hard drive constanly running

I have a Dell desktop running 8.1 and my hard drive seems to be continually running and the light is on or flickering. I unplugged the unit and it seemed to be ok for a day or two but went back to the same issue. What can cause that and what can I do to stop it? It slows everything down to almost unusable. I have already scanned for viruses, cleaner up files etc. :confused

 

Open Task Manager and click the Processes tab. Click View in the menu bar and click Select Columns... Scroll down and check the boxes next to I/O Reads and I/O Writes. That will show which processes are reading from, and writing to, the hard disc.

 

@Eldon - you must be using W7. Task Manager is very different in W8 and Select Columns is not an option so you cannot add the I/O options. But you can see the Disk percentages a process is using.

@WJL24 - In W8 Task Manager under the Performance tab at the bottom, you can click on Open Resource Monitor and from there, under the Disk tab, you can see Read and Write activities.

That could indicate a problem with the drive. Under System Properties for that drive, I recommend you run Error Checking. It will likely prompt you let checking run at next boot so follow the prompt to allow that, then reboot. Depending on the size of the drive, the amount of data on it, and what checking finds, this can take many hours. Just let it run until done.

 

Yes I do. And thanks. We'll never know why Microsoft removes helpful features.

 

Actually TM in W8 provides much more information, including Disk I/O. It just may be in a different place than previous Windows versions.