- Apr 20, 2018
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I think Storage is the right section for this... but it also could pertain to motherboards and Windows
You know when you think you have control over your system and then things randomly start happening that make you question your existence?
My external HDD has just very recently started spinning up each time I power on my pc and has been chugging at times where it never used to. I've made no changes to my system or programs during the time this started.
Note that I make it a hugely conscious effort not to download malware or cracks and go out of my way to use open source alternatives to applications if at all possible. I'm very malware conscious
Basically, the moment I press the power-on button on my pc the disk spins up and my BIOS won't POST until it's done. Previously, my external HDD wouldn't spin up until I booted all the way into Windows and navigated into it with Explorer. Now my BIOS takes longer to POST and my HDD is enduring unnecessary wear by constantly spinning up and down (especially since I restart frequently for one reason or another) and is practically spun up all the time in Windows.
The drive is also chugging while Windows and even my dual boot Linux are booting up even though both these OS's have no business or system files on anything but my SSD. Every now and then in Windows the drive will spin back up (if spun down) and make a couple short chugs before going silent. I've looked in Process Monitor to see what files are being accessed:
https://puu.sh/A7oN5/cb04e3e28a.png (image embed is having issues)
the above accesses happen every 20 or so minutes (my disk spins down just before it spins back up again)
the files being 'accessed':
- a particular game platform launcher .exe i haven't opened in half a year (scanned clean)
- that game launcher, but with .Config at the end (no such thing??)
- a different game .exe that doesn't even exist on the drive anymore (well it does but I renamed the folder it was in, so explorer.exe is repeatedly trying to access an invalid path and returning an error)
- an icon (.ico) file in that same renamed (invalid) folder
- the root HDD drive path
While these files are being 'accessed', Process Explorer shows explorer.exe's delta total disk activity at nothing at all. Consistently though, svchost.exe (netsvcs) and its child process taskeng.exe show ~0.5MBps disk activity during this time, but I have no idea what these processes would have anything to do with explorer accessing some random files on an external drive. No other processes relating to these files are running and all other processes are inactive. This happens with all non-native services and processes closed.
When opening both Process Explorer and Process Monitor the HDD spins up if it was spun down. No idea why
Another thing I noticed is that in my SSD's dual boot Linux Mint, when performing a bootmenu check (such as when upgrading the kernel) the terminal (grub2) will identify all OS's installed on the system and when it gets to Windows the HDD chugs a bit. How is this even possible?
Things I've tried:
- sfc (all good)
- chkdsk /R on all drives and partitions (all good)
- S.M.A.R.T. check on all drives (all good)
- verifying the hash of explorer.exe, svchost.exe, taskeng.exe (all match)
- virus scanning all system files, exe's, dll's and more on all drives including the ones being 'accessed'
- flashing the BIOS with the latest revision (hashed fine)
- searching the Windows registry for E:\Half-Life\hl.exe (nothing turned up)
- obsessively monitoring procexp and procmon for odd activity (none other than what i've explained, seems pretty consistent)
System details:
Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (straight from Microsoft support, no crack)
AMD FX-6300 stock clock
Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P rev 5 F3 motherboard
Hitachi HDS721010CLA330 ATA 1TB HDD (the one in question, probably like 5 years old, heavy use, SATA connection)
Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD
I just want to know what has changed since a few days ago. I've just been playing Team Fortress 2 and browsing YouTube, lol. If anyone has any clue on what I might be missing here I'd love to get a better understanding. Thank you for reading this novel and potentially replying
You know when you think you have control over your system and then things randomly start happening that make you question your existence?
My external HDD has just very recently started spinning up each time I power on my pc and has been chugging at times where it never used to. I've made no changes to my system or programs during the time this started.
Note that I make it a hugely conscious effort not to download malware or cracks and go out of my way to use open source alternatives to applications if at all possible. I'm very malware conscious
Basically, the moment I press the power-on button on my pc the disk spins up and my BIOS won't POST until it's done. Previously, my external HDD wouldn't spin up until I booted all the way into Windows and navigated into it with Explorer. Now my BIOS takes longer to POST and my HDD is enduring unnecessary wear by constantly spinning up and down (especially since I restart frequently for one reason or another) and is practically spun up all the time in Windows.
The drive is also chugging while Windows and even my dual boot Linux are booting up even though both these OS's have no business or system files on anything but my SSD. Every now and then in Windows the drive will spin back up (if spun down) and make a couple short chugs before going silent. I've looked in Process Monitor to see what files are being accessed:
https://puu.sh/A7oN5/cb04e3e28a.png (image embed is having issues)
the above accesses happen every 20 or so minutes (my disk spins down just before it spins back up again)
the files being 'accessed':
- a particular game platform launcher .exe i haven't opened in half a year (scanned clean)
- that game launcher, but with .Config at the end (no such thing??)
- a different game .exe that doesn't even exist on the drive anymore (well it does but I renamed the folder it was in, so explorer.exe is repeatedly trying to access an invalid path and returning an error)
- an icon (.ico) file in that same renamed (invalid) folder
- the root HDD drive path
While these files are being 'accessed', Process Explorer shows explorer.exe's delta total disk activity at nothing at all. Consistently though, svchost.exe (netsvcs) and its child process taskeng.exe show ~0.5MBps disk activity during this time, but I have no idea what these processes would have anything to do with explorer accessing some random files on an external drive. No other processes relating to these files are running and all other processes are inactive. This happens with all non-native services and processes closed.
When opening both Process Explorer and Process Monitor the HDD spins up if it was spun down. No idea why
Another thing I noticed is that in my SSD's dual boot Linux Mint, when performing a bootmenu check (such as when upgrading the kernel) the terminal (grub2) will identify all OS's installed on the system and when it gets to Windows the HDD chugs a bit. How is this even possible?
Things I've tried:
- sfc (all good)
- chkdsk /R on all drives and partitions (all good)
- S.M.A.R.T. check on all drives (all good)
- verifying the hash of explorer.exe, svchost.exe, taskeng.exe (all match)
- virus scanning all system files, exe's, dll's and more on all drives including the ones being 'accessed'
- flashing the BIOS with the latest revision (hashed fine)
- searching the Windows registry for E:\Half-Life\hl.exe (nothing turned up)
- obsessively monitoring procexp and procmon for odd activity (none other than what i've explained, seems pretty consistent)
System details:
Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (straight from Microsoft support, no crack)
AMD FX-6300 stock clock
Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P rev 5 F3 motherboard
Hitachi HDS721010CLA330 ATA 1TB HDD (the one in question, probably like 5 years old, heavy use, SATA connection)
Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD
I just want to know what has changed since a few days ago. I've just been playing Team Fortress 2 and browsing YouTube, lol. If anyone has any clue on what I might be missing here I'd love to get a better understanding. Thank you for reading this novel and potentially replying
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