OK, my current PC is only 2 months old and I've had no problems with it so far. However, I seem to have noticed recently that my hard drive makes this random noise, and its very frustrating. I wouldn't call it a noise, but the hard drive will have the yellow light flashing as if doing some sort of work in the background, but I have no applications running.

This seems to have happened ever since I installed Zone Alarm / AVG. Both are free versions and even after disabling and turning off both, I still have the problem. It's a random thing and it only lasts for a few short seconds, but when it happens the sound is just annoying.

Anyone know what it could be or how to possibly fix it?

It’s your Operating System (OS) that is accessing the hard drive. This could be to unload programs and DLLs from your memory or to optimize your HDD when idle.

If you would be so kind to tell us what OS you are using I will move your topic to the appropriate forum part, e.g. Vista or XP. It’s not a hardware related thing...

Also, if you were to run Process Monitor on the machine, you could see what process was accessing the drive, what files/folders, etc.

I'm using Windows Vista, sorry about that and thx for the info.

So, I will move this topic to the Vista forum part .