Random hard drive activity while gaming?

[deanx0r]

Hi,

I got Half-Life 2 installed and noticed random hard drive activity now and then while playing. It's not as intense as if you were copying a file, but it's enough to render the game choppy at times.

I tried playing with the settings from lowest to highest, and then give it a try with Fable Lost Chapters, and the hdd is still being randomly accessed while playing. It's even more noticeable in Fable and the game isn't smooth at all.

I got nothing running the background that would lead to hdd access such as anti-virus scan or bittorrent.

Is it something normal? I had UT on an older rig and never the hdd would show any kind of activity while gaming.

My current specs:

AMD 3800 X2
6800 GT
MSI Neo2 plat.
2GB of RAM
Audigy 2ZS
300 GB 7200.8 Seagate SATA hdd

 

[Hyperlite]

hmm....Well, regular hard drive access while playing games is obviously going to happen, i'm just trying to figure out why it is making you slideshow...have you downloaded the X2 driver and set affinity for your apps? that system should definantly not be lagging in anything short of FEAR or STALKER. I'd look into the x2 driver first, then see perhaps there is a pagefile issue?

 

[crizzar]

yeah, hdd access isn't unheard of, but if you're having that kind of slowdown, something is taking up processing time... you sure about nothing going on in the background?

 

[ElTorrente]

With 2gb, you shouldn't need too much activity on your paging file. Even so, set your paging file's minimum and maximum size as the same number - this will create a permanent file that your comp can access for virtual memory, instead of it having to read/write in a fragmented file spread all over your drive.

How many sticks of RAM do you have, and what are your timings? Are you in dual channel mode?

The X2 driver shouldn't be a necessity for HL2, because it ran fine on my machine without it, BUT- install it anyway- it won't hurt and could help.

How many tasks are running in the background? How many processes are normally running? - viewable in the taskmanager. Maybe you have some spyware or something that you didn't know about. Believe me- it has happened to me (viruses/spyware) a few times until I started protecting my computer with a hardware router and software. Download and install Windows XP Anti-spyware Beta - it's free, and it is AWESOME! It monitors all of your ports, registry, scripts, malicous activities, etc and does so with minimum of resources. I've paid for several programs to help keep my computer running clean and hacker free- and this program owns all of them. I used it to clean out my startup registry of all sorts of lame programs that run when I start my computer, and it keeps my comp nice and smooth and fast.

Are you sure all of your drivers are up to date? Your BIOS? Chipset drivers?

 

[deanx0r]

The hard drive activity doesn't give me slideshow type framerate, but after playing UT for years, that slight change is noticeable enough to be annoying.

Af for pagefile, I have it set min and max to 4GB on a separate partition.

I noticed that hdd activity happens under windows as well (while complete idle), but maybe once every minute? It's much more noticeable in game.

Got all the latest drivers, bios installed btw, nothing on the background, and the X2 driver is installed.

I am just wondering if this not inherent to the game played tho. I got no prob in UT at all, but the first sequence of HL2 when you are in the subway is aweful. It feels laggy and the HDD LED is in a frenzy mode.

Anyone got similar experience with HL2?