hard drive noisy

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ekdya · #1 Post by **ekdya** » Mon Jun 26, 2006 1:03 am

Hi
A31 Thinkpad, the hard drive is a bit too noisy, it started to get noise after I used a software for some family photos and vedios.
does that mean I have to get another one, I just called IBM here in Australia and they want $550 for a 60gb HD, I feel this is a bit too much.

another problem.
why does my win2000 pro says that it is recommended to defragment this
volume even though I just did.

here is the report
****************************************************************
Volume C (C:):
Volume size = 27,286 MB
Cluster size = 512 bytes
Used space = 15,446 MB
Free space = 11,840 MB
Percent free space = 43 %

Volume fragmentation
Total fragmentation = 11 %
File fragmentation = 23 %
Free space fragmentation = 0 %

File fragmentation
Total files = 55,038
Average file size = 362 KB
Total fragmented files = 30
Total excess fragments = 766
Average fragments per file = 1.01

Pagefile fragmentation
Pagefile size = 500 MB
Total fragments = 4

Directory fragmentation
Total directories = 3,309
Fragmented directories = 1
Excess directory fragments = 3

Master File Table (MFT) fragmentation
Total MFT size = 157 MB
MFT record count = 59,818
Percent MFT in use = 37 %
Total MFT fragments = 4
****************************************************************

thanks

#2 Post by **schen** » Mon Jun 26, 2006 12:46 pm

Your drive information looks fairly normal from what I can tell. It's possible that the drive is about to fail (or has developed bad clusters in a spot critical to W2K) and the OS is seeing something it doesn't like, so the result is to ask for a defrag. You might try getting on the Hitachi site (I'm assuming that your drive is IBM/Hitachi, although I hear it works on other manufacturer's drives) and download the utility to check out the integrity of the drive. If it turns out that it's got problem, I'd go ahead and replace the drive.

I think I'd probably replace it either way (especially if the drive is an original- mostly likely 4200rpm). Brent Presley regularly sells 5400 and 7200 rpm drives in excellent shape that would be a nice upgrade at anywhere from $75 to $100 for 60-80Gb drives. Not only do they run at the faster spindle speed, but they generally have 8Mb or even 16Mb cache (vs. 2Mb), which also helps greatly in speeding up the machine. Spend $50 or so for Acronis True Image (or use the free trial version), buy an Ultrabay HDD adapter to put the new drive in and you have a:
* faster machine
* newer and bigger drive that you know is more stable
* a large backup (put your old drive in either the Ultrabay adapter or buy a cheap external case).
* cloning software that will also do backups
All for less than $200 U.S.!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot- Peace of Mind!

ekdya · #3 Post by **ekdya** » Mon Jun 26, 2006 4:25 pm

thanks

who is Brent Presley, do you have a link?

I was told at the win2000 newsgroup that based on the Cluster size reported it
appears that the drive went through a FAT32 to NTFS conversion
without proper preparation (NTFS Alignment), if that is true, imaging the current HD to the new one would produce the same problem?

another point, how would I make sure off a correct NTFS with the new HD?

thanks

#4 Post by **schen** » Tue Jun 27, 2006 8:55 am

Just go down to the Marketplace forum and look around. Brent usually has several sales going on. He particularly specializes in HDDs and quite often will have memory as well. Lots of members have bought from him and everyone that I know of has had good experiences. His user name is Brentpresley all in one word.

As far as the FAT is concerned; that just doesn't sound right to me. I'm not certain at all the any A31s were sold with Win98 (someone with great experience should be able to answer this more definitively), so you machine should not have had a conversion on it. Of course, if worse comes to worse, you could do a clean load (which is the best way to get a load with only what you want on it) or you can ask around on the forum to see if someone will get you a set of rebuild disks (if you don't have those). In any case, you could also look to see if you a there is a utility that might clean up this conversion if indeed that is the case on you machine.

ekdya · #5 Post by **ekdya** » Tue Jun 27, 2006 2:51 pm

Strange twist of events, I removed the large video files from my C: to a dvd-rw on my LAN, and defragmented the drive and all is fine now, no noisy drive, the result of the defrag is good and it asks for no more defragmentation, I guess those file were being too much load to handle. This system is about 4yr old, which is not too much to ask from this hard drive, isn’t it? Now that I have 2/3 of the C: is a free space, I am pondering my options, replace the HD anyway, upgrade to a dvd-rw instead of the cd-r drive and back up regularly, usb HD, … maybe someone can help me make my mind.

ekdya · #6 Post by **ekdya** » Tue Jun 27, 2006 2:53 pm

deleted

#7 Post by **schen** » Tue Jun 27, 2006 5:56 pm

Congrats on the fix! Cheap fixes are always best when you can get them. Since I don't have all the money in the world to spend on computing (obvious since I'm still using a T23 instead of a T4x), my upgrades aren't usually dictated by what I want, but more by what I can do for a given amount of money.

If you are in the same boat, there are several targets of opportunity to think about.

* A "new", bigger and/or faster HDD. I had some extra money a few months ago and got an 80Gb/5400rpm Hitachi drive from Brent Presley for around $90 so that was a nice upgrade at the time. The 60Gb drive in my machine was cloned into my wife's A30 and now she has a bigger drive. I moved her old 30Gb drive into an external enclosure that I use when I'm working on machines.
* About 6 months ago, some guys on this forum found a store that was selling refurbished NEC 6550 DVD-+RW for $29! They were bare, so I just switched the drive into the caddy on the drive I had at that time.
* Then I was able to pick up another T23 for someone else who didn't need the 1Gb of RAM installed so I lucked into that one.
* About a month ago, I found an Atheros 5002 A/B/G wireless card for my wife's A30 for cheap, so that was done.

So as you can see, it's one thing at a time. So after a while, I eventually have my machine configured with what I want.

christopher_wolf · #8 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Tue Jun 27, 2006 6:12 pm

ekdya wrote:Strange twist of events, I removed the large video files from my C: to a dvd-rw on my LAN, and defragmented the drive and all is fine now, no noisy drive, the result of the defrag is good and it asks for no more defragmentation, I guess those file were being too much load to handle. This system is about 4yr old, which is not too much to ask from this hard drive, isn’t it? Now that I have 2/3 of the C: is a free space, I am pondering my options, replace the HD anyway, upgrade to a dvd-rw instead of the cd-r drive and back up regularly, usb HD, … maybe someone can help me make my mind.

Well, now...You must really keep HDDs healthy to get the most out of them and increase their lifespan. Weekly, for me....More than twice daily defrags, are important; both online and offline. Surface scans and SMART checks are good as well. Although perhaps the HDD does need to be replaced.

abvc · #9 Post by **abvc** » Wed Jun 28, 2006 2:48 am

one possible cause that your drive keep asking for defrag is if you allocate excessive virtual memory to the drive, e.g. 4 gb space is assigned for system restore while you only have 5gb free space out of 40gb total. ofcourse easy solution is to reduce the amount of space system restore takes.

ekdya · #10 Post by **ekdya** » Wed Jun 28, 2006 5:04 am

my paging file size is 500MB.

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