Hard drive overworked

Jayford · Mar 9, 2003

Another one for you tech wizards.

My hard drive has been crunching away like crazy lately, but I'm using less than 10% on CPU usage most of the time. I have enough RAM, so I suspect I have a file of some sort thats full or defective. Suggestions?

thanks,
Jay

nitro · Mar 9, 2003

Defrag the drive as a first step...

nitro

Dustin · Mar 9, 2003

If the HD is >2 years old it could be dying. Mine started making all sorts of noises, then the occasional blue screen before it died. There's some great deals on big HD's on techbargains.com.

Example: 120GB 8MB Maxtor for $121 or an 80GB 8MB for $69.

nkhoi · Mar 9, 2003

Quote from Dustin:

If the HD is >2 years old it could be dying.

it did happen to me.

opm8 · Mar 9, 2003

Jayford,

Definetely run a defrag like everyone else says. Did you have a look at your Task Manager to see what processes are running when this happens?

Order them by I/O and by memory to find the problem ones. Also, have you installed any new software?

--opm8

richtrader · Mar 9, 2003

Are you sure you have enough RAM? How much do you have? One big cause of the hard drive going nuts is when you overuse your RAM and the system has to swap data to the page file on the hard drive.

Quote from Jayford:

Another one for you tech wizards.

My hard drive has been crunching away like crazy lately, but I'm using less than 10% on CPU usage most of the time. I have enough RAM, so I suspect I have a file of some sort thats full or defective. Suggestions?

thanks,
Jay

gnome · Mar 9, 2003

Quote from Jayford:

Another one for you tech wizards.

My hard drive has been crunching away like crazy lately, but I'm using less than 10% on CPU usage most of the time. I have enough RAM, so I suspect I have a file of some sort thats full or defective. Suggestions?

thanks,
Jay

Are you running an "imaging" program like Roxio Go Back? Those things are CONSTANTLY writing an image of your HD. They say they "operate in the background"... yes, but as they are always updating every little change, saved data, etc., they slow down and interfere with most operations.

Jayford · Mar 9, 2003

Quote from opm8:

Jayford,

Definetely run a defrag like everyone else says. Did you have a look at your Task Manager to see what processes are running when this happens?

Order them by I/O and by memory to find the problem ones. Also, have you installed any new software?

--opm8

Yep, I'll run a defrag. I add new software all the time to try stuff out, but the problem seems to occur when my quotes are running.

Jayford · Mar 9, 2003

Quote from richtrader:

Are you sure you have enough RAM? How much do you have? One big cause of the hard drive going nuts is when you overuse your RAM and the system has to swap data to the page file on the hard drive.

Oh, I have plenty of RAM, 768 MG, and I only run a few programs at a time (usually Qcharts and TWS). I usually use about 5% CPU capacity unless I am performing some task such as openning a program, etc.

canyonman00 · Mar 9, 2003

Quote from Jayford:

Oh, I have plenty of RAM, 768 MG, and I only run a few programs at a time (usually Qcharts and TWS). I usually use about 5% CPU capacity unless I am performing some task such as openning a program, etc.

Get yourself a copy of Norton Utilities and run the System Doctor. Set up the Smart Disk and that will check the status/health of your hard drive. It will also provide several additional system checks at the same time. You should also run WinDoctor and allow it to make the corrections that it finds. Running the Disk Doctor won't hurt either.