A while ago (not exactly sure when) I noticed that my mouse pointer would "stick" for a split second about once every second. It was accompanied by my hard drive activity led lighting up (as well as activity sounds from my hardrive). It didn't happen all the time... only after a lot of hard drive activity. Something similar would happen in games (Call of Duty) where for the first couple of minutes after loading the map, the sound and video stuttered (at the same frequency as the mouse "sticking" while web browsing) while at the same time the hard drive led was pulsing. Some time after I noticed this, was rearranging the components in my case because I had bought a quieter HS/fan for my CPU, a quiter fan for my PSU, and some quiter case fans as well. I oringinally had my primary HD (20GB Maxtor) on my primary IDE channel and a secondary HD (4.3GB Maxtor) and Pioneer DVD-ROM on my secondary IDE channel. I rearranged everything so that I had both hard drives on my secondary IDE channel (secondary connector is closer to hard drives) and the Pioneer as well as an added CD-RW drive on the primary channel. I also configured my HDs and optical drives to use cable select to determine master and slave. Finally, I added a front intake case fan and placed the 2 harddrives further apart (as opposed to on top of each other) so that I could increase the surface area between the drives for air flow. I booted up and immediately noticed that my boot time was much faster... down to 30 seconds from 2+ mintues. In the past, during bootup, there would be long periods (several seconds at a time) when the HD activity LED would light up but I would hear no sounds coming from the drive. After my rearrangement, the HD seemed to be churning away the entire time through bootup without pauses. After booting up, I noticed that I no longer had the mouse "sticking" problem while browsing (although the HD activity LED would still pulse) and my games were stutter free again (map load times were faster too). I installed the DOOM 3 demo and played through it and didn't have any problems. Problem solved!
Unfortunately....
A few weeks later, I noticed that I was having the mouse issues again and bootup times were longer. I tried to play the DOOM 3 demo but lo and behold, I get sound stuttering and skipping accompanied by HD activity LED lighting up. Both my wife and I use the same computer but she claims that she had not installed any progams and made any downloads. I thought maybe that I had a spyware/virus problem so I installed AVG anti-virus and spybot. I DID have a quite a bit of spyware as well as the Klez worm and some other viruses (I guess i'm not invincible behind my hardware router/firewall!). After cleaning up these problems, my machine seems a little better but boot times are even longer (maybe because of anti-virus software?) and I still have the same stuttering problem with the DOOM 3 demo (although mouse "sticking" is reduced but not eliminated). After some googling, I discovered that some of my symptoms seemed to be consistent with HD failure. It seems that hard drive are self-repairing to a degree and won't indicate errors even if they have to read a sector multiple times before getting good data. The symptoms for such "soft" failures are mouse pointer sticking, and HD activity LED without sound (among other things),
http://users.iafrica.com/c/cq/cquirke/baddata.htm
So now I think there is something wrong with my HD (its 5 years old). However, scandisk says I am fine. Also, a surface scan and burn-in test using Maxtor's powermax HD diagnostic utility both pass with flying colors. Also, S.M.A.R.T. reports Ok for each of the various tests/parameters on the HD. I need help! Is there any way to diagnose a failing harddrive that has performance problems but has not yet had a "hard" failure? How do I know if it is being forced to make multiple attempts at accessing sectors? Is it possible that my problem has nothing to do with the HD?
Unfortunately....
A few weeks later, I noticed that I was having the mouse issues again and bootup times were longer. I tried to play the DOOM 3 demo but lo and behold, I get sound stuttering and skipping accompanied by HD activity LED lighting up. Both my wife and I use the same computer but she claims that she had not installed any progams and made any downloads. I thought maybe that I had a spyware/virus problem so I installed AVG anti-virus and spybot. I DID have a quite a bit of spyware as well as the Klez worm and some other viruses (I guess i'm not invincible behind my hardware router/firewall!). After cleaning up these problems, my machine seems a little better but boot times are even longer (maybe because of anti-virus software?) and I still have the same stuttering problem with the DOOM 3 demo (although mouse "sticking" is reduced but not eliminated). After some googling, I discovered that some of my symptoms seemed to be consistent with HD failure. It seems that hard drive are self-repairing to a degree and won't indicate errors even if they have to read a sector multiple times before getting good data. The symptoms for such "soft" failures are mouse pointer sticking, and HD activity LED without sound (among other things),
http://users.iafrica.com/c/cq/cquirke/baddata.htm
So now I think there is something wrong with my HD (its 5 years old). However, scandisk says I am fine. Also, a surface scan and burn-in test using Maxtor's powermax HD diagnostic utility both pass with flying colors. Also, S.M.A.R.T. reports Ok for each of the various tests/parameters on the HD. I need help! Is there any way to diagnose a failing harddrive that has performance problems but has not yet had a "hard" failure? How do I know if it is being forced to make multiple attempts at accessing sectors? Is it possible that my problem has nothing to do with the HD?
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