[GOALIEFN]

My hard drive is constantly whirring--even when I am not using my computer.

It seems to be causing my hard drive to react at a much slower pace. For instance, as I type this thread, I hit keys faster than they appear on the screen.

Is there a reason why a hard drive constantly whirrs?

I am running Windows 98 with 128 MB RAM on a Pentium II 300 MHZ system.

Any the size of my hard drive is 20 GB. At this moment, only 4.96 GB are used so almost 15 GB are free.

Is this a problem I should be worrying about?

I tried running Scan disk and Defrag but due to low memory errors I could not run them. I wonder if they are related to the whirring problem.

Please give me any advice you can.

 

[TheTechIsIn]

Welcome to the board,

My first suggestion is to do a Virus scan with the most recent virus defs. Let me know how that turns out, and we'll go from there.

 

[GOALIEFN]

MY HARD DRIVE IS WHIRRING ALL THE TIME

Hi,

I performed a virus check this morning using Ontrack System Suite.

Everything came up clean.

Now where do we go from here?

 

[Guest]

Welcome to Tech Support Forums GOALIEFN.....

You didn't say what brand of hard drive you have!

But go to the manufacturers website and download their diagnostics program and run that to see if it comes up with any errors........:winkgrin:

 

[GOALIEFN]

MY HARD DRIVE IS WHIRRING ALL THE TIME

Hi Speedo:

My Hard Drive is made by Intel.

It is an IDE 82371AB controller.

I will check the Intel website, but please look into this for me s I am somewhat of a novice on tech issues.

 

[GOALIEFN]

My hard drive whirrs all the time

Speedo,

I went to the Intel site, but was unable to find any information about hard drives.

Perhaps I am mis understanding something.

Can you give tell me if I am on the write track?

 

[Guest]

I believe that was a controller number that you posted....

What we need is the hard drive mfg.

You may need to take the cover off of the machine to see this.

Is your machine made by one of the large manufacturers like HP or Compaq? Or is it a home built type?

 

[GOALIEFN]

My hard drives is whirring all the time

Speedo,

Is there another way to get the hard drive manufacturer without opening the case?

I am physically disabled and I am unable to open the case myself.

Is there a control panel or something I can check?

Please let me know.

By the way, my computer was manufactured by Sony. It is a VA10 220/240 model.

 

[Guest]

Well from the info that I gathered at Sony it should be an IBM hard drive.

Go here and download the Drive Fitness Test.

Read the instructions while you are on their website on how to use it.

 

[Doonz]

If that doesnt help you....The ontrack suite should have...if not got to www.ontrack.com ... they have a genric hard drive diag download...also is it the hard dive that making the noise...a nosiy hard drive is a bad sign....or is your A drive that is being called on...can you run scan disk...let it run through and see if it finds bad sectors..also go to www.lavasoftusa.com and download adaware...it might be some spyware making the calls to the hard drive

G/L

 

[GOALIEFN]

My hard drive is whirring all the time

Hi Speedo,

I went to the IBM site and downloaded and ran the DRIVE FITNESS TEST.

Everything checked out fine. There were no errors to speak of.

Anything else I can try?

 

[Guest]

Are you sure it's the hard drive that's whirring not one of the fans?

It could be the CPU fan or the Power Supply fan.....

You may need to get someone that can get the cover off of the case so that they can find out exactly where the noise is coming from.

Or take it to a repair shop before some serious damage occurs, At least if just to ease your mind.

 

[GOALIEFN]

My hard drive is whirring all the time

Speedo,

The reason I believe it is the hard drive is because the light on my tower is constantly blinking.

This makes it seem as if the computer is trying to do something, plus it is running slower than usual and skips beats when I use a 3d graphics program.

Let me know what you think now.

I have plans to take my system in for a look see in the morning.

Is this necessary?

 

[Zvalkor]

You may want to try Sisoft Sandra. It is a diagnostic/benchmark tool. Run a benchmark test of your hard drive. If the results are low it may indicate you drive is going bad. You can download the software HERE

 

[Guest]

Try this!
Bott into safe mode (F8 on the boot)

And try to run scandisk and defrag in there......

 

[GOALIEFN]

My hard drive whirrs all the time

Speedo,

I tried running both Scan Disk and Defrag in both Safe Mode and regular mode with all programs "end tasked," but I receive an error message explaining that "there is not enough memory to run Scandisk or Defrag."

With 160 mb of ram am I still lacking the resources needed to run a simple diagnostic program.

Now I am truly stuck.

 

[GOALIEFN]

My hard drive is whirring all the time

Bvalkor,

Your link on the word "here" went no where except to crash my system twice. Can you provide me with the website please so I may check it out?

THX

 

[Guest]

Onward.....

Type CTRL, Alt, Delete

End Task everything in there one by one until the only two left are Systray and Explorer and leave them there.

Don't reboot.

Then try scandisk and defrag.......:winkgrin:

 

[Zvalkor]

Here is the full address: http://www.tucows.com/system/preview/195891.html

If the link still does not work for ya, copy and paste the address into your browser.

 

[GOALIEFN]

My hard drives whirrs all the time

Speedo:

I am way ahead of you.

I tried end tasking everything but Explorer and Systray yesterday for three very frustrating hours but still received the same error message.

Finally, I just a while ago found a document on the Microsoft Knowledge Base which seems to illustrate this problem.

The article canbest be viewed at:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];Q229154

To sum it up, the article states that if you ar running Windows and a harddrive larger than 8 gb, with cluster size of les than 8 kb.

It really does not say much more except to contact the manufacturer.

Can you offer any more clues or ways to remedy this problem?