Is this flickering worrying?

strumpusplunket · 15 Apr 2009 at 09:38

I've been transferring a lot of my DVD-rips to my new Hitcahi Deskstar 1TB HDD over the past couple of days, and I've just started to notice some odd behaviour.

Basically, whenever I browse the files from within windows the screen starts to flicker as soon as I get two or three folders deep into the file structure (depending on which folder it is). It's like all of the windows I have open briefly blink out of existence for a millisecond. It stops after a while, or straight away when I browse back to higher up the file structure.

I can't hear any unusual noises from the drive, and I can play media files on it fine in full-screen mode without flickering, but the flickering issue is 100% reproducible if I browse to the folders that cause it.

Is this something to be concerned about?

Rileyt · 15 Apr 2009 at 11:57

It might be time to defrag the hdd. When you moved all those files over it might have put them in bad places. Defragging will help to arrange them all together

strumpusplunket · 15 Apr 2009 at 11:58

Ah. I think I forgot to mention that it's a brand new drive. Just been formatted and then I started copying my files across to it. Would your advice still apply to a new, empty drive?

Rileyt · 16 Apr 2009 at 08:47

I would. When files go onto a drive they don't put them in together they just kind of toss them in. If you've moved a vast amount of files then yeah I would suggest it. The other thing you might want to try is mark the folders that are having the issue then mark where they are. Next move them to the desktop and try them again see if theres still an issue

strumpusplunket · 16 Apr 2009 at 08:50

Ok. Will give those steps a try. Cheers!

strumpusplunket · 18 Apr 2009 at 08:45

Update: left my drives defragging overnight. No change this morning, though.

It still happens - if I open any one of about three or four folders in Windows I get flickering. It's the title bar and outlines of the open windows that start flickering, along with my Objectdock bars. I can still read and write from the drive with no problems, and it's not making any unpleasant noises.

Still puzzled and a bit worried about this. Anyone know if it's actually likely to be anything serious?

yashiro · 18 Apr 2009 at 08:52

Sounds more like an Explorer/Addon/Stardock crud issue than anything HD related.

strumpusplunket · 18 Apr 2009 at 09:10

I was kind of hoping that, since there's s much data on the drive now and I've not the space to back it all up to another drive yet.

Don't quite understand why an explorer/Stardock issue would only cause this flickering when I'm browsing this HDD and not any others, though...

deadite66 · 18 Apr 2009 at 09:53

could the drive controler be sharing the same irq as the gfx card?

strumpusplunket · 18 Apr 2009 at 10:43

Ah. Good thinking. It seems that my gfx card and the JMicron controller are both on the same IRQ. They both list "no conflicting devices" in resources, but I guess this could be the source of the problem?

Still wonder why it's only on this one drive (though it's by far my biggest drive) and only some folders.

I may see if I can reassign the IRQ of one the devices later on when I have some time - though I seem to remember reassigning IRQs being a right old hassle.

I guess, though, that since this could now be the most likely cause, there's not actually any real problem in leaving it as it is - as long as I can live with the flickering? It's not likely to cause any more problems... is it?

And, finally, if I decide to reassign IRQs later, are there any problems likely to be attached to reassign the IRQ for the drive controller?