Momentary freeze at hard drive spin up...

[Storm70]

After searching many forums, I'm thinking I will have to learn to live with this, but if anyone can help, I would be grateful indeed...

At random intervals I can hear the hard disk spin up, and the mouse will freeze while it waits for the drive to come up to speed. This can happen even when I am not using the computer as well. It only last a couple of seconds, then the computer is ready to respond as normal. As long as I keep actively using it, it will not occur, but as soon as the computer is left untouched briefly, it will happen again. Has anyone experience with this? Laptop is a Toshiba Satellite A70 with 512Ram, 80GigHD, Pentium4 3.06ghz.

Here is a list of the things I've tried to no avail:

Unchecked the "automatically search for network folders"
Ran every spyware and adware program known to man - clean
Ran virus check - clean (disabled checking of folders & files at opening
Msconfig - only necessary items remain at startup
Disk defragment - all is well
Disk chek - all is well
Temp monitors on cpu and hd report nothing out of ordinary

Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

 

[braddds]

This is a normal operation of the laptop. However your energy savings settings maybe a bit too agressive. Check your settings by right clickingthe desktop, properties, and selecting screen saver tab then power. Set your power schemes to a more usable setting...howeve the down side is your battery won't last as long as the hardware uses more power in less aggressive power setting configurations.

Cheers

 

[Storm70]

Thanks for the response. I have set the energy saving settings as you suggested (set them to always on) but problem persists. I am refusing to accept this is normal operation. When I am done typing this, I will click the submit button only to hear the drive "spin-up", and be locked out from doing anything for about 3 seconds. My old 800mhz HP laptop never suffered from this problem, and at 3.06 I don't want to wait for this at every command I give the computer, even if it is minor.

Any other thoughts? Is there maybe a service running that is accessing the disk after brief idle periods? I have disabled the indexing and background transfer, but this hasnt helped either. I considered that it might be a network issue, but it happens to me when I'm mobile too....

 

[satrow]

Check the power saving features in the BIOS, Storm.