Hdd Sometimes “races” For No Apparent Reason — What’s Going On?

I think this is a software question, rather than one for hardware, but you tell me.

For some reason, when I haven’t been using my desktop computer for 20 minutes or so, the HDD starts to “race.” Sometimes it will only do so briefly, but sometimes longer. It does slow down immediately as soon as I touch the mouse.

What’s going on with this? Should I be concerned? Is there some software running that I’m not aware of? I don’t see anything like that in WinPatrol.

But one thing I did see in WinPatrol just now is eight copies of iexplorer.exe currently running (shown in Active Tasks), all with distinct Process IDs, even though IE was not open.

For what it’s worth, I do have Smart Defrag installed, and it does occasionally prompt me to run a defrag, although I don’t see it at all in WinPatrol.

Is there some diagnostic program I can run to see what’s going on?

Or does anyone have any idea what might be going on?

Thanks for any help.

 

Look at the settings of Smart Defrag.
It's probably set to defrag after x minutes of HDD inactivity.

 

Auto-defrag is available for only the Pro version of Smart Defrag, and I only have the free version, so that can’t be what’s causing this.

For what it’s worth, I had also recently installed Driver Booster (from IObit, like Smart Defrag), but it was set to auto-scan only once a week (which I just changed to monthly). So I don’t think that’s the problem, either.

P.S. For what it’s worth, when my machine is first finished booting up, RAM is only at about 17% capacity, but over time, if I don’t clean it, that will eventually rise to around 45%.

This happens even when IE is closed. But I think there might be some residual effect from having used Facebook. Could this be related?

And as I mentioned above, there are eight copies of iexplorer.exe running all the time, even with the browser closed. That’s gotta mean something.

 

What version of Windows are you using?

 

Windows 10 Pro, Version 10.0.17134 Build 17134. My complete system information is in my signature.

 

Sorry, can't help you with Windows 10.