I think my HD has a problem

[Danzego]

Hey all!! Picked up am IBM Deskstar 5400 RPM 10.1 GB HD at a show a few months back. I put it in my system and noticed after a bit a strange problem. First time I noticed it was in Photoshop. I was screwing around trying to learn the program and everytime I would do certain things such as enlarging a photo or applying certain filters, I would hear a click and my system would freeze up for a couple of seconds. Then everything would be back to normal. Every so often this would happen to me when I was online too. I haven't seen this happen for awhile, but then the other day I was imaging a CD to my HD (about 630 MB or so) and when I highlighted all the files and moved them over to a desktop folder I heard the click again. The windows froze up and after a few seconds, my mouse pointer did too. I was still able to eject the CD as normal, just couldn't do anything on screen. After a restart I copied the files, folder by folder, and all went well. Got the same problem when watching an episode of South Park on my system last night. About 5 minutes into the episode, the system totally froze (HD light was on). After resetting the system I was able to watch the rest of the episode no problem.
One thing I do find humorous is I went to IBM's site to see if any FAQ's had a thing on this. The only thing I found was a page about HD noises filled with wav files named after different problems (bad head, bad motor, etc..). Weird?
Any help would be appreciated. TIA!!

[Danzego]

I beg to differ. I've copied large files to my desktop many time and I have three folders on it right at this moment totalling 1.4 GB's. I could be wrong, but hwat in the world would the desktop have anything to do with the size of the files stored there. I would be apt to believe it could slow my system down a bit, but it wouldn't be the first time I or other people I know have copied that large of a file to a folder on my desktop (unless of course the fact that it's in a folder has anything to do with it; I doubt it). Any suggestions with the HD question?

[DA]

Are you sure it is not just your drive powering-down, it could explain the pause ?

have you tried changing the power management settings for your disks to a longer time period ?

who knows, it might help...

[chuckiechan]

If you have win 98 and aren't using fat 32, you may have several partitions.
Make sure your virtual memory is directed to a place that has space for these large files.
This may or may not help, but no one has suggested it yet. I solved a game problem this way.

[Danzego]

Yes to chuckiechan, I'm using FAT32. I have just the active partition set. As far as virtual memory is concerned, any advice on settings and where or how it can be done (never really screwed with it too much myself).

[Nathan]

You can't put 630 MB on your desktop. It will freeze up, unless you have Some 700 MB of ram. Having shortcuts on the desktop pointing to the document else on your hard drive other than desktop is fine. But copying it over to the desktop, I don't think so. You are lucky you didn't blow the windows directory out.

[DSEG]

you can put 10gb on your desktop if you like as long as you have the hard disk spacein the partition that holds your windows folder. The desktop is just another folder after all.

Check power management is turned off in your bios. I always make sure this is disabled as it can become annoying.

IS your hard drive heating up. Have you tried a different cdrom. I had a problem when my pc was just crashing and it turned out to be the cdrom that was at fault.

Also check that your power lead to you hard drive and other peripherals is not cutting out as this would cause your hard disk to fail but it may just be a bad connection. Try a different power point.


[This message has been edited by DSEG (edited 08-08-99).]

[Danzego]

I'm not sure if it could be a power issue because when it freezes up after I hear the click, the hard drive light stays on. Could it still be a power issue if this is the case? As far as cooling is concerned, I have the drive mounted in a 5.25" bay with a hard drive cooling package (dual fans blowing in over it), so I wouldn't think this is a possibility. I did consider whether it was the CDROM or not, but this happens at odd times like when I was using Photoshop and when I was on the net (although, like I said, I haven't seen that one in a while). I do have my HD set to power down after an hour of being idle, but that freeze when imaging that disk happened after my system was on for like 2 minutes as I was doing it right before I was on my way to work and I had to give my buddy his disk back (just a bunch of South Park episodes). Could that still affect it?