Unexplained HDD read access causing short freezes

[Spip]

Hello,

The situation is as follows: I recently acquired a new HDD (SATA2) to replace a smaller/older IDE one. This new disk is just for holding data.

The weird behaviour is: when performing some routine tasks under WinXP, I can see (with OODLed) that "something" is accessing that drive (one of the 4 partitions I,J,K or L) for no apparent reason. And then I have to wait for 3-4 seconds (everything blocked during that time), until the reading stops.

Worse, when trying to check with ProcessExplorer what could be doing the I/O, no activity is reported by the program, even though (1) the led is clearly flashing bright, and (2) the system goes into "hiccup".

Now, the old "I:" partition on the IDE drive used to contain a "test WinXP installation" (dual boot). But, in the new configuration, I went back to "single boot", and only kept the data.

Any ideas what could be causing this ?


Many thanks in advance.

 

[piratepast40]

The typical culprits are spyware, viruses, or that the drive is failing. You might want to run a full virus and spyware scan to see if that comes up with something. Even though the drive is new, you should also run the manufacturers diagnostics. Hope that helps.

 

[bjornlo]

Other possible sources that I have seen are the cabling.

Bad power cable, or a marginal powersupply.
bad SATA cable, or one not firmly seated.
Cabling is easy to test. Just use a different cable. Ideally in a different socket. Try putting the HD on a seperate power line. See if the problem persists if you remove a few other things in the system.

 

[MrLinux]

This can also be caused by software conflicts, usualy conflicting security products (anti-virus/anti-spyware etc); they usualy run in the background and can't always be seen by Process viewer.

 

[Spip]

Many thanks for all the replies !

I believe I found the issue... With these WD "green" HDD, some settings are set rather aggressively in order to save some power.

One of these is programmed to automatically park the heads after about 8 seconds of inactivity (which is quite short really). And whenever I tried to access the HD after a park action, the HDD somehow had to "reload", which caused the 3-4 seconds freeze.

I simply have disabled this function altogether and all is back to normal. Except my power consumption, which must have gone 0.5 watts up... Meh.


Thanks again.