Hard drive never stops spinning - even on idle

[Tazman192]

Hi.

 

I have a pretty silent pc for the most part, but my hard drive is driving me crazy. Ever since building my pc (as far as I can remember), my hard drive's been pretty loud. It sounds as though it's always spinning - even on idle. It's more noticeable now since I've been using on ear headphones that don't isolate background noise well.

 

I've tried all the basic fixes such as disabling automatic defrag, disabling windows defender, and disabling anything else that may cause my hard drive to spin on idle, all to no avail.

 

I'm 100% sure it's the hard drive - I've disconnected every fan but the CPU fans and when I disconnect my hard drive, my pc boots into bios and is as silent as anything.

 

Specs are in my sig, I'd appreciate any pointers on what could cause my hard drive to constantly spin at full speed even when idle.

 

Cheers.

[thekeemo]

im fairly certain they dont stop spinning

[Zah]

The only way you'll get it to stop spinning all the time is to install the OS on a separate device.

[Tazman192]

im fairly certain they dont stop spinning

 

Sorry, I mean spinning at full speed continously. They slow down when idle (at least my other pc does, its much more silent than this one).

[Tazman192]

im fairly certain they dont stop spinning

 

Sorry, I mean spinning at full speed continously. They slow down when idle (at least my other pc does, its much more silent than this one).

[thekeemo]

Sorry, I mean spinning at full speed continously. They slow down when idle (at least my other pc does, its much more silent than this one).

oh do you have anything that writes to it or scans it?

[Tazman192]

oh do you have anything that writes to it or scans it?

 

As far as I know - no. I've disabled anything I could think of.

[AGGELOS_970]

In windows you can go to advanced settings in power options and set when the HDD you want to turn off. when not in use.

[Lord Gaben]

Hard disk drives never stop spinning (unless you set the OS to turn off the HDD's after a set time of inactivity) and they never slow down, they spin at a fixed speed, I am guessing what you are trying to refer to is read/write heads constantly writing/reading to the disk.

 

When it is there is drive activity (reading/writing) is there a little clock icon beside the action center flag?

 

And how long has it been doing this?

 

Also I would recommend re-enabling windows defender and auto defrag, as otherwise you will have to scan your system manually and you will have to manually defragment your disk.

[Tazman192]

Hard disk drives never stop spinning (unless you set the OS to turn off the HDD's after a set time of inactivity) and they never slow down, they spin at a fixed speed, I am guessing what you are trying to refer to is read/write heads constantly writing/reading to the disk.

 

When it is there is drive activity (reading/writing) is there a little clock icon beside the action center flag?

 

And how long has it been doing this?

 

Also I would recommend re-enabling windows defender and auto defrag, as otherwise you will have to scan your system manually and you will have to manually defragment your disk.

 

 

I completely forgot about this post when exams came, so I'm sorry for the awfully late reply. I can't see any clock icon beside the action center flag (besides the windows time itself but I don't think you're referring to that?). It's been doing ever I reinstalled windows (I originally installed w8.1 in legacy mode, and reinstalled in UEFI mode).

 

Auto defrag is enabled - I don't use windows defender personally.

[Lord Gaben]

I completely forgot about this post when exams came, so I'm sorry for the awfully late reply. I can't see any clock icon beside the action center flag (besides the windows time itself but I don't think you're referring to that?). It's been doing ever I reinstalled windows (I originally installed w8.1 in legacy mode, and reinstalled in UEFI mode).

 

Auto defrag is enabled - I don't use windows defender personally.

OK I asked about the action center flag because when that shows up on it, it means the system is doing maintenance ( defragging, scanning for virus. etc), If you open task manager and sort the processes by disk usage, what is at the top?

[Tazman192]

OK I asked about the action center flag because when that shows up on it, it means the system is doing maintenance ( defragging, scanning for virus. etc), If you open task manager and sort the processes by disk usage, what is at the top?

 

http://gyazo.com/f6ddf5f1f6b3e3872a33681a0f654d35

 

That's what it looks like on an average day when I'm not gaming.

[Lord Gaben]

http://gyazo.com/f6ddf5f1f6b3e3872a33681a0f654d35

 

That's what it looks like on an average day when I'm not gaming.

That looks fine, so you are saying the HDD activity light is always on?

[Tazman192]

That looks fine, so you are saying the HDD activity light is always on?

 

 

I have the fractal design case so I can't actually check hard drive activity - I'm just saying that my hard drive is really noisy, as if its doing something every time (i.e. defragging in the background or something). Compared to an older prebuilt machine, its really audible and the fact that I have a silent case. I've even shown it to 2 friends who have a similar build to mine and they've said its unusual to be that loud aswell.

[Lord Gaben]

I have the fractal design case so I can't actually check hard drive activity - I'm just saying that my hard drive is really noisy, as if its doing something every time (i.e. defragging in the background or something). Compared to an older prebuilt machine, its really audible and the fact that I have a silent case. I've even shown it to 2 friends who have a similar build to mine and they've said its unusual to be that loud aswell.

Your Hard drive might be dieing; I had a HDD nearly die on me once, Before I sent the PC back to the OEM (Laptop, under warranty). For me the signs where constant HDD activity, slow and unresponsiveness and also it became quite loud when reading or writing

[Tazman192]

Your Hard drive might be dieing; I had a HDD nearly die on me once, Before I sent the PC back to the OEM (Laptop, under warranty). For me the signs where constant HDD activity, slow and unresponsiveness and also it became quite loud when reading or writing

 

It's not slow/unresponsive, but I've done a check with seagate tools and it reported no bad sectors. Anything else I can check to see the health of my hard drive?

 

Cheers.

[Lord Gaben]

It's not slow/unresponsive, but I've done a check with seagate tools and it reported no bad sectors. Anything else I can check to see the health of my hard drive?

 

Cheers.

You could try chkdsk to see if it is causing in file system errors with in Windows