HDD Access maxes CPU Load

StevenG · 13 Sep 2007 at 12:21

hi, just wondered if anyone had come accross this before... when im writing/reading from my hard drive my cpu usssage goes through the roof, maxing out one of my cores.

any idea why this is happening??

any info would be grateful.

thanks
steveng

semi-pro waster · 13 Sep 2007 at 12:32

Do you have the correct drivers installed for your motherboard? That is about the only thing I can think of at the moment.

rpstewart · 13 Sep 2007 at 13:06

StevenG said:
any idea why this is happening??

Can you give some more information on the setup - type of disk, board it's connected to etc.

Have you benchmarked the disk since this started? It could be that the drive is running in PIO mode.

StevenG · 13 Sep 2007 at 13:13

Its a Acer 5633 laptop and all the drivers are installed correctly, not benchmarked but will try that when i get home. i'll also do a driver update see if that helps. this just started happening, been fine for 6 month. just started to slow down.

when this happens it also distorts the sound on the machine and makes the mouse cursor jumpy when moving.

any more ideas to try and fix this?

rpstewart · 13 Sep 2007 at 13:36

Can you take a look in Device Manager at the properties of the IDE controller, does the properties page for the controller (or the attached channels) show what mode the drives are running in?

basmic · 13 Sep 2007 at 15:22

I've seen this happen with drives that are ready to fail.

But the first thing that sprung to mind, was which transfer mode the drives are operating in.