Hard Drive constantly running

  • Thread starter Thread starter George Pertoli
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George Pertoli

I have windows xp installed on a older dell p3 450, with 768 of ram.
In this machine the primary hd is a western digital (old 5400) and the
secondary is a maxtor 7200 30gig. Now every so often both drives
revert to PIO mode and I have to restore an older image (with drive
image 2002) to get back to ultra dma mode. I'm assuming (from what
I've read) that crc errors are causing the drive mode to switch.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Now from time to time the primary
(wd 5400) will wind as if I asked it to unrar a 10gig file, and will
not stop until I move the mouse. I'm concerned that this older hd
will eventually give out due to this weirdness. I have turned off
system restore and all screen savers and power saving options to see
if this would help. I thought it did, until today, when it just
happened without these items running.

What could be causing the drive to wind?

What could be causing the errors that change the drive transfer modes?

ANY help would be greatly appreciated.

TIA
George
 
Hi Geroge,

Background services and jobs could be what is causing the drive to wind.
Since they stop when you move the mouse that is why I suspect background
services. As far as what is causing the drive transfer mode changes, I have
no clue what could cause that nor have I ever heard of such a thing. I
suggest getting rid of the old 5400 RPM drive and use the 7300 RPM 30GB
drive as your primary. Install a fresh copy of windows on that drive and
you system will be more responsive with the faster drive access.

-Steve Sinchak
 
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