[WinXP-Pro] disc access

[Chiefy]

Recently installed WinXP-Pro SP1 into 2GB.

Seems OK except for a flash of disc (HDD) activity roughly every second or
so. I've closed down just about evey unwanted program, yet the 'ticking'
continues.

Am I experiencing some sort of standard NTFS thing?

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Is "Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching"
checked on the System Properties page for the hard drive? (Open My computer
and right click on the drive icon and choose Properties.)

 

[Chiefy]

09 Mar 2005 23:35 UTC, Colin Barnhorst typed:

Is "Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching"
checked on the System Properties page for the hard drive? (Open My computer
and right click on the drive icon and choose Properties.)

No. I stumbled across that one early on, no change. Ditto for write
caching.

Doesn't appear to be slowing things down, the whole thing is much livelier
that NT4.

256MB RAM and around 300MB spare on the disc btw.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Frankly I think your hard drive is too small for XP. It takes 1.5GB for
installation, not counting apps. Be sure to turn off System Restore and
reduce the amount allocated for the recycle bin to a minimal amount or you
will have no space left. The system needs some space for scratch while the
OS is working and there is more space needed for the page file. You don't
begin to have enough space for the optimum page file for 256mb, which is 1.5
to 3 times ram. I suspect that all that is going on is that everytime you
sneeze the hard drive has to find a place for the kleenex. Just a thought.

 

[Yabbadoo]

You have 2 major problems - HDD size (only 2GB) and RAM (only 256MB)

RAM needs increasing to a minimum 512MB for XP (in fact, more is much
better). Increased RAM reduces writing to HDD, therefore noticeably
increases speed.

HDD's should NEVER have less than 15% free space - that's just asking for
trouble (no space for pc to work in). HDD's are relatively cheap - invest in
a decent size one (40GB or bigger).

XP is a good OS, but boy! does it need HDD space!

Hope this helps - Len.