Why does hard drive keep reving up?

B

brett

I have an Intel DG965ss motherboard with two 320GB Seagate SATA drives
(same model). The box is running Vista Ultimate with 4GB RAM and a
EVGA e-GeForce 8600T 256MB video card. It has a 450w CoolerMaster P/
S.

For what ever reason, the secondary hard drive sleeps then revs up and
will do this every minute or so and never stops. The only time it
stops is when the drive is in use. This is a machine on my home
network and isn't always in use, especially the secondary hard
drive. So, I constantly hear it spinning up. Very annoying.

What is reving up? People probably have different terms for what I'm
hearing. I'm not saying "reving up" or "spinning up" are the right
terms but I'll try to decribe what I'm hearing. When the computer is
first turned on, one or both of the HDs will rev up. That's the
noise I constantly hear every minute. Some HDs rev up and then
click. These don't click. I can hold the HD and it is dead silent,
still and cooler than the primary. Then it revs up and I can feel it
jerk into motion. It vibrates for only about 5 seconds then becomes
dead silent and still for about minute.

I've tried turning off all sorts of programs (indexing, scanners, etc)
but none of that helps. Oddly, it will not do this if the drive is
being used. Seagate sent a replacement drive and that didn't help.
I've switched SATA ports and no luck there either. The P/S was
changed out for a 600w CoolerMaster and no change. I've tried
everything short of changing the MB, which is no longer available. I
bought it in Nov 2006.

The only things I can think of around the time this started was the
power flicking on and off during a storm. I do have a surge
protector on the machine. Just after that, I put the video card in.
That seems to be when I started noticing this activity but hard to say
for sure.

Any other suggestions? Thanks.
 
M

~misfit~

Somewhere on teh interweb brett typed:
I have an Intel DG965ss motherboard with two 320GB Seagate SATA drives
(same model). The box is running Vista Ultimate with 4GB RAM and a
EVGA e-GeForce 8600T 256MB video card. It has a 450w CoolerMaster P/
S.

For what ever reason, the secondary hard drive sleeps then revs up and
will do this every minute or so and never stops. The only time it
stops is when the drive is in use. This is a machine on my home
network and isn't always in use, especially the secondary hard
drive. So, I constantly hear it spinning up. Very annoying.

What is reving up? People probably have different terms for what I'm
hearing. I'm not saying "reving up" or "spinning up" are the right
terms but I'll try to decribe what I'm hearing. When the computer is
first turned on, one or both of the HDs will rev up. That's the
noise I constantly hear every minute. Some HDs rev up and then
click. These don't click. I can hold the HD and it is dead silent,
still and cooler than the primary. Then it revs up and I can feel it
jerk into motion. It vibrates for only about 5 seconds then becomes
dead silent and still for about minute.

I've tried turning off all sorts of programs (indexing, scanners, etc)
but none of that helps. Oddly, it will not do this if the drive is
being used. Seagate sent a replacement drive and that didn't help.
I've switched SATA ports and no luck there either. The P/S was
changed out for a 600w CoolerMaster and no change. I've tried
everything short of changing the MB, which is no longer available. I
bought it in Nov 2006.

The only things I can think of around the time this started was the
power flicking on and off during a storm. I do have a surge
protector on the machine. Just after that, I put the video card in.
That seems to be when I started noticing this activity but hard to say
for sure.

Any other suggestions? Thanks.
Click to expand...

Check and turn off all power saving modes, both in BIOS and in Windows. Make
sure the drive isn't set to power down if not active. If two drives do it on
two different ports with a bigger PSU/different power connector then it
ain't the drive and it probably ain't the mobo, it's the settings. The
primary drive wouldn't do it as it's almost constantly being accessed.
Perhaps updating the BIOS is in order also. The latest BIOS version is 1709
and was only released last month.

BTW, why would you tell us what graphics card you have but not what CPU?
 
B

brett

Check and turn off all power saving modes, both in BIOS and in Windows. Make
sure the drive isn't set to power down if not active. If two drives do it on
two different ports with a bigger PSU/different power connector then it
ain't the drive and it probably ain't the mobo, it's the settings. The
primary drive wouldn't do it as it's almost constantly being accessed.
Perhaps updating the BIOS is in order also. The latest BIOS version is 1709
and was only released last month.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Just upgraded. Will post back results.
BTW, why would you tell us what graphics card you have but not what CPU?
Click to expand...

Because I forgot. It's an Intel Core 2 Duo 6600.
 
B

brett

Thanks. Just upgraded. Will post back results.
Click to expand...

I have two monitors but after flashing the BIOS, only one will display
anything. I rebooted to check the video configuration. It is set to
use the external video card (the one I added) so no change there.
Then I booted back into Vista and still get only one monitor but now
it is 8bit color at 800x600 and I can't change it. Any ideas?
 
B

brett

I have two monitors but after flashing the BIOS, only one will display
anything. I rebooted to check the video configuration. It is set to
use the external video card (the one I added) so no change there.
Then I booted back into Vista and still get only one monitor but now
it is 8bit color at 800x600 and I can't change it. Any ideas?
Click to expand...

Scratch video card issue. It has been resolved.
 
M

~misfit~

Somewhere on teh interweb brett typed:
Scratch video card issue. It has been resolved.
Click to expand...

Good man. What was it? Sometimes when you update the BIOS the OS will
rediscover devices and you might have to re-install drivers.

Any luck with the HDD problem?
 
B

brett

Somewhere on teh interweb brett typed:







Good man. What was it?
Click to expand...

Just needed to reinstall the video card drivers.
Sometimes when you update the BIOS the OS will
rediscover devices and you might have to re-install drivers.

Any luck with the HDD problem?
Click to expand...

No luck there. I still hear it cycling as before. All BIOS sleep
options are disabled. Vista HD sleep options are set to 0 minutes.
Any other suggestions for it? Thanks.
 
K

kony

No luck there. I still hear it cycling as before. All BIOS sleep
options are disabled. Vista HD sleep options are set to 0 minutes.
Any other suggestions for it? Thanks.
Click to expand...


Try setting something other than 0 minutes like 2 hours or
whatever. Try the drive in another system to see if it
exhibits same behavior. Try pulling new video card and
uninstalling it's driver, occasionally I have come across
video card drivers that had strange interactions with hard
drives, causing them to power down... and if it was the OS
drive it crashes system, but maybe in this case it can
gracefully recover being a secondary drive and on SATA.
 
B

brett

Try setting something other than 0 minutes like 2 hours or
whatever. Try the drive in another system to see if it
exhibits same behavior. Try pulling new video card and
uninstalling it's driver, occasionally I have come across
video card drivers that had strange interactions with hard
drives, causing them to power down... and if it was the OS
drive it crashes system, but maybe in this case it can
gracefully recover being a secondary drive and on SATA.
Click to expand...

I've set the HDs to sleep after 2 hours and have taken out the video
card. For whatever reason, one or both of the HDs has been constantly
crunching. I'll have to wait for that to stop to see if removing the
video card makes any difference.
 
K

kony

I've set the HDs to sleep after 2 hours and have taken out the video
card. For whatever reason, one or both of the HDs has been constantly
crunching. I'll have to wait for that to stop to see if removing the
video card makes any difference.
Click to expand...


What's "crunching"?
 

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