Well, i just upgraded my system From....

Asus AM266-D Dual Athlon MP 2400+, 1 Gig Ram, Promis SATA controller, etc.......

To:

Core 2 Duo EN6600, 2 Gig crosshair 800mhz, (pc6400), and the MSI Platinum PowerUp Board, using my same HD's....


Problem... Strange Very Annoying Constant HD Access.


First everything is all good, so i boot into my previous windows install from my other system, it updates all the drivers and i notice the thing is messed up, the HD access is slow and seems like its working harder than usual.... Turns out this was due to it being in IDE Mode, so i did a re-install of windows anyway in ACHI or whatever it is and installed the proper drivers, for the Intel SATA controller in AHCI.

Well, that definatly fixed the initial problem, but now, when the PC is completely IDLE, 0% CPU usage, No System restore, and nothing obvious using preformance monitors i setup, the HD is being accessed and its a constant sounding pattern, over and over and over every 3 seconds.... and its very very annoying.

So, for shits and gigles, i try a diffrent controller, the other sata controller, and same thing (with a re-intall of windows) then, i tried my old promis controller, installed driver, new windows install just incase, no repair, Same thing!!!!!!!!

Windows shows NO hd access in any of its preformance monitors and 0% CPU usage during this time.

Its like somthing is happening in the background, but not at the windows level, but at the hardware level????

I still havent ruled that out 100% though, but when i install linux Next, We'll see...

Windows in safe mode does the same, i've excluded a number of services etc... still the same thing.

This never happend once in my life, or on my previous hardware.

Also, i've even tried installing windows on my secondary drive, a SATA 2 Maxtor 300gig, NCQ... same thing, except its much quieter... so its not noticable, but its still there. On the WD Raptor though, its noticable and very annoying... especially when the PC is suppose to be IDLE, lol......

Also, the HD access LED does light during this access, but i see no simular patterns from HD access of other programs at all. and like i said 0% idle cPU usage.


So, WTF is happening? Anyone experience such a weird problem?? anyone with this Board and a Raptor 74gig running windows XP have this issue?????????

My HD's preformance in PC mark is pretty good, about 7mbits/s normal access and around 11.8/mbps XP startup or so.......

FYI, MB is all in defaults, Auto ram, Auto FSB, no OC, etc.....

is there any tools for monitoring HD access on the HW level? anything? any ideas?

if this is the board, then its gone, this is a BS problem to have...


Thanks for any suggestions.....