I have installed Microsoft SQL Server Express 2012 on a desktop under Windows 8.1 to teach myself SQL (and eventually work with some data). I am also using SQL Server Management Studio.
SQL Server is constantly hitting my disk, for no apparent reason. There's so much disk activity that I am not comfortable running the program because I don't want to wear out my drive.
Here's what I know for sure:
1.The disk activity stops if I stop SQL Server from the command line (net stop mssqlserver).
2.The disk activity does NOT resume if I restart SQL Server from the command line (net start mssqlserver) and I am not in SQL Server Management Studio.
3.The disk activity does NOT resume if I open SQL Server Management Studio, connect to the server (which is the desktop), and do nothing else.
4.The disk activity begins as soon as I open a query window (with the "New Query") button, before I do anything else. And if I close the window without doing anything, the disk activity keeps going.
5.In Activity Monitor in SSMS, I see one process running: a SELECT on tempdb. But I didn't run a single query.
Any idea what might be going on? I don't want to be putting constant, pointless wear-and-tear on my hard drive just to run SQL Server Express while doing nothing.
UPDATE: Apart from "System Databases" shown in SSMS, I have only three databases. One is the AdventureWorks2012 database from Microsoft for training. Another is a database with almost no data that is also based on a book. The third is two text files that I loaded into a database.
I understand why this info is ordinarily relevant, and I understand that SQL Server is active whenever there's database activity (update, select, insert).
What I'm trying to say is that SQL Server is hitting my disk constantly when I am doing NOTHING. I haven't run a single query. All I've done is fire up SQL Server, fire up SSMS, and open a new query window. Constant disk activity then occurs.
Activity monitor shows some "Recent Expensive Queries" that must be system-initiated, because I didn't initiate any, but I can't post a screenshot because I'm new.
My hope is that there's some kind of global setting that I can change that relates to SQL Server's background processes. Given that I am not running any queries at all, I don't think that the constant disk activity is expected behavior.