Do I need a new HDD?

stuart churchil

stuart churchil

stuart churchil

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Joined
8 Nov 2007
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17
Hi,
This is my first post and I'm hoping someone can help me. I'm having problems with my Acer Travelmate 2414. After switching on it sometimes freezes. My desktop is on screen, but I can't access anything. The pointer moves but can do nothing. The only thing I can do is run Task Manager, so I have to switch off using the on/off switch. It then usually starts up as normal after 2 or 3 attempts. One thing I've noticed is that when I switch off, there is a loudish click which comes from the area of the HDD. I use the laptop in a fixed position and it's rarely moved, so it's not mishandled. It's almost always connected to mains electricity. The HD is 40 GB. Can anyone help? Do I need a new HDD?
Stuart.
 
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Is there any indication in task manager of high CPU usage against a particular task?

Try running a copy of HDTach against the drive and see what sort of speed it reports for the sustained transfer rate. It won't be spectacular but if it's in single figures of MB/s or the graph has noticable troughs then the drive might be failing.

If you check in device manager you should be able to get the drive model, a google will give you the manufacturer from that, downloading their own diagnostics program might be a good plan too.
 
Hi,
Thanks for the replies, guys. I have done a virus scan using Avast, and that was ok. Task manager showed 100% CPU use when it was frozen on start up, otherwise all seems well when running normally. I ran HDTach and the sequencial read speed is from 30 MB/s @1 GB to 15 MB/s @ 40 GB with no noticable troughs. Burst speed is 87.1 MB/s (assuming I'm reading it correctly. Is that the red bar?). Random access 19.2 ms; CPU utilisation 4%; average read 23.9 MB/s.
Unfortunately, I don't understand any of this information. Are the figures normal?
Stuart.
 
Speeds seem about right for a laptop disk, they are a fair bit slower than desktop ones.

Can you get to the processes tab of task manager to see which process is hogging the CPU?
 
That's what it should say, basically no other processes are taking CPU.

However, is status bar showing the CPU usage as 100%? It's possible that there are services or other things causing CPU usage - I used to get excessive usage due to system interrupts etc on a previous machine. ProcessExplorer is the best option for determining if this is happening on your machine.
 
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