vista and external hard drive

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bradman666

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Hi, I have a usb hard drive. I hear it spinning up every so often (every few minutes) even when I am not accessing it. Why is it doing this?
Matt.
 
you could have a program accessing it in the background. Say an av program is scanning the XHD when you plug it in. It could be for any number of reasons, good or bad. If your worried about viruses or malware just update your av definitions to there latest and do a full scan on all drives. If nothing shows up then i guess there's nothing to worry about. I turned on my xhd to copy/paste something i needed. Thats it, didn't use it for anything else. Then some time passes away and my xhd gives some kind of very long buzzing sound. XHD active light wasn't even flashing, so im not show if it was being accessed or not. After about a minute it stopped. :suspiciou
 
I don't think it is a virus

Thanks for that N!sung. I don't think it is a virus as my definitions are up to date. I am not really worried about it. It annoys me slightly as the drive sits on the desk and causes one more noise/vibration that I could do without. Also, I worry that it is always spinning up and then down which will eventually reduce its life. How can I tell which programme is accessing it?
Thanks for your help, Matt.
 
Well first lets see if a program is really accessing it or not. Here's a good way in finding out:

A great way to find out if a program is accessing your xhd or not is wait for your XHD to be active again. The second you hear it acting up try to end the task on the XHD on the system tray (right click USB green arrow icon then "safely remove hardware"), if a program is accessing the xhd, XP will not allow you to end task. Instead you gotta wait. After your xhd stops acting up then see again if you can end the task. This is exactly what I tried to do when I had my buzzing noise come out of my xhd. I couldn't end the task. As soon as the buzzing stopped. I tried to end the task again and it worked. This is a good indication of knowing if a program is REALLY accessing the xhd or not.
 
this is similar to what happens with my second hard drive, occasionally it'll start up and maybe go for a minute or just a few seconds then it'll shut off again. i have it set to turn itself off after 40 mins of no use but this is different
 
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