Storage: Excessive Hard Drive Activity
Excessive Hard Drive Activity
by patrick Dakin - 5/22/06 7:51 AMHi,
Just recently, my hard drive has been accessing itself about every minute. I don't mean just the red light, but I get four sets of four audible ''clicks'' each time. Most of the time, this stops whatever I'm doing for about 10 seconds, but sometimes I can still work while it's going on. I have Windows XP running 512K (this has always been sufficient for everything other than running Photoshop-intensive work, and even then, it just slows things down, which is to be expected). I have no detectable virus (I use Symantec which auto-updates). I've run spybot programs and deleted all suspicious cookies and I've run Hijack This! which didn't show anything out of the ordinary. I've tried to determine what is causing this by going to Task Manager, but I've been unable to determine what process is causing this. Is there an easy way to absolutely tell what process is using memory at a given instant?
Possible causes:
I only have 3 gB left on my 40 gB C drive.
I've gotten a battery low message on my wireless MS keyboard/mouse, but everything still works as it should.
I got an indication about a week or so ago that Windows was increasing the page file because of memory. I've rebooted several times since then but the problem still occurs.
Just in the time that I've been typing this, I've gotten 4 distinct accesses, each time, it's 4 quick clicks four times. I've been able to type while this is going on, but if I had been trying to read my email or change web pages, everything would have stopped.
This is driving me CRAZY! (as well as causing undue wear and tear on my drive).
Any ideas?
scan hard disk
by linkit - 5/22/06 10:10 AM In reply to: Excessive Hard Drive Activity by patrick DakinBACKUP all important files.
MOVE some files to other storage. Try to get it to about 25-30GB max used space. (Or install a larger HD.)
Rt-click on the HD and select properties. Click the Tools tab. In the Error Checking section, click Check Now. Check both ''Check Disk'' options and Start the scans.
Also, defragment the HD.
Excessive Hard Drive Activity
by lousellsco - 5/26/06 4:05 AM In reply to: Excessive Hard Drive Activity by patrick DakinWith a 40GB drive this full, you may not have enough swap space available to defragment the drive. Typically you nee 15% avaialble space for this process. You may also have a number of duplicat files on your drive taking up a lot of space, which can free you up some.
I would recommend backing up all of your data quickly, before you crash the system. Then decide what is absolutely necessary and remove what is not. this will also improve system performance.
If you need a lot of software, install a larger hard drive. Save the old one and put it in an exterrnal enclosure for data boackup, via USB cable to the laptop.
Finally, you may have spamware or spyware infecting your machine. It could be loading up your drive with unnecessary fluff. This could be the reason for the disk accesses, especially if you notice them while the machine is idle. Keep your "anti" software updated. If you don't have anti spy or spam software, get it. It takes an unprotectedf computer less than 30 minutes to become infected with hundreds of little bugs.
Excessive Hard DIsk Activity
by parvez - 5/26/06 4:55 AM In reply to: Excessive Hard Drive Activity by patrick DakinI had this problem couple of times on different PCs.
I tried every possible solution but in-vain. What I did was that I backed up all the data and format the "C" partition.
On one occesion, while I was scanning the hard disk for the similar problem, it just crashed. Thanks God that I had a backup of of all the data.
Now if I have same situation on any PC, so instead of wasting time on running different test, I right away format the disk after backing up the data. Which of course save lot of time. Hard Disks are becoming unreliable now a days.
Parvez
Swapfile
by mightydeerhunter - 5/26/06 5:02 AM In reply to: Excessive Hard Drive Activity by patrick DakinI agree with the other person about your swapfile not being able to do it's job. As a minimum, this should be set to use space that is 1.5x your system memory as reported by Windows, not what's physically installed and a maximum of 3x your system memory. I
f you don't have the available disk space for your swapfile or it's too low, that's when you get anything from what your describing which is called "disk thrashing," to where your system will just lock up.
This can explain your hard drive activity.
Hard drive full
by gtoguy - 5/26/06 5:10 AM In reply to: Excessive Hard Drive Activity by patrick DakinYou have no space left on your hard drive. You have to look at all your files and delete any you no longer need. Look for large files, and free up some space before your drive crashes. You should get an external USB hard drive and copy all the files you don't need on a daily basis to this drive. Do this after you clean up your drive. Empty all your temporary file folders before you defrag the drive. If you have a disk clean utility, use it to find all your temp files and cookies. There are many free utilitys available. After doing all this, upgrade your hard drive to 80 gig or higher. Software with your new drive will copy the contents of your existing drive to your new one. Then you can reformat the 40 gig drive and use it as extra storage. GTOGUY
Excessive Hard Drive Activity
by charliep46 - 5/26/06 6:28 AM In reply to: Excessive Hard Drive Activity by patrick DakinTry some of these suggestions:
1. Try to free some disk space
2. Defrag the hard drive
3. Increase page file
4. Run Performance Monitor and check disk, memory and processor monitors. Memory or processor bottleneck may also cause disk activity.
5. Check startup group (msconfig). If any there are lots of unnecessary files located in startup, remove them. More importantly, check to see what may be placing these files in the startup (virus, spyware, malware, etc.)
I hope this helps.
Excessive Hard Drive Activity
by bioman - 5/26/06 7:02 AM In reply to: Excessive Hard Drive Activity by patrick DakinHi::
- don't know for sure, but problem likely involves your lack of RAM, and the overly full hard drive. - if you live in North America, additional Ram & hard drives (in tower or portable) are inexpensive. - correct these two, & you may solve your problem.
- program called Cacheman XP is excellent for assigning Ram & processor priority to running processes when your resources aren't sufficient for everything you're trying to run. - also has a whole bunch of "one click" tweaks to help computer operate at its best under widely varying circumstances.
- don't know if this is relevant, but I once had a process called spoolsv.exe go nuts when I was trying to install a network printer. - got mixed up in something called Windows virtual printer, and spoolsv.exe started running constantly. - tower was useless for anything else until I managed to turn it off. - don't remember how I did it, but I found a fix on the Internet. - Cacheman XP made fix possible by first showing me which process was running full speed ahead, allowing me to research the correct question.
Backup-Degrag-Ccleaner-Diskeeper Lite-CachemanXP
by axekick - 5/26/06 10:19 PM In reply to: Excessive Hard Drive Activity by biomanI would download and install ccleaner to remove garbage files from your hard drive. I have done this on relatives computers who rarely use the internet and removed 2Gig in junk files. Afterwards I would try to scandisk or chkdsk /f from your command prompt, then defrag if possible. If not, you may try Diskeeper Lite to see if that will assist in defraging your hard drive. Either way, you obviously need more hard drive space so as soon as possible backup your important files before you jeapordize losing anything. Jump Drives, CD/DVD's, to another system, anyway you can depending on how much you need backed up. I also agree that CachemanXP may be beneficial but you have to have more free hard drive space.
re storage problem!
by chuckb74 - 5/27/06 6:08 AM In reply to: Backup-Degrag-Ccleaner-Diskeeper Lite-CachemanXP by axekickok before i start and try to help , i read all the info you have been given.Now some will help, but in the long run too a degree all are missing the point, that being the clicks (possible program running in the back ground) and being conected to the internet, thats the clicks you hear.
now i hope my solution for you ,is yes back up the files you need, dont back the whole lot as you will be taking the trouble and saving it.If you know somebody who has a copy of hirens boot cd borrow it and ask if they will show you how to use it ,use the antivirsu scanners ,this will pick up dialers you may have on your system. Onc you have done that download a copy from 0&0 SOFTWARE AND GRAB THERE DEFRAGER, this will show you how and where your hard drive is really going health wise.Y ou can vary how you want your hard drive defraged.
Also if you download music ,put it onto cd disk,
this releases alot of space
Review this discussion.
by R. Proffitt
- 5/27/06 7:18 AM
In reply to: Excessive Hard Drive Activity by patrick Dakin
Read http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-6142-0.html?forumID=5&threadID=178514&messageID=1958684 and at the end they shared a new program they were running.
Bob
Hard Disk Could Be Dying
by tonyny77 - 5/27/06 11:35 AM In reply to: Excessive Hard Drive Activity by patrick DakinTeleBurst,
Of course, there can be many legitimate/normal reasons for the hard disk activity you describe. But don't overlook the possibility that your hard drive is on its last leg.
When I had the same disk activity you're describing, my system was also still functioning quite normally, as far as I could tell. After a few more days, though, the drive was dead. I can only conclude that the problem that caused my own hard disk to behave that way was unrecoverable I/O errors.
I believe many modern-day hard drives — especially SCSI drives — can recover from some problem areas on your disk's recording surface. However, if one of those problem areas is critical such as your Master Boot Record or your FAT, the system will fail, no doubt. Of course, if the problem is with your hard drive's read/write heads, then it won't matter if you've got no bad sectors at all ... the drive will soon be dead.
If you've got a fairly current computer, I suspect your drive uses Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART) which can help assess the ''health condition'' of your hard drive. There may be a Windows utility that can access your drive's SMART information. On my system, I use a non-Microsoft tool that's part of a system maintenance suite to access and display my drives' SMART info.
I don't know whether your drive can reports its own health to you. If not, there ought to be a CNet utility out there to help you diagnose the problem.
But just like other forum members mentioned, you have to presume the worst may be ahead and you should back-up your data ... NOW!
Good luck and please tell us how it turns out.
Tony
look past the obvious
by dkahan - 5/27/06 2:00 PM In reply to: Excessive Hard Drive Activity by patrick Dakinobviously there are many "things" that may cause unexpected hard drive activity. background virus check comes to mind. but you need to check the sinister as well. hacking comes to mind - simple to check - unplug your internet connection and see if that has an affect. run a deep pest and virus scan against the drive. then to the more mundane - drive may be failing - remember, we, the consuming public, are now the quality control experts. I have had a lot of drives crap out within a few days - excessive noise, heat, accessing.
good luck - be glad hard drives are cheap.
Excessive Hard Drive Activity
by patrick Dakin - 5/28/06 7:22 AM In reply to: Excessive Hard Drive Activity by patrick DakinThanks for all of the advice.
I've just about gotten to the limit of things I can safely clear off of my C drive. I've stretched it to 4.4 gig free space. I defragged (of course I had to allow it to defrag at less than the recommended 15%. It seemed to work just fine). Just about everything that's big enough to make a difference is something that might not run on a different drive (things like Napster, which if I move will mess up the licensing, or other things that I suspect are already set up to run on the C drive, like Agent).
Nobody has answered the question of the actual activity (or at least I'm nost sure anyone has). If it's the paging file, is there any way to keep it from doing this access, or am I just out of space? I would think that over 10% free space would be sufficient, if only barely). I did change the page file size to manual and set the minimum at 768 and the maximum at 2000 (just picked the max out of the air).
Isn't there a way to directly be able to tell what service is actually using the hard drive at a specific point in time? I know that the indexing service is disabled (I checked that). This only started happening a few weeks ago, and my hard drive has been pretty full for months.
I DO have three other drives that I keep a lot of stuff on and I was able to move some things to them. One of them is actually everything that was on my C drive before I got the faster and bigger drive (so, in one respect, many of my programs are already "backed up"). Each has 8 to 10 gigs of free space on them. When I got this new computer, I used my 30 gig drive as the C drive because it was the fastest. One of my other drives is a 60 gig drive and that's where I keep my music (except for Napster, which I unfortunately allowed to default to the C drive) and my digital photographs that aren't archived onto disc. I suppose that I could just get a new huge drive and transfer everything on the current C drive to it and see if I still have another slot for the 30 gig drive to keep it as additional storage, but I suspect that I don't. Perhaps I could get a few trade-in bucks for it. I'm really trying to avoid doing this though as I don't want to screw up my Napster licensing (I have a few thousand songs saved).
Anyway, this drive access is REALLY driving me bonkers. Are you guys saying that if I'm able to get to 15% free space that it will just stop happening? I'm having a hard time seeing that happening. There's SOMETHING that's doing this very regular access (it's always four clicks repeated four times, but it doesn't seem to be triggered by any particular event). I'm really trying to get to the source of this VERY specific type of access. It's ALWAYS 4 audible clicks repeated 4 times. Is there anything that you folks know that has this specific "signature"?
Once again, thanks for all of the ideas.
I have similar problem, & LOTS of Xtra drive space
by raoulleon - 5/28/06 5:48 PM In reply to: Excessive Hard Drive Activity by patrick DakinI can relate. I have 2 HD's, with lots of extra space of them, yet I get this "crunching" or "clicking" sound on a regular basis. Some days it will do & other days not, but mostly it does, and it seems like it's gotten louder. I've been wondering what it is.
I don't think "cleaning up the HD" has anything to do with it. My drives are regularly defragged, registry-cleaned, checked for viruses & everything.
After reading everyone's suggestions, I now wonder if my main drive is going out. It's my newest drive too. I have been preparing to insert it in my new PC & use it as a slave drive, so I hope that's not the case!
I don't think anyone has really addressed your problem. It sounds like they have only responded to your issues of low drive space.
Sympathetic...
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