Disk Very Busy on IBM Netvista with XP Home

paulchaplin · 08-18-2008, 03:57 AM

Hi. I've just acquired an ageing NetVista (one with a screen built in and the disc drives installed in the base). I installed my own XP Home licence in a new partition as there was a previous version of XP Pro I don't have the licence for.

Everything installed fine. All I really use it for is internet and use only Firefox + Zone Labs. Problem is that the disk spends an inordinate of time ferreting around for I don't know what. Even on loading a web page it can spend a minute or two rattling around. There's 25Gb of free disk.

Not sure what to look for - can anyone advise? thanks

~~wiseleo~~ · 08-18-2008, 04:18 AM

Clone the disk to a new healthy disk. You'll probably enjoy a substantial boost in speed.

Easy way to verify:

Start -> run perfmon
Click on Avg. Disk Queue
Click on the light bulb icon on the toolbar

Reasons?

1. New install, so no pre-existing problems
2. Everything works but extremely slowly

I am pretty sure a new drive will make you happy.

paulchaplin · 08-18-2008, 07:10 AM

Thanks Leo - I've not used perfmon before - fascinating. The queue time monitor shows between 50% and 100% capacity when doing something simpe like CTRL T to open a new tab in firefox. Does that suggest a new disk is needed? I tried CHKDSK and it showed no bad sectors. Thanks for advice as a newbie in this kind of thing.

~~wiseleo~~ · 08-18-2008, 01:00 PM

CHKDSK won't show bad sectors :)

The drive is still capable of performing electronic error correction on the fly internally. Once it runs out of reserve space, that's when problems will start. It will live in this state for quite a while. My universal upgrade for slow laptops and desktops is cloning to a new HDD. Defragging doesn't make as much difference because in a sector-level copy the files remain exactly as they were on the old drive.

08-18-2008, 03:57 AM	#1 (permalink)
paulchaplin Registered User Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 2 OS: Windows XP Home	Disk Very Busy on IBM Netvista with XP Home Hi. I've just acquired an ageing NetVista (one with a screen built in and the disc drives installed in the base). I installed my own XP Home licence in a new partition as there was a previous version of XP Pro I don't have the licence for. Everything installed fine. All I really use it for is internet and use only Firefox + Zone Labs. Problem is that the disk spends an inordinate of time ferreting around for I don't know what. Even on loading a web page it can spend a minute or two rattling around. There's 25Gb of free disk. Not sure what to look for - can anyone advise? thanks

08-18-2008, 04:18 AM	#2 (permalink)
~~wiseleo~~ Troubled Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: San Francisco Bay Area Posts: 461 OS: Win 2003 SP2 My System	Re: Disk Very Busy on IBM Netvista with XP Home Clone the disk to a new healthy disk. You'll probably enjoy a substantial boost in speed. Easy way to verify: Start -> run perfmon Click on Avg. Disk Queue Click on the light bulb icon on the toolbar Reasons? 1. New install, so no pre-existing problems 2. Everything works but extremely slowly I am pretty sure a new drive will make you happy.

08-18-2008, 07:10 AM	#3 (permalink)
paulchaplin Registered User Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 2 OS: Windows XP Home	Re: Disk Very Busy on IBM Netvista with XP Home Thanks Leo - I've not used perfmon before - fascinating. The queue time monitor shows between 50% and 100% capacity when doing something simpe like CTRL T to open a new tab in firefox. Does that suggest a new disk is needed? I tried CHKDSK and it showed no bad sectors. Thanks for advice as a newbie in this kind of thing.

08-18-2008, 01:00 PM	#4 (permalink)
~~wiseleo~~ Troubled Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: San Francisco Bay Area Posts: 461 OS: Win 2003 SP2 My System	Re: Disk Very Busy on IBM Netvista with XP Home CHKDSK won't show bad sectors :) The drive is still capable of performing electronic error correction on the fly internally. Once it runs out of reserve space, that's when problems will start. It will live in this state for quite a while. My universal upgrade for slow laptops and desktops is cloning to a new HDD. Defragging doesn't make as much difference because in a sector-level copy the files remain exactly as they were on the old drive.