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Explorer.exe keeps checking second drive every 10 minutes

Hi,

I have a primary ssd drive with windows 8 installed and a secondary hdd drive for storage purposes. I want the second drive to sleep when not in use, which is most of the time. The drive stops spinning just as I want but every 10 minutes it starts again without any action by me.
Also, there is no location included to indexing in these drives.
When I checked what was accessing the drive using Sysinternals Process Monitor, it showed me that explorer.exe was accessing the drive (there are no explorer windows open)

Is there a way to stop this from happening?


Here is an example of the accesses:

00:23:01,0921001 Explorer.EXE 1492 CreateFile E:\ SUCCESS Desired Access: Synchronize, Disposition: Open, Options: Directory, Synchronous IO Non-Alert, Open For Free Space Query, Attributes: n/a, ShareMode: None, AllocationSize: n/a, OpenResult: Opened
00:23:01,0921371 Explorer.EXE 1492 QueryFullSizeInformationVolume E:\ SUCCESS TotalAllocationUnits: 56.294.399, CallerAvailableAllocationUnits: 36.080.511, ActualAvailableAllocationUnits: 36.080.511, SectorsPerAllocationUnit: 8, BytesPerSector: 512
00:23:01,0921538 Explorer.EXE 1492 CloseFile E:\ SUCCESS
00:23:01,0923105 Explorer.EXE 1492 CreateFile F:\ SUCCESS Desired Access: Synchronize, Disposition: Open, Options: Directory, Synchronous IO Non-Alert, Open For Free Space Query, Attributes: n/a, ShareMode: None, AllocationSize: n/a, OpenResult: Opened
00:23:01,0923437 Explorer.EXE 1492 QueryFullSizeInformationVolume F:\ SUCCESS TotalAllocationUnits: 178.652.840, CallerAvailableAllocationUnits: 109.596.343, ActualAvailableAllocationUnits: 109.596.343, SectorsPerAllocationUnit: 8, BytesPerSector: 512
00:23:01,0923595 Explorer.EXE 1492 CloseFile F:\ SUCCESS

I have a similar problem with explorer. I have about seven other drives and i find that some of them are being used by explorer.

Like my M: drive. It has about 800GB of Music on it. I find Explorer.exe listed in Performance Monitor -> Disk section, hundreds of times, with files from the M: drive. It is using 90 to 100% of that hard drives bandwidth. this goes on for a long time at random times. (long scans of the drive). What is explorer doing.

I do not have WMP open and i don't think it is updating the library as it should be up to date. When i do open WMP it only takes less then one minute to update the library.

I can not explain what explorer is doing or why it is doing it. Maybe it is indexing it, but then why does it do it three times in a number of hours on the same day.

Win 8 X64 with MC

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Identical issue.
I'm investigating what prevents my drives from sleep. anf finally only this Explorer left.
It constantly checks for free space accurately every 10th minute. 

Example of access is similar to the one in the first post.

61871 12:50:02,7128361 Explorer.EXE 2172 CreateFile E:\ SUCCESS Desired Access: Synchronize, Disposition: Open, Options: Directory, Synchronous IO Non-Alert, Open For Free Space Query, Attributes: n/a, ShareMode: None, AllocationSize: n/a, OpenResult: Opened
61872 12:50:02,7128988 Explorer.EXE 2172 QueryFullSizeInformationVolume E:\ SUCCESS TotalAllocationUnits: 488 378 111, CallerAvailableAllocationUnits: 329 506 822, ActualAvailableAllocationUnits: 329 506 822, SectorsPerAllocationUnit: 8, BytesPerSector: 512
61873 12:50:02,7129436 Explorer.EXE 2172 CloseFile E:\ SUCCESS
61874 12:50:02,7129904 Explorer.EXE 2172 IRP_MJ_CLOSE E:\ SUCCESS
61875 12:50:02,7130569 Explorer.EXE 2172 CreateFile F:\ SUCCESS Desired Access: Synchronize, Disposition: Open, Options: Directory, Synchronous IO Non-Alert, Open For Free Space Query, Attributes: n/a, ShareMode: None, AllocationSize: n/a, OpenResult: Opened
61876 12:50:02,7131183 Explorer.EXE 2172 QueryFullSizeInformationVolume F:\ SUCCESS TotalAllocationUnits: 488 378 111, CallerAvailableAllocationUnits: 421 363 666, ActualAvailableAllocationUnits: 421 363 666, SectorsPerAllocationUnit: 8, BytesPerSector: 512
61877 12:50:02,7131625 Explorer.EXE 2172 CloseFile F:\ SUCCESS
61878 12:50:02,7132079 Explorer.EXE 2172 IRP_MJ_CLOSE F:\ SUCCESS


I see nothing suspicious in the calling stack, no thirdparty modules:

0 fltmgr.sys FltAcquirePushLockShared + 0x907 0xfffff88001123067 C:\Windows\system32\drivers\fltmgr.sys
1 fltmgr.sys FltIsCallbackDataDirty + 0xa39 0xfffff88001124329 C:\Windows\system32\drivers\fltmgr.sys
2 fltmgr.sys fltmgr.sys + 0x16c7 0xfffff880011226c7 C:\Windows\system32\drivers\fltmgr.sys
3 ntoskrnl.exe NtCreateFile + 0x31b 0xfffff800039e371b C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
4 ntoskrnl.exe NtQueryVolumeInformationFile + 0x3db 0xfffff800039f039b C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
5 ntoskrnl.exe KeSynchronizeExecution + 0x3a43 0xfffff800036da8d3 C:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
6 ntdll.dll ZwQueryVolumeInformationFile + 0xa 0x772d17aa C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll
7 KERNELBASE.dll GetDiskFreeSpaceExW + 0x10b 0x7fefd8eaedb C:\Windows\system32\KERNELBASE.dll
8 SHELL32.dll Ordinal733 + 0x27b 0x7fefe476ffb C:\Windows\system32\SHELL32.dll
9 SHELL32.dll Ordinal733 + 0x20a 0x7fefe476f8a C:\Windows\system32\SHELL32.dll
10 SHLWAPI.dll IUnknown_GetWindow + 0x68f 0x7fefdb43843 C:\Windows\system32\SHLWAPI.dll
11 ntdll.dll TpCallbackMayRunLong + 0x32b 0x772a15ab C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll
12 ntdll.dll RtlRealSuccessor + 0x136 0x772a0c26 C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll
13 kernel32.dll BaseThreadInitThunk + 0xd 0x7717652d C:\Windows\system32\kernel32.dll
14 ntdll.dll RtlUserThreadStart + 0x21 0x772ac521 C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll


Any ideas, who needs to know disk size every 10 minutes? How to debug the caller?

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Last updated April 24, 2024 Views 1,382 Applies to: