On the four Windows notebooks that I have had the misfortune of using ever so briefly, all of them had the hard disk pegged for the first 20min or so after boot/resume: anti-virus scan running.

Killing off AVG stopped the disk activity on the two I tried it on.

My first ever Windows notebook (well, not mine but one my client has loaned to me) shows similar behaviour, but the internal SSD means the continuous blinking (HDD LED) stops after just a minute or two.


Most of that activity is probably just "reads", so extremely unlikely. I'd think it would certainly shorten a mechanical drive's lifespan though.