Stuttering Hard Drive

[jkamczyc]

Recently my computer has been stuttering, It's a home built system that has never had any problems before. The main drive is a WD Raptor X 150 GB HDD, the secondary drive is a WD Caviar Black 1 TB. All programs run off the Raptor and my music and videos are on the Caviar. When I say stuttering, I type things it stalls and then completes the sentence 10 seconds later after I am done typing, you can imagine how frustrating it is typing this up. Also the Vista loading bar seems to take forever when loading the system itself. Start up programs take ages to load, I can hear the disk clicking and working, but I can also hear it not clicking and that seems to be when the stalls are occurring. The only recent thing I can think of that may have caused this is I forced a shutdown by holding the power button while the computer was going into sleep mode. Any ideas of what's causing this, should I back up my computer on the Caviar. I am at college and can't reinstall Vista until I get back home in about a week.

 

[Guest]

I wouldn't automatically to attribute delays when typing to the hard drive unless the program is constantly saving. It might happen very occasionally if the program makes a save while you are typing.

I would get a copy of Easycleaner (free) or any other program which will identify programs that startup automatically. You may inadvertently have something running in the background which is hogging memory or processor time.

 

[jkamczyc]

I appreciate the advice, but I don't think any of my programs are hogging up memory or CPU. For example my printer software used to load in 20ish seconds when the desktop loaded up, but now it takes 45ish seconds. It is also the audible clicks of the hard drive that make me worry because the stutters occur when the hard drive isn't spinning. The regular tasks like internet surfing and typing seem to work themselves out once everything is loaded but I've never had any problems with my load up. Like I said the only thing that has changed in my computer's routine is that I forced it to power off when it was going off into a sleep. Another thing I just realized is that the printer I used is now unplugged and gone at home. That could lead to the delays in the printer software, but my cisco agent that loads up to access the internet on my university's network takes the same amount of time to load which is double from what it was before.

Any advice is appreciated.

 

[Guest]

Go to WD's site and download their toolkit which will include one to check the drive. From what you say about clicking it would be a good idea -- and if the utilities warn of impending doom, get stuff backed up.