Inexplicable hard-drive access

J

jpatet

Does anyone know how I can identify what program or process is accessing my hard drive every 10 seconds for about one second each time?

For example, as Task Manager can identify CPU usage, I need something or some way of IDing what is accessing my hard drive. I have Windows XP with all the packs and updates, Norton AV/firewall/spy protector. And I have run Spybot. So far, I have disabled EVERYTHING in Msconfig Startup, disconnected from the Internet and rebooted and I still have the light flashing on my hard drive exactly every 10 seconds for about one second each time.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
JP
 
Keyboard logger phishing for your logon/passwords? The disk-access could be it writing to a log-file everything that's been happening on your computer in the previous 10-seconds?
 
But how can I tell what is writing to my hard drive? Is there no Task Manager equivalent for a hard drive (or something like that)?
 
Quote from yoohoo:

Easypeazy. http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Filemon.html

Download the first option (Win9x) and you can see all hard drive action.

I keep this thing at the top of my bookmarks and if I need to know what my HD is up to, this shows all.
More...
thanks for posting that ..and thanks to the thread starter too.

that's a great little program. my hard drive was slightly being accessed every few seconds too. it was annoying and i never knew what it was. that program showed mim.exe was doing shit pretty much constantly.

well mim.exe is used my the new musicmatch (mp3 program). i found a way to disable it. maybe others have it too.
http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_do_i_disable_musicmatch_jukebox.html
 
Quote from yoohoo:

Easypeazy. http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Filemon.html

Download the first option (Win9x) and you can see all hard drive action.

I keep this thing at the top of my bookmarks and if I need to know what my HD is up to, this shows all.
More...
yoohoo, many thanks; that worked. I found Mozy (mozy.com), a “free” off-site file backup program was doing this. Now I have to determine if it is worth keeping. yoohoo, I cannot thank you enough.

Very best regards and good wishes,
JP
 
Quote from yoohoo:

Easypeazy. http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Filemon.html

Download the first option (Win9x) and you can see all hard drive action.

I keep this thing at the top of my bookmarks and if I need to know what my HD is up to, this shows all.
More...

I have the exact same problem...
A large (about 10,000 lines) VB6 program running as a compiled exe...
Fires up my hard drive every 10 seconds and then does a big, loud seek...
All day long that I am trading.

It's definitely not an infection...
Because it's been duplicated on different drives and different computers.

My best guess is that it's related to I/O across the Windows network...
Maybe this utility will help solve the mystery.

Thanks.
 
It may be virtually impossible to resolve this kind of issue...
Because all Windows disk I/O is virtual and buffered...
So reading/writing files does not correspond in real time...
To actual physical movement of the drive head.
 
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