HDD constant activity and noise

[king.peter]

In my new computer, the Samsung boot drive is constantly active, even when I am doing nothing. The sound of the constant seek and write is driving me nuts, and so is the hum from all four drives (3 data drives in RAID 5. A virus and spyware scan with F-Secure Internet Security 2006 has found no malware.

Does anyone have any suggestions for stopping whatever is causing the constant activity, and also how to reduce the noise of the hard drives?

Peter King

[notsobig]

Your system must be dead quiet, I can't hear any HDD noises because of my noisy fans Anyway, unless you have connected hdd led the other way round, there must be something accessing your HD, try closing down all applications in the background and add them back one by one. Until you find out what your problem is, disable system restore temporarily.

[abeacock]

The access problem could be due to Windows performing a "search optimisation" on the drive. Right-click on the drive, select Properties and then untick Indexing Optimisation.

[d3fiant]

the raid set will almost certainly be in constand use simply because its stripping data, even a small read or write will access all drives. As for ur system drive there could be many reasons. Im suprised u can hear then that bad, u must have a quiet environment, suggest if it bothers u then consider drive enclosures, but thats a little extreme from simple space in ur system as well as cost. This wont be a simple fix im afraid

[BigBry]

You could try Samsungs Hutil tool although that slows down drive speeds to reduce noise.

[king.peter]

I had a look at the Samsung web site, and found the Hutil tool, but was put off by the warning that it will erase all data on the HDD.

I have used the Windows power management tool to suspend the RAID disks after 3 minutes of no access. This stops the humming resonance, but not the drive activity. It is a constant on the boot drive.

Using Sysinternal's File Monitor, I can see which files are being accessed. I am getting stuff like this under the "Request" column : IRP_MJ_QUERY_INFORMATION, followed by IRP_MJ_CLEANUP followed by IRP_MJ_CLOSE, repeated for masses of different processes scrolling through. The sound is not too much to bother about, but it amounts to hundreds of thousands of disk accesses in any session, which is doing the HDD no good, apart from possibly slowing things down.

I disabled "search optimisation" but made no difference.

Any further ideas

[Koolpc]

Try suspending the drives somehow. Keep them away from the sides of the case. The noise resonates throught the case making it loud. My hard drive is suspended in the CD rom bay with Sewing Elastic!!

[king.peter]

Try suspending the drives somehow. Keep them away from the sides of the case. The noise resonates throught the case making it loud. My hard drive is suspended in the CD rom bay with Sewing Elastic!!

I have read somewhere of a system of hard drive isolation just like this, using rubber straps. I wonder if anyone else has used it

[Koolpc]

Rubber straps or ordinary Sewing Elastic like i have used is superb at keeping the noise down (Can't hear mine).

[BigBry]

You could try systool, that has accoustic management in it and available through Windows. Don't use the latest beta, but build 702 should be ok;
http://www.techpowerup.com/systool/

[king.peter]

Unfortunately, the Asus P5W deluxe motherboard is not supported by systool

[BigBry]

Unfortunately, the Asus P5W deluxe motherboard is not supported by systool

Even though your motherboards not supported it will still allow you to alter the HD acoustic setting (it does on my new PC's with unsupported boards).