Every now and then the hard disk goes off on its own whirrr sound and
everything comes to a stop. Nothing can be done. I have to wait for the
whirrr to stop before proceeding to anything else, and that could take up to
a minute. Anything I can do about it?
Thanks
Immediately back up your data.
Visit the hard disk manufacturers site & download their testing utility, as
its possible your hd is failing.
"Ben Stevenson" <casiopie963@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ez88n1$sHHA.4236@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Every now and then the hard disk goes off on its own whirrr sound and
> everything comes to a stop. Nothing can be done. I have to wait for the
> whirrr to stop before proceeding to anything else, and that could take up
to
> a minute. Anything I can do about it?
> Thanks
>
>
>Every now and then the hard disk goes off on its own whirrr sound and
>everything comes to a stop. Nothing can be done. I have to wait for the
>whirrr to stop before proceeding to anything else, and that could take up to
>a minute. Anything I can do about it?
A common cause of this is swap file activity. If you don't have enough
RAM for everything that you're doing to fit, then occasionally
something will have to be moved to the swap file and something on the
swap file moved into RAM before you can do what you want. This can
take many seconds. The swap file works but your disk just is not
anywhere as fast as RAM.
I use some RAM-hungry apps on my machine at work, which was originally
set up with 512MB of RAM. It wasn't enough. I'd click a menu and wait
thirty seconds while the disk whirred until the menu appeared. The
same thing happened when I chose a command from that menu. The problem
went away when my employer upgraded me to 2GB of RAM.
>Every now and then the hard disk goes off on its own whirrr sound and
>everything comes to a stop. Nothing can be done. I have to wait for the
>whirrr to stop before proceeding to anything else, and that could take up to
>a minute. Anything I can do about it?
I tried to back up My Documents to my 2GB thumb drive. I dragged the My Docs
icon from the desktop to the thumb drive but all I got was a My Docs short
cut. I don't think I got that right. How should I go about it?
Thanks
"Uncle Grumpy" <unclegrumpy@ameritech.net> wrote in message
news:ritk739fv1bqktt42vubq49u2ost94kt05@4ax.com...
> "Ben Stevenson" <casiopie963@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Every now and then the hard disk goes off on its own whirrr sound and
>>everything comes to a stop. Nothing can be done. I have to wait for the
>>whirrr to stop before proceeding to anything else, and that could take up
>>to
>>a minute. Anything I can do about it?
>
> Backup everything ASAP and then replace the drive
I don't use any RAM hungry apps. Just view some websites. I have 512 MB of
RAM. It has always been OK till recently. I feel something has gone
recently. I viewed my Virtual Memory which has always been set to 1512 Meg
and it is still the same.
"Tim Slattery" <Slattery_T@bls.gov> wrote in message
news:batk7319ril0oqe4dojp3btkosp7nl6qih@4ax.com...
> "Ben Stevenson" <casiopie963@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Every now and then the hard disk goes off on its own whirrr sound and
>>everything comes to a stop. Nothing can be done. I have to wait for the
>>whirrr to stop before proceeding to anything else, and that could take up
>>to
>>a minute. Anything I can do about it?
>
> A common cause of this is swap file activity. If you don't have enough
> RAM for everything that you're doing to fit, then occasionally
> something will have to be moved to the swap file and something on the
> swap file moved into RAM before you can do what you want. This can
> take many seconds. The swap file works but your disk just is not
> anywhere as fast as RAM.
>
> I use some RAM-hungry apps on my machine at work, which was originally
> set up with 512MB of RAM. It wasn't enough. I'd click a menu and wait
> thirty seconds while the disk whirred until the menu appeared. The
> same thing happened when I chose a command from that menu. The problem
> went away when my employer upgraded me to 2GB of RAM.
>
> --
> Tim Slattery
> MS MVP(DTS)
> Slattery_T@bls.gov
> http://members.cox.net/slatteryt
I don't know what brand and model number hard disk I have. How do I find
out?
Thanks
"DL" <address@invalid> wrote in message
news:%234gykPAtHHA.3504@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> Immediately back up your data.
> Visit the hard disk manufacturers site & download their testing utility,
> as
> its possible your hd is failing.
>
> "Ben Stevenson" <casiopie963@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:ez88n1$sHHA.4236@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>> Every now and then the hard disk goes off on its own whirrr sound and
>> everything comes to a stop. Nothing can be done. I have to wait for the
>> whirrr to stop before proceeding to anything else, and that could take up
> to
>> a minute. Anything I can do about it?
>> Thanks
>>
>>
>
>
>I tried to back up My Documents to my 2GB thumb drive. I dragged the My Docs
>icon from the desktop to the thumb drive but all I got was a My Docs short
>cut. I don't think I got that right. How should I go about it?
Try dragging with the right mouse button held down. You'll get a menu
when you release the button, you can tell it exactly what to do.
Ben Stevenson wrote:
>
> Every now and then the hard disk goes off on its own whirrr sound and
> everything comes to a stop. Nothing can be done. I have to wait for the
> whirrr to stop before proceeding to anything else, and that could take up to
> a minute. Anything I can do about it?
THE VERY FIRST STEP IS TO MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ALL YOUR DATA BACKED UP TO
SEVERAL CDS, AND MAKE SURE THE CDS WORK.
There are just two items in the menu:
"create shortcuts here"
and "cancel"
"Tim Slattery" <Slattery_T@bls.gov> wrote in message
news:kmml73lqe193t3qnvhgdi0gmtlqk05i95e@4ax.com...
> "Ben Stevenson" <casiopie963@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>I tried to back up My Documents to my 2GB thumb drive. I dragged the My
>>Docs
>>icon from the desktop to the thumb drive but all I got was a My Docs short
>>cut. I don't think I got that right. How should I go about it?
>
> Try dragging with the right mouse button held down. You'll get a menu
> when you release the button, you can tell it exactly what to do.
>
> --
> Tim Slattery
> MS MVP(DTS)
> Slattery_T@bls.gov
> http://members.cox.net/slatteryt
Hard Disk whirrr 
Linear Mode
