hard drive - hdd & cpu diasgnostic tools

08
2014-07
  • dole doug

    i have a 4 years old laptop which makes a lot of noise:
    - hdd noise,
    - cooler noise.

    I need to detected which is my CPU temperature and also how to solve hdd noise. Do you have any idea? I just formatted that partition and installed Wimndoes XP on it? I'm thinking to detect HDD problems (if are any) and isolate/hide them. Do you know what tools can I use to solve my problems.

    Also, do you think that a 3-4 years is "old" for a computer. I use that laptop for office work, nothing fancy but time can make a computer become slower?

    • Answers
  • 8088

    For quick and easy temperature monitoring I'd suggest HWMonitor. Doesn't need to be installed, you just download and run the exe.

    alt text

    For monitoring your HDD(s) I'd recommend HDTune. It shows temperature and SMART data, although the later is a bit cryptic. Not the program's fault; SMART in general is a good idea, badly implemented.

  • pjemmert

    I'll try to adress your concerns one-by-one:

    .

    CPU Monitoring:

    You can try a tool that will run diagnostics on your whole system, thus enabling you to see if the CPU is any problem, or if it is just a side effect of bigger things. A good one to try is CheckIt Diagnostics from Smith Micro Software. You can google the download.

    ___________________________.

    .

    HDD Noise (thanks to About.com):

    Run free hard drive diagnostic software, already available on many PCs or available on the Internet. Additionally, more advanced diagnostic software is available for a cost from third party software developers.

    Note: At best, diagnostic software will only mark the areas of the hard drive that are failing as "bad" and prevent the computer from using them in the future. It will not truly fix a hard drive that is physically failing.

    If any corrections made by the diagnostics software do not temporarily resolve the hard drive noise, do a complete backup of your system and replace the hard drive immediately.

    If the diagnostics software helps resolve the clicking, grinding or squealing noises keep in mind that this is only a temporary solution. Chances are, the hard drive will continue to fail until it is completely unusable.

    The permanent solution is to do a complete backup of your system and replace the hard drive as soon as possible.

    Tips:

    Since there is no good way to repair a failing hard drive, protecting your data by performing regular backups is essential.

    With an up-to-date backup, recovering from a hard drive failure is as simple as installing a new drive and restoring your data.

    ______________________. .

    Cooler Noise:

    Run the diagnostics as outlined in the first tip and see what the CPU speed is listed as. If the speed is listed as the highest allowed, and if your laptop is equipped with anything like SpeedStep technology, try turning down the speed of your CPU. This is the case in the majority of constant fan usage.

    If the fan is just making noise, but not running all of the time, you might see if the cooling fan can be replaced. Cooling fans, like all other components in a computer, wear down over time. If you can replace it (or it can be replaced in a computer repair shop), I would suggest doing it, and getting an "ultra quiet" performance fan.

    ________________________________________________.

  • 8088

    You can use Real Temp to check your CPU's temperature:

    alt text

    First off on the XP system try chkdsk. For diagnostics testing I'd recommend the Ultimate boot CD. It comes with a number of tools for testing the peripherals on your system. If you have a Seagate drive, check out Seatools.

    As for your computer becoming out of date, I think it's fine for the tasks you are doing. If you are looking for the latest and greatest, Moore's Law explains things pretty well - computing power for average end-user systems doubles approximately every 2 years. It likely hasn't gotten drastically slower, just your perception of it's speed from when you first got it has changed, but aged components can have performance problems.


    • Related Question

    cpu - Processor noise. What generates it?
  • Stefano Borini

    So, I am probably not alone in noticing that any processor makes a high pitch buzzing sound while working, and this sound is more noticeable and varied in pitch when computations are performed. I also hear it from the GPU when doing operations like dragging a window around. It's not the fan. I also recall a group of hackers at some badass convention recording this noise while gnupg created a key, and got some information about it.

    Here it is: Acoustic cryptanalysis

    What physical phenomenon produces this sound?

    Here are some other reports

    http://www.videohelp.com/forum/archive/buziing-noise-from-processor-t369398.html

    https://www.rohitab.com/discuss/lofiversion/index.php/t11499.html


    • Related Answers
  • Fred Hamilton

    The most common audible noise coming from computers (besides fan noise, of course) is from the transformers used in the power supplies. They are switched at very high frequencies and they generate a powerful magnetic field (that's how they couple energy from one side of the transformer to the other). That powerful magnetic field is essentially a big electromagnet, so any ferromagnetic material in the vicinity will be pulled towards the transformer and pushed away from the transformer thousands of times a second. Most things are soldered down, but some things (like the windings of the transformer themselves) can have a little play, so they move back and forth at the switching frequency (or a harmonic or sub-harmonic of the switching frequency). This is the most common source of physical noise, and it can be modulated by the load on the CPU (as the current draw from the CPU changes, the magnetic field intensity and duty cycle changes). However the most common source of this kind of noise in this environment is the transformers (sometimes called inverters) used to create the high voltages for the backlight of LCD monitors and TVs.

    Since this seems to be a popular topic, I'll add a note on the other big source of noise in PCs. The noise discussed above is produced mechanically, you can hear it without any soundcards or speakers. If you're talking about noise you hear through your speakers, there's another source. CPUs and GPUs use 10s of amps of current from the power supplies, and that current varies depending on what the CPU/GPU is doing. The power supplies typically use the same ground return (usually a copper ground plane layer in the motherboard PCB) that all the other chips (including audio) use. Ohm's law says Voltage (V) = current (I) times resistance (R). An ideal ground plane (made of an ideal conductor) would be zero ohms from any point to any other point, so even 100A of current wouldn't generate a voltage (100 A * 0 ohms = 0 V). But a real-world copper ground plane has some resistance, say 0.010 ohms from one end to the other. So if the CPU current switches between 30A and 10A, the voltage across the ground plane may vary between 0.3V and 0.1V. This means that the ground the audio IC is relying on to "stay still" is actually moving up and down by 200mV. That makes the audio output of the IC jump up and down by up to 200mV (depending on what the processor is doing). Which you hear as noise.

    This is a very, very simplified example - people have written books about this topic. I'm just trying to convey the basic mechanism.

  • bobobobo

    The Toshiba m40 laptop also used to make this insanely annoying squealing noise. If you plugged in a USB key, the noise stopped.

    From here, someone writes about that squealing problem's cause:

    The problem is relating to a capacitor that is vibrating probably because there's too much power flowing through it