external harddrive? It's the second drive on my computer, which is
>>>> a Dell Studio XPS 9000 running Windows 7 x64. It seems like every
>>>> five minutes something is accessing the drive to catalog or search
>>>> it, or whatever.
>>>>
>>>> It will chug away for several minutes, then it dumps everything in a
>>>> long series of chuggs and is quite for a while. Then it starts up
>>>> again. I've got Avast as my antivirus but it doesn't seem to be
>>>> running when the drive is accessed.
>>>>
>>>> -Al-
>>>
>>> Do you have disk indexing turned on or something like that
>>
>>
>> I took another look at disk indexing, and the USB external drive
>> is not checked.
>>
>> -Al-
> Guesses are easy to come up with, it is the actual diagnosis that can tend
> to elude one...
>
> Possibly a hard drive defragmenter program that was told to run in the
> background mode.
>
> A 3rd party monitoring program, checking drive temperature or drive
> condition.
>
> Synchronizing or mirroring software that is trying to keep a folder or file
> on the USB drive identical to another one.
>
> A virus or Trojan horse program looking for a place to hide or just slowly
> spreading it's infection. Run a scan using another brand of anti-virus
> software. Not saying Avast is bad, just that I don't trust any anti-virus
> program to be 100% effective all of the time.
>
> Try booting into the safe mode and see if the condition persists as that
> would eliminate most 3rd party programs and user configurable options.
>
> Try booting one of the Live Linux CD's found at: http://www.livecdlist.com/
> . If the problem persists using a version of Linux, like Puppy Linux, then
> the problem has been pinned down as a hardware issue of some kind, if not
> then yes, there is a software program somewhere in your "normal" system that
> needs to be identified and delt with.
>
>

Good ideas to try. I think it is probably some indexing software
of some kind, or some sort of monitoring software, but so far I
haven't been able to find it. I like the safe mode idea.

-Al-