Constant HDD thrashing/activity

[Darkenraja]

Hi,

I have had an ongoing issue in Windows 7 Home in which my HDD is constantly undergoing activity regardless of what I am doing on the time - even whilst idling. I've already spent a large chunk of time researching the problem and trying to implement solutions that have worked for others however I can't seem to fix the issue. Disabling search/indexing does nothing as well as disabling super fetch. Reformatting also did not stop the problem outright - however it did stop for a period of time, however ultimately the problem came back and is still present at current. Deep scan with an array of anti-virus/malware programs have thus far netted no change in the activity nor reported any threats. It wasn't until I used Procmon that I was pointed in the right direction and it appears that svchost.exe and DCOM in particular appears to be causing the issue. Changing DCOM properties as per suggestions in other forum threads also did nothing.

In Procmon it appears that something to do with /DeviceClasses and USB3 ROOT_HUB in the registry is what is causing the constant I/O however I'm at a loss as to where to go from there. I've tried removing any drivers and devices from the PC which don't appear to be used and also nothing. I'm open to try anything at this stage! Whilst the memory and CPU usage don;t appear to be gettign affected and performance of my system is still completely normal - the sound it makes is driving me crazy - not to mention knowing that there clearly something wrong which needs to be fixed!

Help me TH!

 

[Darkenraja]

So I figured out what the cause of the 'HDD' thrashing sound was just then. I opened up my case and realised the sound - although in nature sounding identical to my HDD reading/writing - was not in fact my HDD at all. It was the god damned intake fan at the front of the case! Applying a small amount of pressure to the centre of the fan made the sound go away. Removing the pressure made it return. So it would appear that the 'problem' is entirely mechanical in nature. Time to swap fans out!

As for the USB HDD I/O I'm going to assume this is fairly normal and simply how the machine detects new plug and play USB devices when they are connected. So my tip to anyone experiencing HDD thrashing sounds is to actually make sure it is your HDD making the sound in the first place!