Hard drive spins for no reason

[json35]

Just wanting to see if anyone else has had this happen. My system started having random crashes in games, I ran a memory test and some addresses came up bad so I took out 2 sticks. That fixed that issue, my other issue was the hard drive would spin and pause the whole system for no good reason. Like when I'm just browsing or opening something. I think maybe the hard drive is going bad but I ran basic check disk ( I know it's probably not enough) but it didn't find anything. It could by my motherboard as well I guess. Odd thing is the CPU usage doesn't go up much when the system is unresponsive. Like just now I had to shut down Chrome and use Firefox because I couldn't get Tom's page to do anything after a few links. Chrome just kept saying "waiting for cache..." and the hard drive light stayed on for a few minutes. I formatted and reinstalled the OS too, so everything's fresh now.

Thanks for any help

 

[rolli59]

Sounds like lack of ram and using the page file on the HDD as memory.

 

[json35]

Sounds like lack of ram and using the page file on the HDD as memory.

Nope, I have 4 gig left, and memory usage is only around 30%, it even does it when nothing special is happening. I'm running the Resource Monitor now but it only shows whichever program is open. It did the same thing before I took the other 4 gigs of RAM out too, I had 8 gigs originally. Nothing changed it just started doing this all of a sudden. I used to even have the swap file turned off when I had 8 gig of RAM before.

My system is AMD Phenom II, 4 gig ram, 500 gig WD Caviar Green drive.

 

[rolli59]

I have been experiences problems with Chrome as well but if you are having lag when opening something it can be a HDD issue

 

[json35]

Well, it's random, I could be in the middle of a game, I play Skyrim and Diablo III. I had no issues with Skyrim previously, but now it will hang randomly, it loads just as fast as it always did though, but when it hangs the hard drive just spins for a few minutes then the system comes back. It's almost like a virus but I haven't found anything yet and I formatted. I even installed Windows 8 to see if it made any difference. It's just annoying. I just didn't want to get a new drive until I was sure that's what it is, I have the SMART turned on and installed the WD utitlity, the report says everything is fine according to SMART.