Hard Drive keeps getting accessed (Acer Aspire A315 i5-8250U)

JayOliver

My hard drive, with the computer at idle, would switch on the hard drive every minute or so. 

I disabled pretty much everything. All the startup, even Win Defender.  All the notifications, updates, reports, etc. are off. Disabled Norton Virus that came with it. 
Uninstalled Google Chrome also.

While playing a video game, the HD would get accessed and I'd get a half to 1 second lag, where everything freeze. Incredibly annoying and can't be good for the HD's life. 

Brand new, so not many programs installed.  Please help.  And thanks for any input. 

Acer Aspire A315  i5-8250U  
Optane memory 16g. 
12gb  RAM, 1 TB HD.

JayOliver

And the drive on the Config Screen says SSD but it's a regular 1 TB SATA mechanical hard drive.  The whole laptop was only $350 new + $53 for 8gb RAM upgrade, so it's def. not a 1 TB SSD. Plus I took it out to make sure the brackets weren't on too tight (which sometimes = bad for it).