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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Retired Forums
Forum: UD Windows Agent Support [Read Only]
Thread: hard drive accessed constantly |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 16
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Hi alin84
----------------------------------------Just a little extra info. Defrag works much more thoroughly, although slower, if you press the F8 key when rebooting and go into 'safe' mode to do it. I also found that performing a 'check disk' operation both before and after defrag may significantly improve overall performance. Also on a 40GB HDD I would turn off Indexing, this is a real pain. One more, little known point, not applicable to laptops of course, is that many manufacturers and computer builders are unaware that the DMA characteristics of the modern HDD are not fully recognised by many MoBos if the IDE cable is plugged in to the HDD before the MoBo. (IDE only of course). Unfortunately this is the easiest way to assemble most computer boxen as is a common problem. If you unplug the IDE cable from the HDD (I reboot to post just to be sure) then, after shutting the systm back down, replace the IDE cable, the performance difference is often staggering, including stopping constant small HDD accesses by the system. Took months to track this down on a PC I built myself using ASUS Mobo. Hope that helps somebody. Cheers ozylynx  [Edit 1 times, last edit by Former Member at Aug 23, 2006 9:56:51 PM] |
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UNiRAC
Advanced Cruncher US Joined: Dec 2, 2004 Post Count: 134 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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good pointz oxyLYNKZ but could you restate your last point ? ie a lower DMA no. for disk access or 40 vs 80 pin IDE cable in which the later in polerized ? and how about RAM for disc cache and even cheapo 1 gig thumb drives [ or even , circomventing the newer O/S to install a RAM-DRV! ]
---------------------------------------- ps : once per sec disk light lit is absolutely normal BUT generating excess heat is not ! pss : most worthless thread to an answer to my question is ---> http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/...?thread=7557&offset=0 psss: sorry, but I searched the help section mins. infamatum and got pizz'd  Are You REALLY Computing?  |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Hi UNiRAC
----------------------------------------I am no expert on this subject, I just happened to stumble on the IDE cable thing almost by accident and I've never seen it mentioned anywhere else. I too was told that HDD access once per second was normal but I knew from other systems that it is NOT. If you plug the IDE cable into the HDD before the MoBo on some MoBos it will read as UDMA2 maximum and cause the once per second access thing. I know that it sounds impossible that this happens with the system turned off but it does happen in the same way as plugging the cable into a FDD before the FDD port on the motherboard will cause the FDD to fail on many systems. My experience has been with UDMA 4 and 5 HDDs so yes I'm talking 80 pin IDE. It may also be a factor with others but I don't know for certain. It can't hurt to try. The UDMA No. is usually stated somewhere in the BIOS page, so if you have an Ultra ATA 100 or 133 HDD and it reports as either UDMA 2 or ATA66 in BIOS just unplug the HDD IDE cable, at the HDD and plug it back n. Problem solved. Cheers ozylynx [Edit 2 times, last edit by Former Member at Aug 24, 2006 3:26:28 AM] |
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Sekerob
Ace Cruncher Joined: Jul 24, 2005 Post Count: 20043 Status: Offline |
Quirky, but there are posts here about complete power down and the length of it, to include that u need to pull the power cable and wait 30 minutes to get a 100% system reset......I have situations where boot up is not performed proper or not at all. Pulling the juice cable and wait 30 seconds has done the trick for me in about 99,999999% of the times. That 0.000001% of the times i have waited a 15 minutes.
----------------------------------------ciao
WCG
Please help to make the Forums an enjoyable experience for All! |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Pulling the juice cable and wait 30 seconds has done the trick for me in about 99,999999% of the times. That 0.000001% of the times i have waited a 15 minutes. ciao Normally the "not boot at all" is caused by the PSU tripping out due to a power spike or surge. Pulling the cable out resets this, usually quite quickly. It's a normal defence mechanism built into Power Supplies. The compete system reset can be achieved in moments by turning off the power, removing the BIOS battery and moving the appropriate junper to the shorted position for 10 seconds or so. Put it all back the way it was and away you go. The HDD thing is more common than "quirky". When I was trying to track the fault I asked a number of the local 'puter Techs what it could be and got answers from "I don't know" to "ah, that's normal they all do that". Not one of them knew about the IDE cable thing, nor had they ever noticed that the Drives were running slow. That's Quirky..  Cheers ozylynx |
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Sekerob
Ace Cruncher Joined: Jul 24, 2005 Post Count: 20043 Status: Offline |
Hi Ozylynx.....yeah pull that little jumper on the battery.....sits in a place on my board that requires pretty much the complete dis-assembly of the Shuttle and small pincer to switch briefly for immediate BIOS reset. Fortunately, the latest SFF machines (for tweakers and optimizers), have a little switch on the outside that does it....each time i do that, spend 15 minutes re-entering all the BIOS settings to get it up to max.
----------------------------------------Seriously, a true total system reset does require a removal of that 110/220 lead, empirical.....there are some electrical engineers and circuit board designers here on the forum whose word i do take as the gospel (most of the times  ).That once a second disklight flicker is interesting....my HDD led ever so lightly shows at about that pace. According Speedfan, the permanent HDD temp is 45C. Performance on this 4.5 year old HT CPU box is superb, so where it is now, this point in time, i'm not going to 'improve' it further. OCing has burned a few RAM banks, so (I) don't do that. Added: The order of cable plugging is documented in for instance Maxtor OneTouch II drives.....had the problem of it not recognising it was there, until I followed instructions to the letter (in very small print). Last steps....Power up Drive, plug the cable into drive first, before connecting to PC....then power up PC. Once WOS knew to expect the drive, the order of power up did not matter.....well, todays electronics is a bit more complicated than the ol PC XT 10mb drive, 512kb ram on DOS 1.0. ciao
WCG
----------------------------------------Please help to make the Forums an enjoyable experience for All! [Edit 1 times, last edit by Sekerob at Aug 24, 2006 11:12:51 AM] |
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