Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Hi there,
There is an issue with role permissions that is being worked on at the moment.
If you are having trouble with access or permissions on regional forums please post here to get access: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058365403/you-do-not-have-permission-for-that#latest

Dell XPS M1330 -Accessing hard drive every second.

  • 03-06-2008 7:25pm
    #1
    yoshytoshy
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,305 ✭✭✭


    My drive being accessed literally every second ,it's very noticable on the xps because the light is blue and at the front of the laptop.
    Would it be something that would bother you ,or is it just one of those things?


Comments

  • #2
    Voodu Child
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,706 ✭✭✭Voodu Child


    It could be a number of things:

    Indexing - this is Vista's advanced search process, it is constantly reading the drives and updating the contents of what's on them. Personally, I don't do any searching of my hard-drive, so I disable this service.

    Defragmenting - Vista is auto set to defragment the drives once a week (or something). This is overkill for most people, its something else that personally I disable (I defragment manually when I feel I need to).

    Restore - not quite so likely to be causing the hard-drive thrashing, but Vista is auto-set to create restore points quite regularly. You'll see your hard drive space jump all over the place if you keep an eye on it..so again, its something that could be accessing your HD. I disable it (trend emerging :pac:) but I don't recommend you do unless you know what you're doing etc. ;)

    Superfetch - this is Vista's pre-fetching application. Any time there's free ram, it loads stuff into it, to try and guess your next move. It basically fills it up completely, so you'll find its constantly emptying it and filling it depending on whether you're using the ram or not. If you don't have a lot of ram (under 2Gb) it might be wise to turn this off. Its only reall useful if you've tonnes of spare ram, which in your case, I don't believe you do.

    Or...it could be lots of other things. They're just a few common ones off the top of my head.


  • #3
    yoshytoshy
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,305 ✭✭✭yoshytoshy


    Thanks for the reply , I've turned prefetch to manual ,turned indexing off ,defrag off and I have aero turned off aswell ,I even turned off the pagefile aswell.
    I need restore at the moment ,just done a reinstall of vista and in case an update borks it:eek:
    The drive isn't being thrashed though ,more like an access every second but constantly. I'm as much worried about my drive as I am the battery life.


  • #4
    Voodu Child
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,706 ✭✭✭Voodu Child


    Well, don't turn the pagefile off, leave it set to automatic, that should be acceptable for the average user.


  • #5
    quarryman
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,496 ✭✭✭quarryman


    grab, Filemon, it'll show you exactly what files it is accessing:

    http://www.snapfiles.com/download/dlfilemon.html


Advertisement