Excessive hard drive use.

[John McGaw]

XP pro SP2
fresh install.
I loaded my scanner software
(epson perfection 1670)

When I take the option to "scan and save"
the hard disk works, stops, works, stops etc etc
in time with an old ticking clock, and whilst the scanner
is idle, this repetitive action remains.

I can re-install of course, but wondered if any steps
I can take to isolate the reason behind the query.
Thanks.

So, are you stating that the scanner software was used before but never
reacted this way? If you have used the scanner software before are you
certain that on the new install you are using exactly the same settings?
For example, if you are scanning at low resolution into a compressed
file format such as JPG then the file being written will be relatively
small and the drive won't show much activity. But if you are scanning at
high resolution into a file format such as uncompressed TIFF the drive
will be writing possibly hundreds of megabytes and, since the scanner
cannot deliver data that quickly, the drive will start and stop repeatedly.

 

[Rod]

XP pro SP2
fresh install.
I loaded my scanner software
(epson perfection 1670)

When I take the option to "scan and save"
the hard disk works, stops, works, stops etc etc
in time with an old ticking clock, and whilst the scanner
is idle, this repetitive action remains.

I can re-install of course, but wondered if any steps
I can take to isolate the reason behind the query.
Thanks.

 

[Rod]

So, are you stating that the scanner software was used before but never
reacted this way? If you have used the scanner software before are you
certain that on the new install you are using exactly the same settings?
For example, if you are scanning at low resolution into a compressed
file format such as JPG then the file being written will be relatively
small and the drive won't show much activity. But if you are scanning at
high resolution into a file format such as uncompressed TIFF the drive
will be writing possibly hundreds of megabytes and, since the scanner
cannot deliver data that quickly, the drive will start and stop

repeatedly.

G'day John,
Yep, I have had the software on W98se for 2 years, the software is a bit
dicky, Seiko, on rare occaisions it would hang from lack of memory.

I have the two computers alongside each other, and intend to jump
to XP when I feel comfortable.
I installed the software, rebooted, and when I clicked
on the scan and save, the "clicking" of the cpu was marked, repetitive
and constant, this is before I even scan.

On XP I am using the default settings, but remain mystified
by what would make the HDD write or seek, whilst the scanner
is idle.

I understand your suggestion, but would discount that.
Rod.

 

[Poprivet]

G'day John,
Yep, I have had the software on W98se for 2 years, the software is a
bit dicky, Seiko, on rare occaisions it would hang from lack of
memory.

I have the two computers alongside each other, and intend to jump
to XP when I feel comfortable.
I installed the software, rebooted, and when I clicked
on the scan and save, the "clicking" of the cpu was marked, repetitive
and constant, this is before I even scan.

On XP I am using the default settings, but remain mystified
by what would make the HDD write or seek, whilst the scanner
is idle.

I understand your suggestion, but would discount that.
Rod.

Are you receiving auto updates? Do you have Anti virus running? Either of
both of them could cause that.

 

[John McGaw]

repeatedly.

G'day John,
Yep, I have had the software on W98se for 2 years, the software is a bit
dicky, Seiko, on rare occaisions it would hang from lack of memory.

I have the two computers alongside each other, and intend to jump
to XP when I feel comfortable.
I installed the software, rebooted, and when I clicked
on the scan and save, the "clicking" of the cpu was marked, repetitive
and constant, this is before I even scan.

On XP I am using the default settings, but remain mystified
by what would make the HDD write or seek, whilst the scanner
is idle.

I understand your suggestion, but would discount that.
Rod.

Any possibility that you have the indexing service running? That will
cause frequent disk accesses and on some marginal system can slow things
down noticeably. You can check to see if the indexing service is running
and if you don't need it (I've never found anyone who did) you can stop
it and set it for "manual" start. Of course any other background
processes can cause disk accesses too. And some level of disk access is
normal on every system and if the drive happened to be noisier than
normal it might seem excessive.

But if the problematic accesses are tied exclusively to this particular
software it may be, as you say "dicky". It surely wouldn't be the first
piece of scanner software I've heard of that had serious problems. It
might be that the software has a memory leak and is grabbing more and
more virtual memory to feed its addiction. This would go along with the
W98SE crashes you mentioned. You can check on the virtual memory usage
and watch to see what it does in Task Manager. You may have to turn on
the "Mem Usage" and "VM Size" columns in the program to watch what is
happening.

Oh, and have you checked with the vendor's website for newer software to
work with your scanner?

Good luck with it.

 

[Rod]

W98SE crashes you mentioned. You can check on the virtual memory usage
and watch to see what it does in Task Manager. You may have to turn on
the "Mem Usage" and "VM Size" columns in the program to watch what is
happening.
Oh, and have you checked with the vendor's website for newer software to
work with your scanner?
Good luck with it.

Cheers John and Pop,
some interesting pointers,
I'm working through XP for dummies, but it is a hard slog
(I couln't believe XP even hides the files extensions)
I'll battle on and post progress.
Thanks VM.