SSD/HDD Issue - High Disk Usage Alert when installing something to SSD

Hello all. This is my first post to this site so I hope I'm posting in the correct area.

I just received a new PC that was custom built AVA Direct. It's Windows 8.1 64bit/i7 5960X CPU/16 GB Corsair Vengeance RAM/EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 4GB GPU and ASUS Rampage Extreme V Motherboard.

I have one Samsung SSD 850 500GB as my primary OS hard drive. Two Internal Western Digital storage drives (one 2TB Black (D) and one 500GB Caviar (E) and one external Western Digital My Passport 1TB drive (I). My issue is that every time I try to install something onto the SSD (C), the computer pauses and starts reading my other internal WD drives for some reason and even the external one comes out of sleep mode. I can hear at least one of the platter drives running like crazy like it's defragging or indexing and I receive a pop up from Norton saying that there is high disk usage by the MSIEXEC.EXE and sometimes it states that it's a WD drive but doesn't indicate which one. Then finally after about 3 minutes, the file/program will finally install onto the SSD. It's extremely annoying. It will even do this if I create a restore point on the SSD C: drive. Why is the PC even trying to access the other drives or spin them up even when there is no OS on any of them besides the SSD? I had installed one of the WD drives (E) recently that I took out of an older Windows 7 PC but I only use it as storage. It's several years old. Could this drive possibly be the culprit?

I have only searched the internet for answers to what may be causing the other drives to always be accessed or spin up even when I am not accessing or using them. All of the WD drives are only storage drives except for the WD 2TB Black (D) which I use for Steam games only. Other than that, I haven't tried anything else yet.

I was thinking about copying the files from the older WD 500GB drive (E) to a backup then maybe reformatting the drive while it is in the Windows 8.1 system to see if it might make a difference.

Also, for example, if I access a file on the 500GB WD Internal Caviar (Storage E) my external WD Passport (I) will wake up from sleep even when I didn't even try to access it. It's almost as if all of the drives are linked together or something but they are all plugged into separate SATA cables.

I did have to reinstall the Windows 8.1 OS a few weeks ago onto the SSD because the OS started acting crazy and was not properly installing updates. After that, everything seemed to work much better but now I'm having the SSD/HDD issue.

Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated. It's very annoying and frustrating but it's nothing that is system breaking. I don't actually receive any Windows OS error messages, only the pop up from Norton when I try to install something. I've turned off the automatic defrag in Norton and I am also using System Mechanic and I have turned off the real time Accelewrite on it as well.

One other forum I checked with wanted me to install a bunch of software to run system scans so I was a little hesitant about doing that.

Thanks

 

Sounds like it might be an effect of having the WD Smartware crypto/compression running an auto-backup. Checkout your external WD model on their site and check their forum/support.

Welcome to MG's, too :major

 

Thanks for the quick reply Satrow. I will check with WD and see what I can find. I was thinking it may have been because it was such an old hard drive. I don't actually have any of the WD software installed on my system for any of the WD drives though unless it's some kind of deal that WD drives automatically do. I've had WD drives for quite some time now and never experienced this. It only acts crazy when installing something but, like you said, it does sound like it's trying to backup or even reorganize files on the drive. Not sure where it would be backing them up to though. Lol! I even turned off the backup utility in Norton. I was wondering if this new Microsoft OneDrive thing might have something to do with how it's reading all of the drives constantly. I don't have it set to back up anything but it may be trying to read the drives or something.

Thanks

 

purple 45...I see that you quoted part of my post but I didn't see anything else. Did you mean to type something else?

Thanks

 

To thompssp: purple45 inserted his problem into your thred. You can ignore his post.

To purple45: You need to start your own thread. Go here http://forums.majorgeeks.com/forumdisplay.php?f=22
click the New Thread button near the top left and state your problem with additional info such as did the computer come with ssd? Is the WD internal or external? Brand/size of ssd and if you installed it, when? Version of Windows installed?

 

Yes, it's specific to the WD model that you have, some are vanilla drives, others are loaded with auto-installing virtual drives and/or encryption/auto-backup.