HDD running

[David M]

Is there a way of telling when you hear your hard drive running, just what it is that your hard drive is doing at that time? Its a little irritating and has me curious at times to hear ones HD going like crazy when you are doing relatively nothing at your computer. Yes I know probably the vast majority of the activity is legitimate. It would be nice to know for curiosities sake just what is going on.

[EzyStvy]

Can look in Task Manager.

[glc]

It's probably updating the hard drive index. XP indexes the hard drive by default for faster searching, this can be disabled in the drive properties. It could also be creating system restore points.

[David M]

Thanks...so there is no software that will tell me with certainty what just happened? (when I hear the HDD being accessed)

[TwoRails]

If this is the program I used years ago, it'll do what you want:

http://pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,23773-order,1-page,1-c,harddisk/description.html