Noisy HDD

[Wildy]

I've just finished setting up a dedicated rig, and although I would have liked to have had an Arch install on a USB stick, the ATI drivers were being a pain in the ass and so I just went with a HDD install of Win7 instead.

I'm using a 7,200 RPM Western Digital drive I had lying around (SATA) and it's as noisy as hell - as in it's constantly churning. I've disabled Windows Search Indexer but that did nothing. What else could it be? I mean it's a fresh install and the only things I have on it is the mining stuff which should all be memory/GPU with no disk IO. Is there a program which can tell me which processes are accessing the HDD?

Thanks in advance,
Mike

[1713864611]

1713864611

[1713864611]

1713864611

[1713864611]

1713864611

[Bitsky]

Sysinternals -> Diskmon

[Wildy]

I should have mentioned I already tried that, but I couldn't see any indication of which process the IO op belonged to.

[joulesbeef]

this might help with the noise some.. auto acoustic management

and you want to use process monitor, not diskmon from the same suite.

or use resource mon that comes with vista or 7 but it isnt as friendly as process monitor.

[wknight]

Use Spinrite.. enough said.

It has saved me so many times!

http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

[pekv2]

I have an SSD, there were a ton of writes going to the SSD on my Win7 OS. Except for an SSD, writes will wear down the SSD, for a HDD, it will work the HDD pretty harsh.

Here are a few tweaks that will stop writes to the HDD, eliminating HDD noise.

1) Disable windows event logs operations.

Code:

Now on to some things we can do to reduce some on the unnecessary writes an SSD or HDD. Windows 7
has the most event logs that I have seen of any OS. If you are having issues, then I would not
change the logging options. If not, then we can stop a lot of writes that frankly, only an engineer
would need (we leave the basic event logs alone).
Go to start/admin tools and select performance monitor. Expand data collector sets. Click on Startup
Event Trace Sessions.
With the exception of the following NECESSARY logs (Application, Security, System, Security
Essentials) we can stop them from starting. To do so, right click on each one that has a status of
Enabled (except the ones mentioned above) and select Properties. Click the Trace Session tab.
Unselect Enabled. Click Ok. Repeat for the others (including readyboot).
After your next boot, you will have a lot less writes going to the SSD or HDD that are not needed. 

2) Disable Indexing.

Code:

Description: Indexing creates and maintains a database of file attributes. This can lead to multiple
small writes when creating/deleting/modifying files. Searching for files will still work.
Instructions: Start Menu -> Right-Click Computer -> Manage -> Services and Applications ->
Services - > Right-Click Windows Search -> Startup type: Disabled -> OK

Instructions: Go to Computer -> Right click on Drive -> Properties -> Uncheck Allow files
on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties -> Click OK
Once you unchecked indexing follow the onscreen instructions, you may have to skip some files
you do not have access to.

3) Disable Windows Disk Defragmenting & use something like MyDefrag, and defrag whenever you like.

Code:

Description: Defragmenting a hard disk's used space is only useful on mechanical disks with multi-
millisecond latencies. Free-space defragmentation may be useful to SSDs, but this feature is not
available in the default Windows Defragmenter.
Instructions: Start Menu -> Right-Click Computer -> Manage -> Services and Applications ->
Services - > Right-Click Disk Defragmenter -> Startup type: Disabled -> OK

Code:

Description: Disk Defragmenter schedule allows to run defragmentation automatically in Windows
7. Disk Defragmenter is set to run on a automatic schedule by default in Windows 7.
Instructions: Start Menu -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Defragmenter ->
Click on the Configure schedule button -> Uncheck the Run on a Schedule box -> Click on OK
-> Close the window.

4) Disable superprefetch & prefetch.

Code:

Disable Superfetch
Instructions: Open regedit.exe and browse down to the following key:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session
Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters
Find the "EnableSuperfetch" key on the right-hand pane, rightclick it, hit modify and change 3 to 0
and hit OK. 

Code:

Disable Prefetch

Instructions: Open regedit.exe and browse down to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session
Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters
Find the "EnablePrefetcher" key on the right-hand pane, right click it, hit modify and change 3 to
0 and hit OK. 

5) Disable system restore and use an image backup software like acronis or clonezilla.

Code:

A.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/windows-os-software/195941-how-disable-hard-disk-thrashing-vista-7.html#post3433842

B.
Description: Don't write backup copies of files when installing new programs or making system
changes. Can free up between a few hundred MB to a couple GB.
WARNING: Although unlikely, if a driver installation corrupts your system, there won't be an
automatic way to recover.
Instructions: Start Menu -> Right-Click Computer -> Properties -> Advanced System Settings ->
System Protection Tab -> Click Configure -> Check Turn off system protection -> Click Delete
-> OK

One recommendation I would suggest is to use Resource Monitor that is built in Win7, goto the Disk tab, and watch what Image is writing to the HDD after all these tweaks are done. Google them, find out how to disable them, don't worry about "System, kernel & a few others that cannot be disabled".

I believe there are a few more tweaks. Use google.

Hope this helps you & your HDD.

[TiagoTiago]

I think the Bitcoin client keeps writing to a .log file constantly (it's in the same folder as the wallet.dat file); that might be worth looking into as well

[pekv2]

I think the Bitcoin client keeps writing to a .log file constantly (it's in the same folder as the wallet.dat file); that might be worth looking into as well

Yes, that as well, I was just thinking about bitcoin client. If he has a second HDD on hand that don't make noise like this one or USB stick or SDHC card, I used this how to and created a junction.

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9301.0

[Wildy]

Thanks for all the tips guys - using a combination of the above I have managed to tame the beast (for the time being).

Cheers,
Mike

[lxFlasHxl]

good info.

[leeloulee]

that helpd me

[Knighty]

Ooo, didn't know about some of those tips pek, going to have to remember this thread.