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I have Windows 8 installed on PC, and another Windows 8 installed inside virtual computer. On virtual computer - without antivirus. In both cases, I see that OS intensively works with the hard disk at idle time. If I continue to work with computer, it stops this, and resumes later.

It looks like some background maintenance process, like hard disk scanning. What part of Windows 8 is responsible for this? Is it possible to remove/reduce this effect?

2 Answers 2

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Windows has an idle maintenance task.

To stop it, open the Task Scheduler (run: taskschd.msc) and go to Task Scheduler -> Microsoft -> Windows -> Task Scheduler and disable the Idle Maintenance task:

taskschd.msc

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  • That's it - changing maintenance start timeout did the trick. It is impossible to disable it completely, because it is re-enabled automatically after some time. But changing the properties works.
    – Alex F
    May 20, 2013 at 9:39
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The activity you are observing is most likely disk cleanup and defragmentation. Since Windows Vista there is no need for manual defragmentation as it is done automatically when Windows notices idle time.

I don't know how to deactivate this but this article looks promising.

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  • Good guess, but I think there is another reason. I found "Defragment and Optimize Drives" command, it contains Schedule optimization option, which is set to "Weekly". In my case, it is definetely not weekly...
    – Alex F
    May 13, 2013 at 8:23
  • Try the Process Explorer then. It shows you which files are accessed by which process. May 13, 2013 at 8:29
  • Actually, there are a lot of candidates in the Task Scheduler. For example, Windows Defender. I will try to disable some of sceduled tasks and see what happens.
    – Alex F
    May 13, 2013 at 8:34

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