am i killing my hard drive???

geek 0001

geek 0001

Member
i have been downloading software and other junk that clogs up the computer ever since I rebuilt it about 6 months ago. Recently I have noticed that I can hear the heads moving in the drive and yesterday it stopped booting because one of the files had corrupted. I replaced the file and got it running again but it kinda scared me because I might be straining it and causing it to corrupt files etc. Could the fact that my p.c is running slowly be killing my hard drive?
 
When you fill your drive up with volumes of files you will end up seeing lack of memory errors when there isn't enough drive space left for virtual memory. There are an endless number of reasons for seeing corrupted system files often due to bad software installations. That by itself won't physically harm a drive unless you are seeing hard boots and system crashes.

The sounds heard if making a clicking sound point at the drive heading for a dead end when the read-write haeds won't lift off of the one or more magnetic disks inside the drive itself. That spells foobar for the drive. The slow down is mainly due to the lack of space for virtual memory and whatever is corrupting the main system files. A slow system doesn't kill drives but simply make life a little harder when things don't run correctly.
 
If the drive itself is super quiet then your main problem is simply the lack of drive space and most likely the number of new programs you have installed. You can reduce the one that are unnecessary with the msconfig utility using the selective startup option. That is one thing good for Windows when solving problems.

Simply type msconfig in at the Run prompt off of the Start menu and go to the startup group tab seen on the right side of the screen that comes up. For disabling programs known to be having problems you can go into the next tab called services and choose the "hide all microsoft services" option to see only those from installed apps like antivirus, cd or dvd burning softwares, or anything else that auto loads like disk detectors.

There are two freewares with good uses that can also be a help. RegCleaner is one tool for cleaning up the system registry from anything leftover or duplicated for some reason. http://www.majorgeeks.com/RegCleaner_d460.html

The other one that more or less has the nick name "crap cleaner" called CCleaner literally goes over the drive looking for now useless temp folders and other loose files not associated with any programs. Just watch it doesn't go after stuff you have saved in folders you created on your own. http://www.ccleaner.com/
 
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