keekwai Posted January 29, 2004 Report Share Posted January 29, 2004 I installed a 2nd version of XP on a seperate partition to use for testing programs before installing them to my main XP installation. The hard drive is noisy when using this second OS. It's a 40GB drive and I think the problem is the location of the partition. Are the noises, like the hard drive is being worked kind of hard, harmful? Should I consider moving the partition closer to the partition with the main OS? There is a couple of partitions in between, data, and a backup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
think_too_mut Posted January 29, 2004 Report Share Posted January 29, 2004 >Are the noises, like the hard drive is being worked kind of hard, harmful? Providing the software you used to create the partition would not let you do illegal things (like crossing the landing zone of the disk), it's not normal. HDD may be on it's way out, I would not store data that I need on it without frequent backups. If you complain to the vendor, most likely they would replace the drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kamui Posted January 29, 2004 Report Share Posted January 29, 2004 Noisy harddrive? Back up all your data ASOP! Recently my HD started to make strange noises. Luckily I was able to copy all important data but lost half of MP3 files (Japanese music), which are not to be found on the net anymore since Audiogalaxy went down. For most HD there is a test tool to check if it is ok. Search the support area of the HD manufacturer, or contact a repair shop. If the HD is ok you might reinstall the complete system with a good boot manager like Partition Magic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keekwai Posted January 30, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 30, 2004 I used the WinXP installation CD to create the partition and install in unallocated space. My gut feeling is the hard drive is fine just some part of the mechanism keeps wanting to bounce back and forth between the partitions containing the operating systems. I don't have a clue as to what mechanical activities actually take place within a hard drive. My thought was that booting into the 2nd installation there would be no need to use the 1st installation unless I wanted to access files there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keekwai Posted January 30, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 30, 2004 Thanks for the advice. I'm pretty good about doing regular backups. I think I'll delete the partition and use the feature in Partition Magic for installing another operating system. I started to use it but I always get hung up on the part about how and when to set a partition as active. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
think_too_mut Posted January 30, 2004 Report Share Posted January 30, 2004 XP Home and XP Professional come with different disk space allocating capabilities. Which edition of XP did you use? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keekwai Posted January 30, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 30, 2004 XP Pro. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
think_too_mut Posted January 30, 2004 Report Share Posted January 30, 2004 You did not say what knid of noise it makes, how often, could be normal paging activity. From what I know about HDDs, there is nothing that would make more distant partitions cause additional (audible) workload. Nowdays disks assign tracks to partitions from inside towards the brim. One reason that may make drive sound noisy is if you are backing up data from one partition to another. That will cause intensive heads movement as blocks are read and written within one physical spindle (like on the same floppy). Just courious: if your backup partition and your "production" partition are on the same drive and the purpose of backup is to restore data if the main partition is gone, it's won't work for you. When your drive is gone, they are all gone. If the noise is really that unusual, the manufacturer has to be called. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 30, 2004 Report Share Posted January 30, 2004 The vast majority of data loss is due to accidental deletion / overwrite of files and backing up to a second partition would guard against this most common data loss situation. Hardware failure claims a surprisingly small percentage of data loss. Even if you backup to another physical drive to account for this, you are still vulnerable to things like theft and fire. Best to backup to a remote location directly or moving backup media to a different physical location. There is an issue with MS Office on some systems where it runs the hard drive literally forever. You can leave the machine sit for 24 hours and it will still be churning away. There is a knowledgebase article that tells how to resolve it which is to go into word and turn off indexing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gummigut Posted January 31, 2004 Report Share Posted January 31, 2004 The whole fact that it makes noise accessing one partition and not in another partition of the same hard drive really doesn't make any sense to me (not to say that it isn't happening). I'd just wipe the whole damn thing and start over. <<burp>> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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