Windows 7 Just Sitting Here Occasionally Accessing the Disk - SuperFetch?
Windows was just sitting here occasionally accessing the hard drive (every few seconds it would seek and the access light would flash very briefly). Then it pretty much stopped. It's not interfering with my work in any way, other than to make me curious about what it's doing. Before you give me the obvious answers: I have completely disabled Indexing. No media was being recorded or accessed. No network access was being done. My system is malware-free. Based on the information the Resource Monitor put up during the activity, my best guess is that it was SuperFetch working in the background, preparing things for faster access. Things like .pf files were being accessed, along with the MFT, etc. Under what conditions should one expect SuperFetch to do this kind of thing? Is SuperFetch setup a scheduled activity or is it just something that is expected to happen after a reboot (a fair number of Windows Updates were installed today and the system rebooted for the first time in a week)? This is no more than a curiosity; I just want to understand the system. Thanks for any insight you can offer. -Noel
April 17th, 2011 2:48pm

This has been going on since Windows NT 3.xx was introduced. Windows does "housekeeping" when you are not using the computer. So, it's nothing you really need to get concerned about. I'm sure there is specific information about this "housekeeping" somewhere, but I never really looked in to it since it's not a problem.Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.
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April 17th, 2011 3:08pm

Thanks. I understand the concept of Windows doing self-maintenance. There's more of that in Windows 7 than ever before. And I do regard that as a Good Thing. Trying to understand when it is expected to do certain things can help one to know when it's not doing the right things. Though I am protected in a number of different ways from malware, one always must be mindful of what should and should not be happening. It can make the difference between lost or compromised data and continued productivity. So I do choose to be concerned about what my computer is doing, especially when I perceive it to be different than usual. The activity I reported above has ceased, so I have to assume it was the large amount of Windows Updates earlier today that triggered it. As a career software engineer, I don't accept that my computer should ever do unexpected things, and so I strive to understand what it's actually expected to do. Attention to detail is one of the reasons I run Windows systems for years without corruption, without slowdown, and without reinstallation. -Noel
April 17th, 2011 4:37pm

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