How to find out what's accessing a particular hard drive on Windows?

The need to find out what is accessing a particular hard drive on a Windows system is an important task for IT administrators. In many cases, the information is required to troubleshoot or investigate a problem, or to gain insight into system activities.

This article will explain how to use Windows tools to discover which programs or processes are accessing a particular hard drive. These steps should be followed when Windows is running normally, and not in Safe Mode.

First, launch the Windows Task Manager. This can be done by pressing “Ctrl+Alt+Del” simultaneously or right-clicking on the taskbar and selecting “Task Manager”.

Once the Task Manager window is open, click on the “Performance” tab, then the “Disk Usage” tab. This will show the current usage of each hard drive in the system. A graph will display the read and write operations on each drive.

If the drive of interest is highlighted in the graph, click on it to see a list of processes that are currently accessing it. This will show the name of the process and a description of what it is doing.

The next step is to view more detailed information about the process. To do this, select the process in the list and click the “Properties” button. This will open a window with detailed information about the process, including the path to the executable file, the process ID, and the user account it is running under.

If the process is a Windows service, the user account it is running under will be “Local System”. This indicates that it is a system process and can’t be terminated.

Alternatively, if the process is a third-party application, the user account it is running under will be a user name. This indicates that the process can be terminated if necessary.

It is also possible to view detailed information about a process that is not currently accessing the drive. To do this, select the “Processes” tab in the Task Manager. This will show a list of all running processes in the system.

Right-click on the process of interest and select “Properties”. This will open a window with detailed information about the process, including the path to the executable file, the process ID, and the user account it is running under.

By using the steps outlined in this article, IT administrators can easily find out what is accessing a particular hard drive on a Windows system. This information can be used to troubleshoot or investigate a problem, or to gain insight into system activities.