Why does a hard drive constantly run? How do I fix this problem?

Tigerlilly62,
If you are running Win98 try this:
Go to Control Panel\Double Click the Power Management Icon\ Down towards the bottom of the power management properties you should see where you can set your hard drive to shut off anywhere from 3 mins. to 5 hours after using it.
WarHog

If you mean the LED is always on, and the drive sounds like it's being accessed, I would think something running in the background is accessing it. Try [Ctrl] [Alt] [Del] ONCE and see what's running. Highlight any programs shown in that window, and click End Task and it should shut down that program. Do not shut down Explorer or Systray, both MUST be running, everyting else can be shut off. When you shut one off and the drive stops accessing, that's the one causing it.

In the Task Bar at bottom right on the desktop, right click on the icon for your virus scanner, and see what its settings are. It might be ocnstantly trying to access th drive too.

Another possibility is Defrag trying to run in the background from a scheduled attempt that never finished. Open Task Scheduler and see if you have anything running, and if you have defrag set to run at a certain time, always remember to turn off all programs running except task scheduler before it should start. Virus scanners are the worst, they cause defrag to continuously start over at about 10% and never finish. That will cause the hard drive to be accessed constantly. In fact, I would check that first, after thinking about it I think it's most likely. [Ctrl] [Alt] [Del] once might show it. Otherwise, check the Task Scheduler, I think it has a log you can check, and it will tell you it started and never finished.

When Task Sheduler is open click Advanced in the menu bar, the bottom option should be View Log. Check it and see if it says defrag has started and not finished.

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[This message has been edited by Paleo Pete (edited 02-12-2001).]