western digital making bleep sounds

[Nostradamus]

I bought a western digital harddrive (80 Gb) a while ago.
Whenever I play sounds (games, mp3, movies) and the disc read or writes I get annoying sounds in the soundflow.
Blips and Beeps whenever the drive is reading/writing.

I have a soundblaster Live! and the drive is placed as far from the soundcard as possible.

The two older drives I have (ibm deskstar 40Gb and Fujitsu 20Gb) don't have this problem.

Anyone know what this is? /Sören

 

[Jakespeare]

Interesting: I doubt that it is really a hard drive issue, but that you have a different configuration on that hard drive, your software is somehow different from the previous setup. However,,,,,,,, you could have this problem because
of the hard drive.

One simple solution is to increase the CACHE - the swap file, on your hard drive. In Virtual memory, just INCREASE the Swap file.........
to 250% of the amount of RAM that you have (this is only a general rule, but I have done it 100+ times and it seems to work great).
So, if you have 256 MB's of RAM, set the MINIMUM TO 700 MB's and the MAXIMUM to 1000, or leave it at NO maximum.

This will GREATLY decrease the amount of time Windows is accessing the hard drive by changing the swap file size.


****** NOTE: RUN DEFRAG BEFORE YOU DO THIS ****** This is because this will create a permanent SWAP FILE on your hard drive and you want this file all in one piece, not filling holes all over your hard drive.

 

[Nostradamus]

I sincerely doubt that the pagefile has anything to do with this. The Western Digital drive is slave (master present) on second ide-channel. The swapfile is placed on the IBM disc (c.

I believe it's the same problem you can recieve in a car.
You know when you can hear the generator sound in your speakers. /Sören

 

[osuman]

I agree, I doubt it is a swap file issue.

Could it be a resources problem? I know that sometimes if I move a webpage quickly or do something else that quickly takes a lot of resources my sound will also make a quick noise. I guess it's possible that it's a power issue also. Do you have a lot of devices on a small power supply? Insufficient power can show up with wierd problems.

It's possible that it's a similar issue as with cars and the spark plug wires causing interference with the stereo, but I would be suprised if it is. I wouldn't think that a HD or it's cableing could produce enough of a EM field to affect the surrounding components.

 

[Nostradamus]

hmm. I've never thought of it as a power issue.
I suppose it could be. I have a lot of devices.
300 W power supply though. Serving 4 ide devices, 2 scsi devices, scsi-controller, 2 NIC's, Soundcard, graphics, P3 733@911 as well as several usb devices. Perhaps I should try dismounting some of the equipment.
Thanks for the tip. /Sören