hard drive issues, any help?

Programs seems to be choking my harddrive somehow, i just installed Vista last night even. I would be downloading something, then when it was done and i clicked "run" it would take forever before asking my permission to run it, and my HDD would be going nuts. Its also very loud, which to me seems unusual for a brand new drive. This happens with other stuff, but generally is most apparent when i click something and Vista asks me for permission to run it. Whats going on?

I was considering RMAing it if this persists after i get my 4-pin to 8-pin converter, and if i do what will be a better choice: 2 good 7200rpm HDDs in raid 0 or 1 single raptor 150gig (replacement for me)?

You can run a utility to find out if the HDD is failing - you can get it from the download section of your HDD manufacturers website.

Its quite possible that this is just a driver issue of some sort, especially since your running on a new install. Did you see this issue before you installed Vista? Make sure you have the latest vista compatible drivers from your component manufacturers - if you are running on the default microsoft drivers for your chipset they may not be interfacing with the hardware well and this could be causing the performance problem your seeing.

i installed the newest nforce drivers for my chipset as soon as i enabled internet on my install, the HDD was loud from the getgo (during installation of OS and such). Ill have to run the utility when i get home.

Weird. Did you load Video drivers also? I'm wondering if the aero effects are giving your video card trouble... theres a transparency/fading effect when the permission screen comes up and maybes its the fan noise that your hearing from the video card working harder. Or you could be on the right track and maybe the HDD is having read errors and thats why its loud and thrashing... Just trying to get a better feel for whats going on. Probably a good idea to run the diagnostic when you can and maybe that will shed some more light on things.

yeah, all the drivers were installed immediately. The videocard shouldnt be struggling with Aero, its an 8800gts lol. Regardless, i have those drivers installed as well but the sound of a harddrive thrashing about is pretty unique, a fan spinning up is one thing, but a harddrive's lows and highs and scratching sounds are another thing. We'll see what happens later.


what about two 7200rpm HDDs in raid 0 vs. a single raptor? How does that compare?

ok so i ran the western digital diagnostic tool and it passed both the extended and the quick tests, then i ran HD tune and got this...

everything seems alright. Is it?

Ok. Thats unfortunate - everything looks normal from what we have covered so far, so we haven't found your problem yet.

Now I consider it safe to say that your HDD is not the issue, though it may be a symptom.

From here, we don't have much direction as far as I can see... Maybe start with benching the GPU performance and see if that produces anything interesting.

I'll check back tomorrow sometime, but if you find anything good get me on twitter (sig) or AIM.

If it's not the HDD failing, it possibly could be software related. Do there happen to be any SW IDE drivers for your board? Check voltages on your PSU, just a thought on that one.