Regular Disk Seek - Why's it doing it?

[rjmusto]

Have a Mac Mini (OSX 10.4.11) that has started a regular disk access 'clunk' - every 10 to 20 secs it makes a clunk noise that is SO ANNOYING. It seems to be accessing the disk for some reason and has only started doing it this morning.

I have started a trial of .Mac today and installed Backup - could that be the reason?
It must be some kind of monitoring process.
Trouble is, .Mac and iDisk get so embedded, I'm not sure how to get rid of it all again.

I've had a look at the running processes, but there are so many, how do you identify the culprit?

Any suggestions?

 

[Egidio]

Probably it would be a good idea to start up from your installation disk and then run Disk Utilities to "verify disk." See what that report says.

 

[rjmusto]

Hmm, ok will give that a try.
I does have more of a software feel about it though. It's like some sort of caching or cataloging has started happening (bit like Beagled on Linux).