Strange Hard Drive Activity

[stevem326]

Sometimes when I have my PC on my hard drive will just take off with a bunch of activity. The activity light starts flickering on and off and I can hear the drive making noises like data is being accessed or written. This will go on for usually 3-5 minutes non-stop and then it pretty much gets quiet. It will happen sometimes once a day but a few times it's been twice or three times in one day.

I have my anti-virus software (Symantec) set to automatically update each night at 9:00 pm so I don't think it's that. And my anti-spyware software (Spyware Doctor) updates randomly but it always gives me a pop-up when it updates telling me so. The HD activity doesn't seem to be related to the Symantec or Spyware Doctor updates in my opinion.

Do you think this is just the OS doing some sort of normal thing that it does? Some kind of check or something like that? All of my virus and spyware scans turn up normal and I have Data Execution Prevention turned on. My Hijack This log appears normal, too.

 

[akhilles]

What OS? What other security/system utilities? Do you have a 3-party defrag program? Do you do file-sharing?

 

[stevem326]

Originally posted by: akhilles
What OS? What other security/system utilities? Do you have a 3-party defrag program? Do you do file-sharing?

I'm running XP Pro with SP3 installed with all the latest MS security patches. The only security stuff I have running is Symantec Anti-Virus (Version 10.1.6.6000), PC Tools Spyware Doctor (Version 5.5), and the free basic Zone Alarm firewall (which is also up-to-date). I am running PerfectDisk 2008 (by Raxco Software) as a 3rd-party defrag program. I don't do any file sharing. I do work from home remotely and log in to my company's systems via a Citrix connection but the HD activity I'm describing has happened both while I'm logged in via Citrix and when I'm not.

Now that you mention it, I wonder if it's PerfectDisk that's doing some sort of check or analysis? But I don't have it set up to automatically defrag. I do all of the HD analysis and defrag manually. I don't like it to defrag automatically so I disabled that feature in the options.

It makes me wonder if someone is accessing my system remotely?