My PC is working hard on the hard drive and I"m not sure what is running or if something is updating or exactly what is going on? I check processes and most of the processor activity is system idle.
So why is my PC disk grinding away?
- Thread starter NaphtaliPress
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toddpedlar
Iron Dramatist
Most likely your computer is using part of your hard drive for virtual RAM space - check your Memory usage and your Virtual Memory usage on the task manager. It's likely that you dont' have sufficient RAM to store all the information the computer wants/needs to store with what you're doing. We have had the same issue with our paltry 512MB of RAM on the machine at home, so I've just bought 2 GB and it should be arriving today (whoopee!)
danmpem
Puritan Board Junior
So you hear a noise and you're not sure why? (I think that's what you are saying).
Here are some things to consider:
- If it's grinding from the hard disk, then your it may be the head of your needle that doing that. Usually if this is the case, you would hear a tick-tick-tick sound, but grinding can occur as well. If this is the case, you ought to back up your files ASAP. While it is possible to extract the plate from the hard disk in a "clean room" and recover your files, a damaged needle head can ruin all attempts of doing that. If nothing else, do this. If for some reason you are in a place where you don't have access to a large flash drive or external hard drive, archive your files in a single .zip, or what have you, and upload it onto a free online storage site.
- Avoid turning off your computer and letting the hard drive's power go off in stand by/hibernation mode. If it is damaged, everytime you turn it off is one more time it may not turn back on.
- If the hard disk is damaged, your computer may have difficulty booting your OS in the future. While this can be caused by a few things (even just in the context of a damaged hard drive), there is still a way to get your files off without having to purchase an external hard drive enclosure kit. Leave your hard drive in there, and use Knoppix Linux Live CD instead.
- If you want to limit the current system processes right now, WinPatrol is a good place to start. Use it to remove all your start-up programs. While you do this, remove them from the system memory (WinPatrol gives you that option if the given program is currently running).
Here are some things to consider:
- If it's grinding from the hard disk, then your it may be the head of your needle that doing that. Usually if this is the case, you would hear a tick-tick-tick sound, but grinding can occur as well. If this is the case, you ought to back up your files ASAP. While it is possible to extract the plate from the hard disk in a "clean room" and recover your files, a damaged needle head can ruin all attempts of doing that. If nothing else, do this. If for some reason you are in a place where you don't have access to a large flash drive or external hard drive, archive your files in a single .zip, or what have you, and upload it onto a free online storage site.
- Avoid turning off your computer and letting the hard drive's power go off in stand by/hibernation mode. If it is damaged, everytime you turn it off is one more time it may not turn back on.
- If the hard disk is damaged, your computer may have difficulty booting your OS in the future. While this can be caused by a few things (even just in the context of a damaged hard drive), there is still a way to get your files off without having to purchase an external hard drive enclosure kit. Leave your hard drive in there, and use Knoppix Linux Live CD instead.
- If you want to limit the current system processes right now, WinPatrol is a good place to start. Use it to remove all your start-up programs. While you do this, remove them from the system memory (WinPatrol gives you that option if the given program is currently running).
Casey
Puritan Board Junior
Chris, I assume you're using Windows? Is this something new, or has this been regular? If it's new, just open up the system monitor and try to see if you have any programs running that look like they would access the hard drive a lot to restart them -- you could reboot, too. If it's been regular, as Todd said, you may need more ram or you could just have a noisy drive. Check to see if your ram is entirely used, if so, then it's the swap space making up for your low ram.
danmpem
Puritan Board Junior
I may have mixed some Chris' words up. I don't know if I see the connection between all the symptoms.
This is the taskmanger report; I don't know how to read it I'm sorry to say; but it doesn't look bad to me??
danmpem
Puritan Board Junior
This is the taskmanger report; I don't know how to read it I'm sorry to say; but it doesn't look bad to me??
You have 69 processes. Use WinPatrol, reboot, then see what it says.
What is Winpatrol?
This is the taskmanger report; I don't know how to read it I'm sorry to say; but it doesn't look bad to me??
You have 69 processes. Use WinPatrol, reboot, then see what it says.
danmpem
Puritan Board Junior
Also, in the Task Manager's processes tab, what are the top four listed in terms of memory usage? If you can identify them as processes you don't need running, then force quit them. If you're not sure, then run some anti-spyware software (Windows Defender and Spybot are good and free).
danmpem
Puritan Board Junior
Oh, sorry. See my first reply post.
Chris,
Go to the Task Manager, and go to View, then Select Columns. Then check the columns for I/O writes and I/O read. That will put the disk writing statistics in your Task Manager. Then click on that column header to sort by that. You will be able to see what is writing.
Just a guess, but it is likely a search program or an AV.
Go to the Task Manager, and go to View, then Select Columns. Then check the columns for I/O writes and I/O read. That will put the disk writing statistics in your Task Manager. Then click on that column header to sort by that. You will be able to see what is writing.
Just a guess, but it is likely a search program or an AV.
danmpem
Puritan Board Junior
Chris,
Go to the Task Manager, and go to View, then Select Columns. Then check the columns for I/O writes and I/O read. That will put the disk writing statistics in your Task Manager. Then click on that column header to sort by that. You will be able to see what is writing.
Just a guess, but it is likely a search program or an AV.
What is an AV?
Seb
Puritan Board Junior
In addition to the other suggestions you should look to see if the
"Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching"
option is turned on for your hard drive. Sometimes it can cause a hard drive to churn and churn.
SpeedGuide.net :: Windows 2k/XP Tweaks
"Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching"
option is turned on for your hard drive. Sometimes it can cause a hard drive to churn and churn.
SpeedGuide.net :: Windows 2k/XP Tweaks
Chris,
Go to the Task Manager, and go to View, then Select Columns. Then check the columns for I/O writes and I/O read. That will put the disk writing statistics in your Task Manager. Then click on that column header to sort by that. You will be able to see what is writing.
Just a guess, but it is likely a search program or an AV.
What is an AV?
Anti-virus
danmpem
Puritan Board Junior
Thanks. Did you mean that it could be slowing the computer down or interfering with something?
danmpem
Puritan Board Junior
[WIKI][/WIKI]
When you say X1, are you talking about XP Service Pack 1 or something else?
When you say X1, are you talking about XP Service Pack 1 or something else?
That might have been it, but usually, once things are indexed, it takes very little hard drive effort to index recent files.
Turning indexing off shouldn't hurt anything. It just means recent files won't be in the index and won't be searchable with X1. Some people index once a week, but I'd think leaving it on shouldn't cause this problem unless the index got corrupted and it decided to do it all over. Or sometimes computers just get confused.
Chris,
You don't have to turn off indexing altogether but make sure that you're only indexing things you want to search for.
You don't have to turn off indexing altogether but make sure that you're only indexing things you want to search for.
rjlynam
Puritan Board Sophomore
How old is this hard drive? If none of the suggestions above have worked, let me suggest that the hard drive is on the way out.
What may be happening is the computer is having trouble reading/writing to the hard drive. When this happens, you see almost constant chatter between the operating system and the drive (HD light is constantly flickering).
It is normal to see intermittent drive activity, even if the computer is idle. What is not normal behavior is when that light is in a constant state of flickering (read/write activity) when in idle mode (not running anything).
If you can bring the computer up in safe mode (Press F8 key once per second when you start the computer) and the drive activity lights behave the same way after the computer is up in safe mode for 4-5 minutes, I would try doing a checkdisk on it as follows:
Start / Run / CMD and enter.
Brings up a black box. (Dos command window for us older folks)
in the black box type
chkdsk /f c:
you should get something like the following:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Cannot lock current drive.
Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another
process. Would you like to schedule this volume to be
checked the next time the system restarts? (Y/N)
to which you should type y and enter.
Reboot your machine and allow the checkdisk to run. If it reports errors, then do it again after running your computer for a bit. It should come up clean and the chatter should go away.
Alot of times the file system gets corrupted by improper shutdowns and you end up with some crosslinked files, invalid indexes, etc. You should not see any "could not read from sector XXXXXX"
If you do get the "could not read" errors on a checkdisk, then I would be going into disaster prep mode .
Hope this helps.
What may be happening is the computer is having trouble reading/writing to the hard drive. When this happens, you see almost constant chatter between the operating system and the drive (HD light is constantly flickering).
It is normal to see intermittent drive activity, even if the computer is idle. What is not normal behavior is when that light is in a constant state of flickering (read/write activity) when in idle mode (not running anything).
If you can bring the computer up in safe mode (Press F8 key once per second when you start the computer) and the drive activity lights behave the same way after the computer is up in safe mode for 4-5 minutes, I would try doing a checkdisk on it as follows:
Start / Run / CMD and enter.
Brings up a black box. (Dos command window for us older folks)
in the black box type
chkdsk /f c:
you should get something like the following:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Cannot lock current drive.
Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another
process. Would you like to schedule this volume to be
checked the next time the system restarts? (Y/N)
to which you should type y and enter.
Reboot your machine and allow the checkdisk to run. If it reports errors, then do it again after running your computer for a bit. It should come up clean and the chatter should go away.
Alot of times the file system gets corrupted by improper shutdowns and you end up with some crosslinked files, invalid indexes, etc. You should not see any "could not read from sector XXXXXX"
If you do get the "could not read" errors on a checkdisk, then I would be going into disaster prep mode .
Hope this helps.
Last edited:
ReformedSinner
Puritan Board Freshman
Nathpal:
When your hard drive spins like crazy it's most likely nothing else but what one replier already said: you don't have enough RAM so the computer uses your hard drive to act as virtual RAM.
How much RAMs do you have? For XP you should have at least 1 GB (2GB recommended) and for Vista you should have no less than 4 GB.
I don't know if you're computer savvy enough to upgrade your own RAM, but if your hard drive is keep swapping files it won't last long either. Maybe it's time for a new computer.
When your hard drive spins like crazy it's most likely nothing else but what one replier already said: you don't have enough RAM so the computer uses your hard drive to act as virtual RAM.
How much RAMs do you have? For XP you should have at least 1 GB (2GB recommended) and for Vista you should have no less than 4 GB.
I don't know if you're computer savvy enough to upgrade your own RAM, but if your hard drive is keep swapping files it won't last long either. Maybe it's time for a new computer.
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