Windows 7 64bit hardrive idle noise

[LAYZER]

I upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7 64bit not too long ago and ever since having it as my OS, I've been having irritating hard drive idle noise which I never had at all while on XP. The noise normally occurs after around 15-20 minutes of being idle, and tends to stop every time I move my cursor - I tried going into Control Panel > Power Options, and changed the 'turn off hard disk drive after' option from 20 minutes to 'Never' thinking this will surely solve it, as the the noise tends to happen around the 15-20 minute mark, but this didn't solve it. The noise itself is simply a processing noise as if I'm installing something, I regularly monitor my computer temp's and they're all fine and I'm quite sure my HD is in good condition, any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

 

[PassMark]

Might be some background process hitting the hard drive when the machine is idle. (e.g. the Window search indexing function reading the files off your disk for indexing purposes). It might stop after a few days once all the existing documents / Emails are indexed.

Otherwise get a silent SSD. You'll never regret it.

 

[jsmithepa]

Windows 7 forward, The OS pre-indexes your HD's files so any searches you may want to do happens faster. Google on how to turn this off, or perhaps if you can still have it run, say in the middle of the night. Or perhaps now that you know what it is, not such a big deal.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there LAYZER,

You can observe Resource Monitor during these noises and see what is using the drive.
Apart from that, it may be a good idea to just test it: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility

Cheers,
D_Know_WD