Windows 7 is right around the corner, but until then, you may be stuck with Vista and its annoying hard drive issues, such as frequent disk thrashing. Have you ever left your PC idle and heard it toiling in the background, the hard drives whirring about like files were being mysteriously moved around? This is a common occurrence with Windows Vista and is actually a process rather than a software bug gone haywire. But, alas, constant disk thrashing can certainly tax your hard drive and shorten its lifespan. Read on to find out why Vista does this and how to remedy it.

Vista's File Indexing

In order to make file operations (searching, reading, writing, opening, etc.) quicker Vista creates an index file filled with makers that point to all the folders and files on your hard drive. Vista accomplishes this by scanning through your hard disk and indexing every file and folder it finds. Vista must keep an up-to-date version of the index file, so it'll periodically rebuild it. It's this index file rebuilding process which causes your hard drive to thrash around like there's no tomorrow.

You can do a couple of things to reduce the amount of disk taxation that occurs when Vista does its file indexing. Put simply, you can turn disk indexing off. While this was almost a no-brainer in XP (XP's file indexing wasn't very effective) you may want to think twice about turning off disk indexing in Vista, as Microsoft has greatly improved it. If you have or expect to have a large amount of files on your Vista system, you should probably leave drive indexing on, which will make searching for files and folders a great deal quicker. However, you may still want to turn this feature off. Searches will still work in Vista, but they may take longer. To disable the indexing feature, in the Start menu type "services" in the search bar and press enter; a services window will appear; scroll down and right click on Windows Search and select Properties. In the Startup Type box alter the value to "disabled"; next, hit the Stop button; hit OK after you're done.

Vista's Defrag

Over time, as you install more applications, write more files to disk, and generally move things around on your hard drive, data will become fragmented. A fragmented hard disk will respond more sluggishly than a defragmented one. Defragmenting is the process that Windows does to clean up your files, moving around pieces of data so that they are contiguous rather than haphazardly scattered about. This improves disk performance.

Under Windows XP you had to run the disk defrag tool manually. Under Vista this process happens automatically, which can interfere with your computing time if you just happen to be using it when Vista decides it's time to defrag. The solution is to disable the automatic defrag, and to do it manually at least once a month. Under the Start Menu type in "defrag" in the search bar. On the Disk Defragmenter dialog, un-check "Run on a schedule" to disable the automatic defrag.

Vista's Superfetch

The superfetch feature can be very useful but is also one of the biggest culprits to disk thrashing. Vista's superfetch monitors which applications you use the most and attempts to partially load up said applications into memory at boot time. The result is that your most frequently used programs load faster. Unfortunately, superfetch must keep abreast of your usage and is always learning: this causes the major disk thrashing you may experience. You can disable superfetch by typing in "services" in the Start Menu search bar; in the services dialog box right click on superfetch and select "Properties"; alter the Startup Type to Disabled and hit the Stop button to shutdown the superfetch feature. After disabling superfetch, you'll lose its advantages, but you may experience less hard drive usage on Vista's part.