harddisk working like mad after some idle time; what is it?

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

From: Wolfgang (rnott_at_nospam.ilternet.edu)
Date: 01/19/05 

Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 22:52:49 GMT

Hardware/software:
Laptop, XP with Servicepack 1 and all patches installed

Sometime ter my laptop has been idle for some time (without any user
program running), the harddisk always starts working away like mad. I
usually become aware of it by the sound of the drive and the drive
light coming on. As soon as I move the mouse or touch a key, the
harddisk will stop working.

My suspicion is that the system is doing some "routine work" it
consideres necessary, such as disk defragmenting or building some
index, but I really don't know.

What is it doing? Does anyone out there know what this is about, or
how I could go about diagnosing it (nothing unusual shows up in the
task manager process list) .

Thanks,
Wolfgang
California

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