Posted on

Fixing Problems with Your Hard Disk

All data on your computer is stored on the hard disk drive. Whenever you click on a file, the hard disk spins at thousands of rotations per minute in order to access the file. Over time hard disk storage has grown tremendously, while improving speeds all the time. These devices are also the most prone to errors and failures, which paralyzes your computer.

Not all hard disk problems are unsolvable though. Below are a few problems with your PC that boil down to problems with your storage device.

Disk full

Your hard disk needs some breathing space in order to function normally. When you fill your hard disk entirely with music, videos, documents and other files, it has to work harder to go to the file that you need. That is because files are scattered over portions of the disk. The more disk space you consume, the greater the seek time for your disk.

Ideally, you want your hard disk to be about 40% free. However, you should leave at least 10% free for optimal functioning of your hard disk. If you find your hard disk to be full and slow, try uninstalling any applications or programs that you don’t use. Over time, there is more software installed on your PC than you would like. Uninstalling them will free up a lot of space and make your PC run faster.

Add storage

Alternatively if you think that you need all the programs and files and don’t want to delete any of them, consider upgrading your hard disk. If you are running a desktop, you can buy a second hard drive and transfer all your music, videos and documents to the new drive, thus freeing up a lot of space for system files.

If you upgrade the hard disk on your laptop, you might need to reinstall Windows and all the applications, because there is no place for the older drive. You can also buy an external storage drive and transfer all your media and documents to it. Hard disks are quite inexpensive today. You can buy disks worth 1TB for less than $80.

Avoiding problems

If you use a desktop PC, and find that the hard disk slows down periodically, it might be due to excessive temperature. The hard disk operates at its best when its temperature is between 30?C and 40?C. Install a program such as SpeedFan. It monitors the temperature of your disks and alerts you when it runs too hot.

 

You might want to ensure that your desktop is placed in an airy part of your room so that it gets proper ventilation. Also take care to ensure that there are minimal chances of dust entering your PC. If you are using a laptop, place it on a raised platform, so that the base is completely touching the ground. The base has a few system fans that run to keep your whole PC cool.

Just follow the above few tips and you should have no problems with your PC and it will run just fine for a long time.

Posted on

How Can I Monitor Temperature, Fan Speeds And Voltages Of My Computer For Free

Monitor voltages, fan speeds and temperatures

If you’re looking for a tool that will change your PC’s fan speeds, that can read your hard disk temperature and S.M.A.R.T. Standing , that may read temperatures, voltages and fan speeds and much more, then you are reading the proper article.

SpeedFan works nicely with Windows 9x, ME, NT, two thousand, 2003 and Windows XP, and this is fully at no cost. SpeedFan monitors temperatures, through available hardware monitor chips which show their temperature sensors hooked up to different places within your PC, and, according to your setup, does its best to keep those temperatures at your desired values. You can even change a fan speed according to the temperature of your hard disk.

You must identify the temperature at which a particular sensor works and that should be assigned. SpeedFan strictly sticks to available datasheets for each sensor chip. Please remember that hardware monitors are chips that do have some pins ( tiny connectors ) which should be attached to some extra hardware ( temperature probes, thermistors or thermocouples ) to be in a position to read temperatures. Just a couple of hardware monitor chips do label their connectors with CPU, System and the likes.

Many of them use labels like Temp18243 [*SCO], Local or Remote. The hardware makers connect available pins to different temperature sensors essentially according to the physical placement of elements on the motherboard. This implies that the same chip, an ITE IT8712F, for instance, could be hooked up to a sensor diode measuring CPU temperature on Temp2 and, on a different hardware, it would be connected on Temp1.

If you have got a Local sensor and a Remote labeled one, this sometimes implies that Local is the temperature of the monitor chip itself and Remote is the temperature read from a remote probe. When you have correctly identified which temperature sensor is which, try to lower the rate of each fan and look at reported speed and temperatures. If you don’t permit SpeedFan to switch any fan speed and set all the speeds too low, then SpeedFan won’t be ready to duck overheating.

[Download SpeedFan]