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danman

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 5, 2002
67
0
I've got one of these lovely, solid Alu powerbooks, thats is proving a great machine, but...

I have had a niggling problem that bugs me more than it being a terminal problem:

1) Running XBench (I know, I Know) renders lower performance figures for my Hard Drive than any posted on the site. I only got the 4200rpm drive, and may upgrade it to a faster drive when the warranty is out, but I -really- notice swap delays on this machine.

2) The Hard drive is -always- active, and never sleeps. I have 768Mb RAM, and if not running any apps, I would have thought there would be room to spin down occasionally!

Various disk tools report no problems with the drive, and even Activity Monitor reports no disk access when I can patently hear the head moving repaeatedly... so whats up? any ideas?
 

DavidLeblond

macrumors 68020
Jan 6, 2004
2,322
599
Raleigh, NC
danman said:
I've got one of these lovely, solid Alu powerbooks, thats is proving a great machine, but...

I have had a niggling problem that bugs me more than it being a terminal problem:

1) Running XBench (I know, I Know) renders lower performance figures for my Hard Drive than any posted on the site. I only got the 4200rpm drive, and may upgrade it to a faster drive when the warranty is out, but I -really- notice swap delays on this machine.

2) The Hard drive is -always- active, and never sleeps. I have 768Mb RAM, and if not running any apps, I would have thought there would be room to spin down occasionally!

Various disk tools report no problems with the drive, and even Activity Monitor reports no disk access when I can patently hear the head moving repaeatedly... so whats up? any ideas?

Is it like a ticking sound, kinda like a clock? (ie tick...tick...tick...) ... If so, check to see if a program like DatabaseDaemon is running. If it is, I think you can kill it... this is some Microsoft thing probably related to Office or Office TestDrive or something.
 

danman

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 5, 2002
67
0
DavidLeblond said:
Is it like a ticking sound, kinda like a clock? (ie tick...tick...tick...) ... If so, check to see if a program like DatabaseDaemon is running. If it is, I think you can kill it... this is some Microsoft thing probably related to Office or Office TestDrive or something.

Tha little bugger was there, and I've killed it.. thanks..

The sound though, was more of a semi-regular 'zeeeeep' noise, like the heads moving a fair distance. Occuring roughly every 4 or 5 seconds. In between there is a very gentle click-click-click, like the heads stepping.

Don't know If ill ever get to the bottom of this.

Has anyone else out there got a ALU 15" 4200rpm 80Gb drive that I could compare some Xbench scores with (whilst being sure it is that config of drive, which you can't tell on the XBench site??)

Thanks again David.

(Edit: Added XBench scorecard)
 

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