Noise Drive / Slow Machine

[CaptainDirk]

I have a fairly new machine with an Antec Three Hundred Mini-Tower and "Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU 650 @ 3.20GHz" and Hitachi 1 TB sata 7200 RPM and 4 G RAM. This case is supposed to be quiet, but sometimes I hear the hard drive quite clearly. My coworker, in the next desk, even said once, "Is that your hard drive?" OK, her chair is only about 3 or 4 feet from mine, but I think this is not normal.

I run ArchLinux and Xfce and I think this machine should be FAST. Now I understand that Firefox can be a real resource hog, but even so, sometimes this machine literally crawls. Not sure why either.

Seems my disk tests well:

[fixed][dirk@arch]$ df -k
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
udev 10240 0 10240 0% /dev
run 10240 116 10124 2% /run
/dev/sda2 432554256 61911892 348669864 16% /
shm 1673556 288 1673268 1% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1 93307 32840 55650 38% /boot
/dev/sda3 522916084 152983284 343370128 31% /home
[dirk@arch]$ sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/sda2
Password:

/dev/sda2:
Timing cached reads: 9726 MB in 2.00 seconds = 4866.41 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 418 MB in 3.00 seconds = 139.16 MB/sec
[dirk@arch]$ sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/sda3

/dev/sda3:
Timing cached reads: 9348 MB in 2.00 seconds = 4677.45 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 360 MB in 3.00 seconds = 119.89 MB/sec [/fixed]

So I'm guessing that anyway the noise is NOT good and I should return the drive (the store said he will replace it no problem) and that maybe that's why it's sometimes slow.

I did this also:

http://ryanschwartz.net/2009/03/19/adventures-in-firefox-placessqlite

and it helped, but still the machine is slow sometimes. VERY slow.

Any thoughts are appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hello,

Two not good signs. When you hear noises coming from your HDD there is a mechanical problem. When someone at the next desk can hear it, it is NOT just positioning of the read/write heads. Also when a HDD becomes slower and slower, it is having trouble finding data and is a sign of a failing disk.

Back up your data and have it replaced. Saftey first.

 

[almartin]

I agree with John. Backup your data now before the drive fails completely.

 

[CaptainDirk]

OK I contacted my seller to see if he can send a delivery of a new one. It's not quite that it's becoming slower and slower because I just got it in January. And I trust the guy that it's new--I know he's an honest dealer.

Anyhow, thanks for the confirmation guys. I will replace it.

 

[CaptainDirk]

I got a new disk and I ran CloneZilla in disk-to-disk mode and it was VERY easy. Just clicked OK 13 times and it copied the entire disk, from MBR to my last Firefox session, to the new disk.

I booted up the new disk and launched Thunderbird and this NEW disk makes noise also.

It's not as bad as the last one and the cover is not yet on my case, but still, it makes noise.

I don't see why. Even if I do have 6 GB of mail, it shouldn't make noise...