Hard drive sound like a dentist’s drill

Question: Often, when I am running several programs on the Internet, or closing a large program, my hard drive light will come on and the hard drive will start clicking like it should, but the only problem is that it won’t stop.

I can let it run for 10 to 15 minutes. When I return, it is still going. This is after I have closed all open applications. The only thing running is Windows 95 itself.

I upgraded from 16 MB of RAM to 32 MB to avoid this type of thing. Windows reports that the drive is only eight-per-cent fragmented. Any suggestions?

Answer: Your swap file might be fragmented. So what does this mean?

First let me explain fragmentation. A computer writes data to its hard drive in blocks. Ideally, it likes to write lots of blocks of data together side-by-side. But say there is only a small space on one side of the hard drive and a slightly bigger space further away.

If you added up both spaces it would be big enough to hold the picture of your mother you just received via e-mail.

Instead of rejecting the two hard drive locations, the computer will split up the file and put part of it in one spot (say your Mom’s forehead) and the rest of the photo in the second space.

Now, let’s say your Mom decides to send you digital pictures of the recent Egyptian vacation she took with your father. Sooner or later, if there aren’t enough large empty spaces on your hard drive, there will be hundreds of fragmented camel and pyramid picture files across the disk.

In your situation, your computer is telling you that the hard drive in general is not fragmented. But maybe your swap file is. A swap file is a large space on your hard drive that is reserved by Windows to be used as extra memory.

If your machine runs out of RAM, Windows uses the swap file to process data that won’t fit. Think of it as surrogate memory.

If it uses the swap file a lot, it too can get fragmented. The solution, says Mathew Fiszer, a senior tech support adviser at West Edmonton’s CompuSmart store, is to use the Speed Disk utility that comes with Norton Utilities for Windows 95.

“Speed Disk is similar to Defrag that comes with Windows 95, but one of the additional features that Speed Disk has is optimizing the swap file, which basically aligns the swap file into one continuous block,” Fiszer explained.

If the swap file is one big area of the hard drive, the computer can get at it very quickly and doesn’t have to do a great deal of jumping around.

… Or is it your controller drivers?

All that said, you may also have a problem with improper or improperly installed hard disk controller drivers. In this case, you will have to find out the model of controller and source out updated drivers.

To determine the status of your drivers, here are a few tips:

1. Click Start > Settings > Control Panel > System and click on the Device Manager tab. Click on Hard Disk Controllers twice. This should expand to show you the controllers on your system. If there is a yellow exclamation mark beside the controller, you have a problem. Click on the controller once and then on the Properties button for a message about why the warning is showing.

2. Check the Performance tab and look for messages. You have a problem if the system reports that the hard disk is running in MS-DOS compatibility mode.

“Most of the time Windows 95 is very good at picking up driver problems or conflicts,” said Fiszer. “If a hard disk is running in MS-DOS mode it usually indicates improper drivers. It could also be an indication of a virus present on the system.”

To fix the problem, search out the latest drivers through your computer dealer or manufacturer, via the Internet or through your local system support guru.