Saneesh called me up yesterday saying that his HP Pavilion laptop with Windows Vista Home Basic, bought 6 months back, was making a lot of noise. It was not from the fan. He was afraid whether the hard disk is going to crash. When he accessed some applications, the noise level went up. He confirmed that he used to installed and uninstalled many software, and also he used to play with many huge video and music files in that laptop.
I concluded that the noise is coming from the hard disk. I told him to use Disk Defragmenter on his laptop. Thanks to tech support skills shared by Peter! 
Fragmentation happens to a hard disk over time as you save, change, or delete files. The changes that you save to a file are often stored at a location on the hard disk that’s different from the original file. Additional changes are saved to even more locations. Over time, both the file and the hard disk itself become fragmented, and your computer slows down as it has to look in many different places to open a file.
The Disk Defragmenter tool rearranges the data on your hard disk and reunites fragmented files so your computer can run more efficiently. The Disk Defragmenter in Vista is scheduled to automatically run at 1 A.M. on every Wednesday.
I think the task scheduler was was disabled in Saneesh’s laptop for some reason and the scheduled defrag job did not happen weekly. He did the defrag and the noise level reduced to the acceptable level of regular disk movement. 
If the noise level is too high and it doesn’t change much after the defragmentation, do back up your data and talk to tech support. Your hard disk may be about to crash.
Be the first to comment