So you hard disk is going nuts, spinning even you haven’t opened any programs ? What would be going on on that disk ? A couple things could be the reason. Perhaps you are just boosting computer. System requires necessary drivers, services that you have installed or enabled needs to be run and stay on. Even after everything looks what you expect, and your hard disk still keeps spinning with that red or yellow light on and off or at times just on constantly, you might need to think about these possiblities:

• You have enabled file indexing feature
• You might have a virus, spy ware or you have a scheduled maintenance that’s running such as anti-virus or windows defender.
• Or it you could your old hard disk is old.
• Your have less memory and windows is creating what it calls “Paging File” or Virtual Memory; some kind of a file that acts like a temporary memory for your operating system to store memory and give you some performance. The file is deleted when the computer shuts down and it is created back again when the computer is booted.
• You should be running two or more programs, often called Multi-tasking.
• You forgot you are online, your VISTA is updating secretly [Dig in for an article related to this]
• You have setup your PC; folders and files shareable without any passwords, and you are online, and and someone is taking your files away without your knowledge.
• You have setup an unprotected wi-fi (someone could be using it) so setup your wifi with password and make it secure or unless you wish to give it away for free for all to use.
• You are running too many media players such as quick time, real player and Windows media player with Internet on.

If your PC is new, you sure have a new Hard disk. And if you PC is a  budget one like most of ours, and you want to get things done fast as well as prolong the life of your hard disk (i.e. not making it run like crazy all the time) you can actually disable the Indexing feature, run a defragmentation on a weekly basis, and of course have a good anti-virus program, disable file sharing and so on.

But remember, even if you have disabled the indexing feature and you type search on the explorer bar, Windows VISTA resumes indexing everything again.

Indexing makes it easier to find files just incase we forget where we kept our files. But you are smart, you know the most used folder “My Documents” So ? Save all your works there, Disable the indexing feature and you could solve some of the excessive hard disk spins. If you like, just index that folder and nothing else.

One of the easiest way to prolong the life of your Original Hard Disk is to buy “External Hard Disk” and store your documents, pictures, videos etc there. You can also use it as a “Scratch Disk” (a term commenly used in video-editing software, external hard disk is used extremely to create catch files, temporary files and when the video editing program finishes, it cleans all the files it created. The scratch is a good term; create - clean, create - clean; no it’s the something else, create - delete, create - delete, and everytime this happens, your hard disk is missed up, files are kept not in one line like you audio-CD track, they are scattered every where. Defrag you external hard disk once in a while) Doing video editing a-lot? Installing External hard disk is your top priority. i.e. if you want to increase the life of your main hard disk with operating system installed on it.

It is normal for a hard disk to spin.
Faster hard disk spin even faster. Well, you knew that didn’t you?

But if you suspect that you hard disk is spinning without a reason, take some time and find out.
You can use taskbar for this. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL (holding all together) and see which program are running, look under the service tab as well. Remove the opens you think you don’t need.

Hope this much helps. Also try minimizing the programs that open up on start-up. Well, not all of it. There is no point using a messenger service when all you cat is once month!

VISTA, as you know, is a RESOURCE hungry since it’s BIG, latest and the most advanced operating system ever built by our Microsoft. VISTA will spin our hard disk even more than Disk Operating System. LOL!!

Believe me, even when you are doing nothing ? VISTA spins our hard disk like crazy.  Have you noticed this.

Try this : Turn off your printer. Now Turn your printer on. Hard disk will start spinning and probably will stop in a few minutes. Shouldn’t such a smart VISTA already load what is required to print. Well blaming is easy. Perhaps you have HP printer or somesort and many of them come with utilities and these days printing is not just A4 or B4 size — you can print various layouts, designs and so on just by using the printer’s utility itself and printers have become so complex they are now 3 in one or two in one… you get the point right ? They act like a scanner, photo copy or faxer. Vista sure does need to popup the manufacturers controller [the utility] so goes the hard disk spin!

Comment if you have any problems, I will try to pass my knowledge. Excessive spinning of your hard disk not only will make it’s life shorter, you will love performance, stability.

One thing is for sure. Install only the program you will use, do a regular maintenance such as Defrag, Check for antivirus once a week, etc, and don’t worry about hard spins. It always does happen even if you leave you PC ON all night long while you are having a good-night sleep. A hard disk that doesn’t spin is Dead. When it spins more than it should, it will wear-out.

Ruben
“Good buy night lamps, I leave my PC on and there is a light in my room”