Hard drive noise

[Guest]

About two weeks ago my motherboard died and after getting a new one and
installing XP, I have a "problem" with my hard drives being too noisy during
reads and writes... sometimes during really intensive operations (virus
scanning, e.g.) I can actually feel the activity through my desk. These
previously quiet (almost silent) drives have become annoyingly loud! They
sound like they're running ultra-fast and I'm worried that they might be
getting damaged by some kind of configuration issue.

Before I go too far with this let me give the relevant specs:
- originally an eMachines computer which is now just an eMachines case.
- ANTEC TPII-430 PSU
- ASUS A8N-VM motherboard (new)
- AMI BIOS v8.00.12 dated 10/05/05.
- AMD Athlon64 3200+ cpu (new)
- Primary IDE Master: 160Gb West. Dig. WD1600JB (5 mos. old)
- Primary IDE Slave: 80Gb Maxtor DiamondMax D540X-4D (~ 4 yrs. old)
- onboard NVIDIA nForce 410 PCI media & communications processor
- 1Gb DDR SDRAM
- WinXP Home edition, w/ SP2 and all updates as of 28-Mar
- Pagefile on system drive, for now...

- Device Manager shows that UDMA-5 is being used for both drives.


I think that's it...

I've looked all over the web for ideas why this might be, but with 0 helpful
results. Various diagnostic utilities, including testers from Maxtor and WD
show no problems, S.M.A.R.T. results top out as being in near perfect
condition. BIOS & Windows are both correctly identifying the drives, and the
full capacity of each (80 & 160 Gb) is shown/known. De-fragging doesn't
help...

I did read one post from a guy who said that his drive sounded like a geiger
counter, which is just what mine sounds like (his was like that all the time
though. Mine are only loud during I/O operations.)

I've tried a lot of things - actually I was able to get the drives REALLY
quiet by re-installing Windows into a FAT32 partition, but I really don't
want to go that route, compromising security and stability, etc.

I've done a lot of troubleshooting, but when it comes to the advanced and
newer technology kind of stuff, I'm kind of lost. Aside from being able to
install drivers for it, I don't know what the to do with a PCI bus. And to
be honest, with my old eMachines motherboard I never had to get into BIOS or
Device Manager for much of anything; I've had a lot of luck with XP's PnP
capabilities...

I was hoping to provide as much info for any potential helpers as I could,
and hope I haven't turned any of you away by being too lengthy. Also, please
forgive me if this post should have gone in the "Hardware" forum - I checked
out both, and Hardware seems to contain questions about failures and
compatability issues and to me this is a performance issue.

 

[Galen]

In GW had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

About two weeks ago my motherboard died and after getting a new one
and installing XP, I have a "problem" with my hard drives being too
noisy during reads and writes... sometimes during really intensive
operations (virus scanning, e.g.) I can actually feel the activity
through my desk. These previously quiet (almost silent) drives have
become annoyingly loud! They sound like they're running ultra-fast
and I'm worried that they might be getting damaged by some kind of
configuration issue.

Before I go too far with this let me give the relevant specs:
- originally an eMachines computer which is now just an eMachines
case.
- ANTEC TPII-430 PSU
- ASUS A8N-VM motherboard (new)
- AMI BIOS v8.00.12 dated 10/05/05.
- AMD Athlon64 3200+ cpu (new)
- Primary IDE Master: 160Gb West. Dig. WD1600JB (5 mos. old)
- Primary IDE Slave: 80Gb Maxtor DiamondMax D540X-4D (~ 4 yrs. old)
- onboard NVIDIA nForce 410 PCI media & communications processor
- 1Gb DDR SDRAM
- WinXP Home edition, w/ SP2 and all updates as of 28-Mar
- Pagefile on system drive, for now...

- Device Manager shows that UDMA-5 is being used for both drives.


I think that's it...

I've looked all over the web for ideas why this might be, but with 0
helpful results. Various diagnostic utilities, including testers
from Maxtor and WD show no problems, S.M.A.R.T. results top out as
being in near perfect condition. BIOS & Windows are both correctly
identifying the drives, and the full capacity of each (80 & 160 Gb)
is shown/known. De-fragging doesn't help...

I did read one post from a guy who said that his drive sounded like a
geiger counter, which is just what mine sounds like (his was like
that all the time though. Mine are only loud during I/O operations.)

I've tried a lot of things - actually I was able to get the drives
REALLY quiet by re-installing Windows into a FAT32 partition, but I
really don't want to go that route, compromising security and
stability, etc.

I've done a lot of troubleshooting, but when it comes to the advanced
and newer technology kind of stuff, I'm kind of lost. Aside from
being able to install drivers for it, I don't know what the to do
with a PCI bus. And to be honest, with my old eMachines motherboard
I never had to get into BIOS or Device Manager for much of anything;
I've had a lot of luck with XP's PnP capabilities...

I was hoping to provide as much info for any potential helpers as I
could, and hope I haven't turned any of you away by being too
lengthy. Also, please forgive me if this post should have gone in
the "Hardware" forum - I checked out both, and Hardware seems to
contain questions about failures and compatability issues and to me
this is a performance issue.

Honestly? Stop using them except back up the data and return them to the
vendor if they're still under warranty.

--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/
http://kgiii.info/

"At present I am, as you know, fairly busy, but I propose to devote my
declining years to the composition of a textbook which shall focus the
whole art of detection into one volume." - Sherlock Holmes

 

[Ted Zieglar]

Are you sure it's the hard disk making the noise and not one of the
ventilation fans?

Go to the hard disk manufacturer's web site and obtain their disk
diagnostics. Run the diagnostics to determine if your drive is failing. If
the drive is failing, get it replaced pronto. Meanwhile, backup to external
media often.

 

[Guest]

I had the same problem. I could feed my Hard Disk's vibration through my
table - especially during file accessing and heavy processing. (They even
produced sounds!)

I later found that I hadn't tightened the screws that held the HDD in its
place properly.

As silly as this may sound, it could be the cause of your problem.


One more thing... You said that:

--------------
"I've tried a lot of things - actually I was able to get the drives REALLY
quiet by re-installing Windows into a FAT32 partition, but I really don't
want to go that route, compromising security and stability, etc."
--------------

I am not sure I understand how you solved your problem by installing to a
different partition because as far as I know (I may be wrong), partitions are
logical divisions of the hard disk but not physical ones. So if there is a
'vibrating' problem in one partition, it should be present in others too...

Anyway, as I said before, even though you may have did it carefully, it
would say you take a look at your CPU's inside and make sure that 'stuff' are
physically well placed!

 

[Guest]

Hi Dil, thanks for your reply:

I had the same problem. I could feed my Hard Disk's vibration through my
table - especially during file accessing and heavy processing. (They even
produced sounds!)

I had looked into what you mentioned and even added rubber pads in the
mounting brackets w/ no noticeable difference.

I really think that this problem has something to do with the NTFS file
system and the way XP is currently handling it. I remember in the days of
DOS that if you didn't have enough buffers in your CONFIG.SYS your machine
would access the disk really slowly, which could cause the drive to sound
like it was thrashing about... Anybody know if XP have similar settings?

I'm also quite sure that there is NO DEFECT with either of these drives:
- I have run many different diag tools on them w/ no problems shown.
S.M.A.R.T. shows very little wear.
- I *very* rarely have an app crash and when they do it's usually because
of an old app, or too many things going on that strain the OS.
- I never get blue screens.
- ...never had any data loss.
- Up until I put this new mo-board in the drives were whisper-quiet.

I am not sure I understand how you solved your problem by installing to a
different partition because as far as I know (I may be wrong), partitions are
logical divisions of the hard disk but not physical ones. So if there is a
'vibrating' problem in one partition, it should be present in others too...

I'm aware of some of the overhead involved with using NTFS (logfile,
manifest, permissions, etc.) and have found in the past that, in some cases,
XP does perform better with FAT32. So just for the heck of it, I tried this:
- divided the Maxtor into two partitions, 30Gb and 50Gb
- formatted both with FAT32 (512 byte sectors, 32 sectors per cluster
using Paragon HD Manager)
- unplugged the WD drive
- put master jumper on Maxtor
- new install of Win XP on Maxtor partition 1, leave present FS alone.
- slave WD to Maxtor
- re-size WD primary partition
- create two new primary partitions on WD, 50Gb each
- format each of those w/ FAT32

with that setup both drives are nice and quiet. Booting takes about 2 - 5
seconds longer, nothing extreme.

Another thing that seems strange to me, is that my computer is now using a
lot of MS drivers instead of proprietary ones. I've been to the ASUS, WD,
Maxtor & nVidia websites - downloaded & installed everything they had to
offer. Still, the only two driver files for each drive are DISK.SYS and
PARTMGR.SYS, both from MS. Under "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller"
Device Manager shows driver files ATAPI.SYS, PCIIDE.SYS and PCIIDEX.SYS,
again all from MS. The primary & secondary IDE channels show driver files
ATAPI.SYS and STORPROP.DLL from MS.

On the General tab for each of the drives the manufacturer is shown as
"(Standard disk drives)". The IDE controllers are manufactured by "(Standard
IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers)". ???

Shouldn't I have something from one of these other companies?
--
Thanks
Greg

BTW, partitions are physical divisions of a disk if you consider that
partition 0, often called partition 1 these days, is the innermost division -
physically closer to center than all others. Partition 1 (or 2 if you
prefer) is next out, and so on. I guess that they're also logical if you
consider there are no physical boundaries between them and that the logical
boundary can be moved by resizing the partition...

I think one important thing to note is that the drive heads will never move
through cylinders of one partition while accessing data in another partition.