Old internal HD now used as external drive - why does it fire up?

aliasojo

As title really. Old hard drive taken from knackered pc and put in a drop in caddy to use as an extra external drive. Works well, no issues other than when the caddy is switched on, the hard drive will occasionally fire up and is obviously doing something or other.

How can I find out what is causing this? It might be an old program looking for updates or could it be some external program on the net trying to access the disk? I'm not overly concerned about it tbh, just curious as to what might be starting it up, iyswim.

There's loads of stuff on the disk from progs to pics and I wouldn't know where to start to find out tbh.

Marty_J

Isn't it supposed to "fire up" when you turn it on?

culpepper

maybe it is your antivirus checking the disc ?

aliasojo

Marty_J wrote: »

Isn't it supposed to "fire up" when you turn it on?

Sorry, I wasn't clear...I meant if the hd is switched on all day for instance, the drive will stay silent until I access it then it will spin up and obviously be working whilst I am using it.

My point is, it also does this on occasion if it's left alone, so something else is either accessing it or a prog on the disk is doing something.

isofa

Could be anti-virus, shortcut caching, all sorts of things... often in a similar to things that sometimes wake a computer from sleep.