Major hard drive problem, please help...

merlinxi

Okay let me go over the basics:

This is a brand new hard drive. It's a 200 GB Maxtor. It's SATA. For some reason I don't know why, the hard drive will read VERY HARD for awhile which in turn slows down everything. It does it randomly, I don't know what is going on. To keep the virus and spyware shit out, it's not that because my windows xp was a fresh install and it was doing it. I don't know whats going on. It's formatted in NTFS. I am running a Gig of DDRAM pc3200, pentium 4 E 3.3 GHZ, and x800 xt. i don't know what to do.

Merlin

mkk

Does it mostly happen in specific circumstances? Run the diagnostics tool from the drive manufacturer to see if it finds any hardware issues.

merlinxi

Actually it's random...

Merlin

pr0digal jenius

my old Seagate Barracuda(EIDE, nto SATA) did that right before it did the hard drive equivalent to throwing a rod

i heard a loud pop, then it stopped working, the BIOS recognized it as being 20GB(not 40 liek it should have been) and the name was a buncha jibberish instead of the normal SG__serial number___, and upon taking it out i realized something isnide was rattling best of luck to ya....try running some sort of drive diagnostics tool(seagate and WD both make very good ones, dunno about maxtor)

swimtech

Maxtor's diagnostic is called MaxBlast - available at Maxtor's site.

merlinxi

I okay I ran ALL three diagnostics2. NONE of them found an error.

I also defreagmented.
Virus checked.
And Spyware checked all full.

Their is nothing on the hard drive that is bad.
I don't understand what is going on, I can't even press back on the internet explorer button without this thing thinking extremely hard. Do you think their is some program causing this???

I also checked my manual on my motherboard, made sure all the ATA device setting are set up correctly in the BIOS.

Also checked the HARd drive's manual and the jumper settings are correct.

I am stumped...

Merlin

No_Style

Did you set your pagefile to any specific size? I suggest letting Windows handle it.

merlinxi

I checked and windows is handling it.

Merlin

No_Style

Did you slap on all the updates for your chipset, OS service packs etc?

swimtech

You ran the maxblast software from a boot CD? Just checking as it is available from Maxtor as an .iso CD image file that you make a CD from, and the disk is bootable to get all software out of the way.

Therefore, if the diagnostics check the drive as good, the problem is likely your Windows and other software - God knows what. If No_Style's thoughtful suggestion doesn't work though, start uninstalling any software dealing with internet or network connectivity one by one, then CD burning software, then any printer and/or scanner related software. Those apps suck backround cycles - cause conflicts on occasion - and just go haywire sometimes.

You could also have the beginnnings of a failure of a CDRW or DVDRW drive that is affecting the data throughput on the IDE channels - which would then affect the CD burning software monitoring in the backround (I had that happen once...).

merlinxi

My DVD RW is new, but how would that effect an SATA drive?



Merlin

merlinxi

Holy shit!!! My chipset drivers!! I completely forgot!

Thanks a lot no style!

(I recently got a new motherboard...)

Damn me!!!!!

Merlin

No_Style

Haha. Reactions like that me glad that I chose to become a Computer System's Technician in the near future. I hope your problems go away. I know people forget the chipset drivers when Windows Starts up because they figure it works. But chipset drivers have important drivers like AGP and SATA ones

merlinxi

I would love to be a techy. I am studying network administration though in College. My tech experience is very good, I just over looks things. Because I had the chipset drivers out of mind because I thought XP detected everything, so I completely crossed that out. Then when you mentioned I was like wait, I never installed them... UH OH!

Merlin

No_Style

XP does detect everything, but it gives you the basic crud to get you up and running, but not performing I take it that everything is all good?

My CST program has a little bit of everything. I still have to take the CISCO course, Linux networking, Windows networking... I believe I also have a Network security in my fourth semester.

swimtech

You want to get some excellent tech experience (there is no substitute for hands on experience...)? Go to the place on your college or university where they work on the faculty/staff or possibly the student's computers and see if they could use you - they might even pay you (a minimum wage pittance likely - but better than nothing!)

Glad you got your prob sorted!

No_Style

Yeah, my college has that same "use students as techs" program. My friend is in it.. however, ironically enough he's having major PC troubles and looking towards me for help. He just does small tech stuff.. rewire stuff.. and what not.. basically a "Tech slave"