Hard disk activity

[jvcalara]

I am running WinXP on a system with 3 hard disks. I have set it to power down the HDs after a few minutes of inactivity. But from time to time I hear a whirring sound like the one of the HDs was powering up.

Is there a program out there that will show on screen the run status of the HDs? I found one on PCMag site but it didn't work with WinXP.

Thanks for any help.

 

[linney]

I don't know if this will help you.


In the graphical view of the Disk Management program you should see the word "Online" in relation to the disk. This is listed under the Disk 0, Disk 1, Disk2, headings on the side, or under "Status" in the main window, on the line that mentions drive by volume label.


Disk status descriptions.

Online.

The Online status occurs when a basic or dynamic disk is accessible and has no known problems. This is the normal disk status. No user action is required.


Whether selecting to "power down" a drive will trigger any change to the "Online" status, you'll have to let me know.



You might want to check this site out to see if you can disable any unrequired services (especially Indexing) that run in the background.

http://www.blkviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

 

[jvcalara]

To linney,

Spin down of HDs and Zip drive did not change "online" status of any of them. Thanks for the suggestion though.

 

[Bobg1]

Windows has many background tasks running.
If for some reason it needs something from th epagefile it will spin up the drive to get it.
What you could try to see if this is the case, provided you have enough physical memory, 256m or more, reset the vitual memory allocation to 0. everything will be running in physical memory and the drive should sit quietly.

 

[jvcalara]

Bobg1 and Linney,
My real intent in wanting to know which drive is getting spun up is to preserve my boot drive from wear and tear. I would like to know for example, that if I am playing mp3s all day it also meant my boot drive is spinning all the time. Would it make a difference then whether my mp3s are in the boot drive or in another drive? And for that matter would adding more memory help as well? I want an on screen indicator of drive activity because most of the time, except in the dead of night, ambient noise masks those from the computer.

 

[Bobg1]

Like I said previously if you have plenty of physical memory, try setting the virtual memory to 0.
If you are concerned about the drive failing you can calculate how long it may last (mtb) and plan on replacing it before it gets that much time on it. At least back it up on a routine basis, so if it does fail you can restore to where you were. Big thing is make sure you have plenty of air flow in and around your drives, this is what causes most drives to fail prematurly.

 

[Stealer]

Hard drive can fail at ANY TIME. Brand new or eight years old. The only thing you can do is be prepared and always have a backup that is not older than a week.

Stealer

 

[jvcalara]

Bobg1, Stealer,
Your suggestions are duly noted and appreciated. I shall heed them in addition to what I am really seeking.

As I noted in my initial post, there's a program that can show disk activity on-screen from PCMag, but worked only with Win2000 or earlier, not on WinXP.

In view of the comments all of you made, can I assume that not one of you knows of a WinXP compatible program that will do the same? If so, I just have to wait for PCMag to update their freebee program to WinXP.

 

[linney]

If this program worked in Windows 2000 or even 9x, did you try running it in XP under that Compatibility mode setting?

 

[jvcalara]

linney,
I did what you suggested (Win95/9x/ME compatibility, doesn't run in W2K like I thought it did). The program started to run but stopped with message "can't find damonit.vxd file" though that file was right there. A second message window said "Cannot write DiskAction configuration file."

**I guess I am stuck, should have bought a Mac**