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LangaList 2004-09-13 Please visit our sponsors and help keep the LangaList S.E. free!
--- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList S.E. Free! ) --- "Hi, Fred: Just a line to say a
great news letter, the best investment --------------( the above is an advertisement )-------------- 1) Save Yourself Some Grief!Most people installing XP's SP2--- including me--- are having no problems at all. But enough people *are* having problems to warrant caution. For example, readers Eran R writes:
Thanks, Eran! That kind of information can save you days of hassle and
lost time, and it's just a sampling of the information available in the "Real-Life
Experiences With XP's SP2" posted (and free!) over at If you, or anyone you know, is facing an SP2 install, a little time spent perusing the real-life experiences of others just might pay off in a huge way, by letting you avoid the pitfalls and missteps of others Click on over, and then join the discussion ( http://www.informationweek.com/forum/Fred Langa ) See you there! Click to email this item to a
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--------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 2) Constant Drive Noise (Pt 1)Hi Fred, A couple of months ago I noticed my hard drive really needed to be defragged. So I did it. Ever since then my hard drive has made a constant noise. The noise is the noise hard drives make when they are digging for information on the disk so at first the noise didn't bother me. After a few minutes it started to drive me crazy though. Why wasn't it stopping? I don't recall what I tried anymore, but I never got it to stop. I just turned my music up and tried not to notice it. The two parts of a hard drive that make the most noise are the platter assembly (motor, bearings, spindle and actual platters) and the head assembly (heads, arm, actuator or motor, bearings). The platter assembly simply spins in a wheel-like way. The motor makes a little noise all the time, and may be louder when the platter speed is changing, such as at power-up or -down, or when the drives are going into or out of sleep mode. Drive motors are very reliable, and rarely fail in themselves. The bearings that support the weight of the platter assembly also always make a little noise, but they get louder as they wear or as the lubrication fails; this often grows to a distinctive metal-on-metal grinding sound that may be more noticeable at startup and at temperature extremes--- very cool or very warm rooms, for example. You sometimes can feel the vibrations from bad bearings if you gently put your hand on the outside of your PC's case; bearing vibrations will be very regular--- like a metronome. Significant bearing noise or vibration is almost always a sign of impending drive death. But I take your description of the "the noise hard drives make when they are digging for information on the disk" to be head-movement noise: This is usually caused by the head actuator (a kind of motor) rapidly moving the heads back and forth across the platters' surface as they "seek" bits and pieces of data. In newer drives, these "head seeks" may have a sigh-like or soft squeak-like quality; other drives--- especially older ones--- may head-seek with a distinctive mechanical chattering sound. You can usually feel head seeks as irregular vibrations if you gently put your hand on the outside of your PC's case; that is, the vibrations don't have a steady metronomic beat, but come in rapid-fire clumps and bunches. Absent major trauma like dropping a PC or a drive assembly; or allowing voltage spikes to damage the drive electronics; head assemblies rarely fail in themselves. When they do, the damage usually shows up as increasing numbers of data errors long before there's any audible problem. Excessive head movement is usually caused by a fragmented drive--- the heads have to jump around the platters to grab files piecemeal instead of scooping them up in a long, continuous read. But you said the problem showed up *after* you defragged. A slowly-degrading platter surface also can cause excessive head movement: If parts of the platter are "going bad" and losing their ability to hold data, the drive may need many attempts to read each bit of data from the affected area; each retry involves a head seek. If the damage gets bad, the drive may even automatically move the affected data to a safe spot elsewhere on the drive, "remapping" the drive to avoid the growing bad spots. This remapping saves your data, but increases head seeks, and slows down the responsiveness of your drive There are other factors at play too, including software-related issues. See next item.
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friend 3) Constant Drive Noise (Pt 2)(continued from above) Before we go any further, let's try to verify the source of the noise. Sometimes a bad fan or a loose fastener may masquerade as drive noise, so before you do anything drastic, open the case and make sure the noise is indeed coming from the hard drive itself and not from some other nearby component or fastener. Assuming it is the drive that's making the noise, I suggest you immediately make a full, complete backup or (even better) a disk image. Because we don't yet know what's going wrong with your drive, it's safest to assume the worst--- assume the drive is going to die any minute now--- and get your data safely backed up! Next, run a thorough ChkDsk and select both "Automatically fix file system errors" and "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" when prompted. Follow any other on-screen prompts you get, including rebooting. (Note: I mention Chkdsk because you're using Win2K; Chkdsk is the correct tool for Win2K and XP. In Win9x and WinME, it's Scandisk.) Newer hard drives with "Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology," also called "SMART Drives" can tell you about their health, including the number of sectors that have gone bad, the error rates they're experiencing, and so on. Many software tools let you access this SMART data to gauge your drive's health. For example, the free BELARC Advisor takes only a minute to produce an overall "audit" of your PC, including the general health status of any SMART-enabled hard drives. Lots more SMART tools (that provide more detail) are at: http://langa.com/u/5y.htm and http://langa.com/u/5z.htm . If your initial tests come up clean, then defrag the drive again. If you're using the built-in Win2K defragger, you may wish to run it several times back to back; each run packs your drive a little tighter. If the head seeks are still annoying after that, note that some malware activity shows up as increased drive usage, so make sure the drive and system is completely free of worms, viruses, and other malware. You'll find lots of anti-malware options listed here: http://langa.com/newsletters/2004/2004-09-09.htm#3 If the drive is *still* noisy with too many head seeks, check the BIOS and OS settings to ensure the drive and OS are communicating with the fastest-possible transfer mode protocol. See http://langa.com/newsletters/2001/2001-01-18.htm#2 for Win2K-specific info, or more generally: http://www.google.com/search?q=hard+drive+transfer+dma+pio If your drive is *still* over-seeking, make sure your pagefile/swapfile is properly sized: Poor sizing can lead to "thrashing" and overuse of the hard drive. See http://www.google.com/search?q=pagefile+size+optimal There are other reasons for excessive head seeks, but this item already is quite long. <g> Generally, if you got this far and are still hearing unusual drive noises, it may be time to seriously consider a new drive. They're relatively inexpensive; why take a chance with your data? Besides, you already have a brand-new, fresh image or backup, so this is the perfect time to get a new drive: Just drop the image or restore the backup to the new drive, and you're off and running! One final thought: If you do get a new drive, you may wish to secure-wipe your old drive of all data so some dumpster-diver won't be able to access your old files. See http://www.informationweek.com/837/langa.htm for information on making a discarded drive safe from snoops! Click to email this item to a
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--------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 4) Update From EthiopiaRemember Tizita, "a quiet 12 year old girl who was born in Gudoberet, a small rural village at the Northern part of Shewa Region of Ethiopia?" A year and a half ago, she became one of the many children sponsored worldwide, on an ongoing basis, by LangaList Plus! subscribers. (More on Tizita? See http://langa.com/newsletters/2003/2003-02-24.htm#3 or here for an update http://langa.com/newsletters/2003/2003-04-24.htm#5 or here for her first report card http://langa.com/newsletters/2004/2004-01-29.htm#5 ).We just got another update on her progress, along with her current grades, a health report, status update on the aid project that's helping her village, and a charming photo of Tizita setting out a coffee service in a straw-floored dwelling, as if for guests. As before, the information arrived in a tri-fold pamphlet, which I've scanned for you here: Standard Edition Subscribers: Plus Edition Subscribers: Here's what this is all about: Those of us with
computers and Internet access are vastly better off than most of the world's
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friend 5) A "Cool File Server Product"
Interesting, Michael. I've never really needed a file server per se; here in my office and on my home LAN, my needs are modest enough that I can just share folders or drives through Windows, and it works fine for me. But for higher-capacity and wider use, a "single floppy disk based Network Attached Storage (NAS) Server Operating Systems, designed to transform a basic computer into a dedicated SMB/CIFS, FTP or NFS file server" could be a great tool. Thanks! Click to email this item to a
friend 6) Don't Make Me Beg! :-)If you think the LangaList is a worthwhile read, maybe a
friend would find it useful too! Just use the following link to recommend
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edition given each month. (If your name is drawn and you're already a Plus!
subscriber, your current subscription will be extended by a full year.) Click to email this item to a
friend 7) Free Mail Monitor
Presorting mail can be a great way to cull spam and potentially dangerous attachments before they ever reach your machine. It's also useful on slow connections where you don't want to wait--- or pay--- to pull down a pile of junk mail. But of course, manual culling takes time, and only works if your mail volume is low enough for you to keep up with. (I'm currently topping 7,000 messages a day... sigh. I have to let software do most of the filtering or I'd be totally swamped.) But if your email volume is more normal than mine, Jet Mail is free, so there's nothing to lose by giving it a try. <g> Click to email this item to a
friend 8) More Reader Sites!Do you have a home page or website? (It doesn't matter
what size.) Please click over to
http://langa.com/code.htm , and maybe you can join the hundreds and
hundreds of LangaList readers who have "Loaded the Code!" (If you've already
"Loaded The Code" and are wondering if your site will appear here or on the
Langa.Com web site, please see Manually Browse All Posted-to-Date Sites Starting At PC Support Tips The Prescotts Utch Entel Photography Blog Parallel Universes (blog) Florida Real Estate Carl and Pia "Cheapest Link" Carrie Beth Buzzelli Personal Page Antiques and Collecting kretchfoop Chicago Astronomy Click to email this item to a
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--------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 9) Free and Easy System TestsFred, I am a recent convert to the Plus edition and have enjoyed it very much. Thanks for the hard work and great information. My question is about performance measurement programs for the pc's on my network. Do you have any recommendations on good, cheap and user friendly performance measurement systems? All of my systems run Windows (98SE, 2kpro, or XP home and pro). Basically, I'm looking to establish benchmarks for these systems that I can check from time to time to determine if the system has lost performance. Thanks for the help. ---Bob Terry There's a million benchmarking tools out there, Bob, and Google can help you find 'em all; but the ones I use most are these: SiSoft Sandra; free and commercial versions; thoroughly analyzes what's in your system, and has built-in benchmarks to gauge how the system performs. It's large, though, and takes a while to run its thorough tests and benchmarks. http://www.sisoftware.net/ PC PitStop: free; performance-oriented, with a strong secondary emphasis on security. Easy to set up and run. The site can automatically track the performance over time of tested machines, and has an extensive database of performance info that lets you see exactly how any given machine compares to similar machines. http://www.pcpitstop.com/ Click to email this item to a
friend 10) Just For Grins
The whole AngryAlien site there is silly, Dave.... and I personally think their "The Exorcist in 30 seconds" is funnier. 8-) Click to email this item to a
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--------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 11) Plus! Edition Highlights:
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