PC Preservation Society

November 8, 2006 1:42 AM

PrehistoricPCFilter. Win98 (SE); bad clusters appearing every couple of days. Due to using Azureus? Just plain senility on the laptop's part? Advice greatly appreciated.

It's an old laptop (Windows 98 Second Edition). I installed E-Mule a couple of months ago when my problems seemed to start. I have stopped using it and went back to Azureus. However every couple of days my computer finds bad clusters and takes about a day to go through the system checking and marking them (300 odd bad clusters on the last run). Is my using of BitTorrent causing/contributing? If so should I stop completely or use another friendlier client? Or would you think that it's just plain old age and I should be readying a grave for the thing no matter what I do?

Tips on how to get the most out the old dog greatly appreciated, can't really afford to get a new one anytime soon.

posted by Gratishades to computers & internet (8 comments total)

A guess is old age (of the hard disk) amplified by the continuous writing of different blocks by the Bittorent client. If Bittorrent plays a part, probably no other client will change it, because the thing taxing the disk (random writing of blocks) is going to be the same for all of them.

Regardless what it is:

1) At that age, and especially with a laptop drive, a sudden or gradual fatal drive failure becomes quite possible. Backup accordingly.

2) For most laptops I've seen, it's mechanically fairly easy to swap in a new drive. So if you can't afford a new machine, you can reduce the risk of a complete failure and extend it's lifetime by simply buying a new drive.
posted by uncle harold at 2:18 AM on November 8, 2006

Likely your disk is in bad shape to begin with. Emule and Torrent clients are terrible, because they tend to beat on the internal disk, writing tiny bits of hundreds of files as they come in.

To maximize the life of your machine, do a full defrag, using something other than the windows tools, if you can. I highly recommend Diskeeper. It does a fantastic job. Having contiguous space free on the disk will make the impact of writing all that small stuff smaller.

Second, consider getting an external disk. You might not be able to afford a whole new machine, but you can get a 40gb disk in an enclosure for something like 40$. For a hundred, you can get 320gb. Check the deals sites. With an external drive, you can set all the temp directories and shares there, and offload all the work from your aging disk. Problem solved.
posted by fake at 2:18 AM on November 8, 2006

If a hard disk drive has a hundred bad clusters on it, it's overdue to be backed up and replaced. No ifs, ands or buts; it's on the way out, and it will soon fail completely.

If your laptop otherwise still meets your needs, the right thing to do is just put a new hard drive in it. Get a knowledgeable geek friend to copy everything off your old hard drive onto your new one, and you won't even have to reinstall Windows. Your laptop will run faster (because drives have got faster since your old one was made) and will have more space (because the cheapest available drive is now much bigger than your old one) and won't get bad clusters any more.
posted by flabdablet at 2:33 AM on November 8, 2006

DANGER : bad cluster appearing = Change Hard Drive (Back Up First)
posted by zouhair at 4:07 AM on November 8, 2006

Don't defrag! Extra disk activity will only exacerbate the problem and bring the ultimate failure that much closer. Back up IMMEDIATELY and replace the drive this week.

Azureus is actually gentler on the disk than many torrent clients due to its use of an in-memory cache over and above what the OS provides. It's a fairly heavyweight piece of software, being GUI-heavy and written in Java, but once it gets started, it's quite well-behaved.

As for disks, I just replaced a failing laptop drive with a 60-gig Seagate that Microcenter has for $60 this week. They're nearly silent, fairly good on power consumption (and thus heat generation), and warranted for 5 years. Might be a good place to start.
posted by Myself at 6:14 AM on November 8, 2006

Don't defrag!

The folks advising you this way are right, and I retract my defrag advice.
posted by fake at 7:26 AM on November 8, 2006

Hard drive dying! Prepare for the end times! (of the computer)
posted by unixrat at 7:43 AM on November 8, 2006

Get a new HD if thrift is of the essence, or spend a couple hundred for a new machine if you rather it to work without problems.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 9:20 AM on November 9, 2006