HD continues to run

[drmax]

hi, not sure what is going on, but as my pc sits idle, it sounds like the HD continues to run (an intermittent noise) when i use the norton program, the meter actually reflects an increase in activity when the sound is heard. i feel there is a conflict somewhere and that by reformatting and starting over would correct this, but didn't really want to go there. it's a homebuilt (30 gb hd) about 6 months old. i have failed to keep current backups of the registery. the backups available would be of no value, for this has been going on for some time. i do a system ck with norton and it did say there were some unrepairable problems in the registery, auto or manual. can i completely reinstall just an original registery off of my W98se cd? thx for any advice. dm

[RWSchlatter]

Following power-on the hard disks continue to run nonstop. This is the normal way of operating a disk and they are designed to this.

For powersavings, and if the hardware has been designed to interact with an operating system, you can configure the OS to shut down the harddisk after a certain amount of time.

Even with a disk temporarily shut down, if a timer related activity within the OS or from within an application is initiated, and a disk access is required, this will suddenly start up your disk and let it running until the inactivity delay has passed befor going to sleep again.

Reformatting your harddisk has nothing to do with this functionality whatsoever.

You tell us, that one of your utilities tells you, that you have a bad registry. If you don't have a recent backup (as you indicate), then you would have to do a fresh reinstall of your Windows. You cannot just retrieve a "fresh original" copy. Following a re-install of the OS, you will also have to re-install all your applications, so that these can enter the proper data into the registry too.

If you don't do a format of your disk (not necessarily required, but some installs will do it without asking you), the follwong program installs will already find the files on the disk an d complete faster. Make sure you don't loose any of your data.

After a re-install of Windows, don't forget to go to the windowsupdate.microsoft.com site to get all fixes, best before doing any further things on your machine.

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Regards - Richard

[drmax]

Richard, Thx for the quick reply. I understand all that you wrote, and about the hard drive always turning, but, it's the sound that it makes when you are retrieving info from storage. something is telling it do work, without any input from me. that sort-of scratchy noise, and it's intermittent, like on for 2 seconds, off for 2 seconds. it has never done this before and don't know why it is doing this. i did reinstall my w98se and all seems to be ok, but still have this nifty little irritating sound. oh, and by the way, about every other time when i go to shut down, right before the "it's safe to shut down your computer" message comes up, the white blinking cursor in the upper left corner just sits there, hanging up the shut down. i then reach down and power it off manually.
thx for you help. i am reading up on all the update info and problems with 98, but just looking for a little expert help. dm
ps. i did uninstall my easy cd creator 4.02, which has been know to be a cause of interrupted shutdowns. i'm also wondering if this HD problem might be associated with a power management setting. i have no messed with the bios, so wouldn't know why that would be the cause. i'll await your response.

[drmax]

richard, forgot to mention that i have removed all of my programs from my pc. someone mentioned to me that it sounds like a program, or a piece of a program running in the background. wondering if i should run my norton clean sweep to rid of unused files and garbage? (i will back up what i get rid of)
thx, dm

[RWSchlatter]

one piece of software, that runs in the background, and that nobody usually thinks of, is the indexing service, but usually that one should only kick in every one hour. Use the ControlPanel applet to inactivate it.

J am not a hardware specialist, but a question: is the ventilation of your system still ok, not heating up to much around the disk enclousure ? If the disk gets too hot, J could think that the drive may loose its arm/head position and go to re-calibrate.

And else use MSCONFIG, disable step by step some items, and see, if by some chance the noise stops, you will then have possibly found the program that makes trouble. As you have at the moment a near to clear system, without any applications, the chances are good to find something this way.

Running Cleansweep will probably not give any results, as inactive files (program or data) will not initiate such behaviour.

Hope someone else has some helpful ideas too.

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Regards - Richard

[BrokkenStik]

I had a hard drive "chatter" when nothing else was going on.... This continued for a year or so. At some point, I noticed the bearings were making an increasingly louder noice, so I replaced the hard drive. I haven't noticed the chatter since.

Richard, I wonder if you aren't onto something when you mentioned the arm/head recalibration.




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