How to determine what's trying to access my optical drive (emits unusual sounds)?
I just got a new laptop and I've noticed that every 10 to 20 minutes, the BD-RE drive emits sounds. The sounds are similar to sounds made by movement of the optical head inside the drive. If there is a disk in the drive, the dive will spin it up in addition to moving the head.
NOTE: Sounds can be heard even when there is no disk in the drive. As I mentioned previously, the when there is a disk in the drive, in addition to emission of sounds, the disk will spin up.
This is the first time I've encountered something like this, so I don't know how to proceed.
I did read this question, but my case isn't as severe, because the optical drive seems to be working normally, except for the intermittent sound it makes.
The computer itself is Toshiba P50t-B-10T running OEM installation of Windows 8.1 64 bit and the drive itself is MATSHITA UJ272 (Panasonic UJ272 in non-OEM versions).
One tool you could use is the Resource Monitor in Windows. Open Task Manager and click the "Resource Monitor" button on the Performance tab. Once in the Resource Monitor, go to the Disk tab, where you can see which processes are accessing your disks, and exactly which disks and which files they're accessing.
Another tool is Process Explorer from Sysinternals. Use the Search tool to search for X: where X is the drive letter of the BD-RE drive. This will find any currently open file on X.
The most flexible tool is Process Monitor that can trace and log almost all and any
event happening in the computer, including access to the disks.
You can select the Files filter to selectively include only disk accesses to
the BD-RE drive. For more information see the article:
Using Process Monitor to capture system events.
DiskMon also shows direct disk access, but doesn’t show the process doing it.
Like harrymc said, a couple programs you can use are Resource Monitor, Process Explorer, Process Monitor, and DiskMon.
However, the problem here is most likely that there is a wire loose or a faulty/dying optical drive mobo.
Basically, it's connecting and disconnecting, causing Windows to keep registering it as a new drive.
Additionally, it could be a problem with the driver that is trying to reconnect the drive.
Do this to find out if either of these are the problem:
- Physically disconnect the optical drive by unscrewing the screw on the bottom and pulling it out.
- Now reconnect the optical drive by pushing it back in. (all while the PC is still on).
- Listen to the sound it makes as you connect it. This is the sound of the drive initializing. Is this the same sound you heard that it makes randomly? If so, then there is probably an issue with either the optical drive itself (hardware), the cable connecting the optical drive, or the optical drive driver (software).