Possible hard disk and computer problems..

[SE14man]

Hi there,

I have noticed a problem on this machine since yesterday afternoon.
Yesterday i plugged in my 400GB external hard disk to load it up with music etc etc, just to clear space on my C: drive.
Anyway it wouldn't dismount for some reason so i didn't go yanking to cable out i just left it plugged in and went to bed with itp lugged in.
Woke up this morning to find the PC off.
Which was an opportunity to unplug the hard drive. First of all is there a way to scan the hard drive for damaged data because it could have been being read and suddenly the pc shut down?
Anyway i started the PC up and it was a lot louder this time and when in windows it's performance in general was a lot slower, opening applications in particular. The noise went after about 10 minutes and is now back to normal with the speed of things.
What is this problem do you think?
What needs replacing?

Cheers people.

[redwudz]

Hard to say if there is a problem. Windows doesn't want you to disconnect a drive sometimes as it may want to write more info to or read more from it. Not sure why the PC would shut down, but it could be Microsoft was adding a update that requires a shutdown when completed and it just did that automatically.

If you really need to disconnect a drive and Windows gives you that warning, just try shutting the PC down from the start menu, or use restart if wanted. That should allow Windows to do any 'housekeeping' with the drives before it shuts down the computer. You are correct that unplugging it, especially if it's being written to or from, can corrupt the files.

Also not sure about the odd behavior on restart. Could also be a update finishing.

If it works correctly now, maybe not a problem. You could run CHKDSK on the hard drives, along with a defrag and that may help speed things up a bit. You should be able to select both options by R clicking the drive and going to 'Properties>Tools'.

EDIT: This thread would probably be better in the Computer Forum. Moving.

[SE14man]

Ok mate thanks very much.
I will do that for sure.

Cheers

[SE14man]

Ok it turns out it was a power cut we had during the night!
So youd sitll recommend chkdsk right?

Cheers mate.

[redwudz]

Yes, if the power was cut off improperly, I would run CHKDSK on the boot drive at least. The drives were probably not doing anything when the power failed, but CHKDSK may be good insurance. For the boot drive, CHKDSK will run at the next startup. It may take a while with large drives, so you would want to run it when you don't need to use the computer for a while. BTW, CHKDSK is also called 'Error Checking'.

If the power failed, Windows may have needed to do some cleanup when the PC restarted and that may have been the extra noise, but just guessing. You should have also got a Windows popup that complained about the PC being shut down improperly when you restarted.

[victoriabears]

Run some spyware checking software as well I have just uninstalled my ISP's protection package which missed a virus and installed various free virus software avira, and gone back to spybot and winpatrol-the stuff they found and the smoother running of my pc are amazing.