My system has run great since installing Vista..

In the past couple of days, though, my hard drive has started peaking and freezing the system until it is finished doing whatever it is doing.. I can even hear it 'scratching', something I've never heard from it before..

I thought maybe it was web related, but it does it even if I'm not running IE.. It usually takes about 2.5 mins to complete, and happens about twice an hour.. Very annoying as I'm trying to finish a large project and I'm worried my hard drive is crashing.

I've scanned for viruses and malware and found nothing.

Should I back up the important stuff and run chkdsk?

I check the task manager processes and don't see anything standing out as abnormal.. I have no idea why it is doing this..

-Matthew

Turn off HD indexing, its probably just indexing files for faster searches. Did you just install vista?

If you hear "scratching", you're disk is dying...
I suggest you to backup your important data.

Turn off HD indexing, its probably just indexing files for faster searches. Did you just install vista?

I've had Vista on here for several months.. Recently I have noticed slow refreshes on changing folders in Explorer.. I click on a folder and it slowly updates icons/dates/file sizes..

If you hear "scratching", you're disk is dying...
I suggest you to backup your important data.

Arg.. Not what I need to hear.. But- you are probably right..

-Matthew

Originally Posted by 3DPiper

Turn off HD indexing, its probably just indexing files for faster searches. Did you just install vista?

I've had Vista on here for several months.. Recently I have noticed slow refreshes on changing folders in Explorer.. I click on a folder and it slowly updates icons/dates/file sizes..

If you hear "scratching", you're disk is dying...
I suggest you to backup your important data.

Arg.. Not what I need to hear.. But- you are probably right..

-Matthew

Sorry... good luck!

thats not good, start getting your Data off.

I backed everything up without problems.

Then I ran the Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics on my drive. It found no errors.

Then I ran chkdsk on my drive. It also found no errors.

While I'm (moderately) reassured that my hard drive isn't failing, is there anything else I can run to see why my hard drive is peaking?

Thanks

-Matthew

Try the resource monitor.

Well, the test you made are "software test", a hardware problem is detectable only by S.M.A.R.T. technology. Try enable it in the BIOS and see if it reports errors.

The first test the Western Digital software performs is SMART.. The two tests I ran with the WD software:


QUICK TEST - performs SMART drive quick self-test to gather and verify the Data Lifeguard information contained on the drive.
EXTENDED TEST - performs a Full Media Scan to detect bad sectors. Test may take several hours to complete depending on the size of the drive.

I've turned off HD indexing and turned on the resource monitor.. Hopefully I can track this down..

-Matthew