Odd behaviour since 'patch Tuesday'

[RVB]

Windows 10 did a sizeable update a few days ago, requiring restart and configure etc.

Ever since, my external 1TB WD mechanical hard drive has been spending many hours per day reading/writing (mostly reading) in short 5-second bursts with 1-second pauses, for no apparent reason (i.e. I'm not trying to access it, nor using files on it)

Screenshot of its behaviour below, showing non-stop spikes in its activity. It has only done a few thousand hours, is in good health according to Crystaldisk and isn't misbehaving in any way if I try to read from it or write to it.
No viruses suspected and Windows defender/Norton not reporting any viruses even after scanning.

[stemll]

Not a Windows user at home but could it be re-indexing it thinking it's a new drive? Have seen similar with Macs sometimes after an upgrade

[xeny]

Look on the processes tab sorted by disk use, and you'll probably be able to see which process it is pretty quickly.

[RVB]

xeny said:

Look on the processes tab sorted by disk use, and you'll probably be able to see which process it is pretty quickly.

That's the odd thing; nothing unusual was showing consistently near the top of the list to coincide with the quirky disk behaviour.

[RVB]

stemll said:

Not a Windows user at home but could it be re-indexing it thinking it's a new drive? Have seen similar with Macs sometimes after an upgrade

Funny you should say that, because I don't think this is the first time such a thing has happened shortly after a large/re-configure/restart type of update.

[pquinn]

Click that handy Resource Monitor button and look at the disk activity there. It'll break it down by process and file and show you exactly what's going on.

[Mr Happy]

Is it a cloud accessible one (wd my cloud or similar)? cloudOS 3 has dropped out of support and there are exploitable hacks out there.

Disable external access if so, it might have an update to cloudOS 5, but if not, it's vulnerable.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/07/another-0-day-...


Eta just saw its a wd elements drive, not a cloud one. Info above still stands for others with wd cloud nas drives tho.