Random Synapses

Having resolved the problem with the laptops’ hard drives clicking constantly, I faced another annoyance, still related to the hard drives. The laptops were a bit sluggish when they were heavily reading or writing to the hard drives, which was a little below my expectations from the excellent Western Digital Scorpio drives. And they were making a loud “clunk” noise every once in a while which, even if did not have any impact on the system’s performance, was an annoying and fearful sound.

It’s a known fact that hard drives get hot during use. Very hot. And their platters spin fast. Very fast. The temperature and centripetal acceleration in fast drives makes the chemical layers of the platters slightly dilate. Considering the very high density of data tracks and sectors on every square inch, even the slightest dillatation can result in heads not becoming properly alligned with the spinning tracks below. As a result, all hard drives periodically perform a head allignment operation to be able to locate the correct position of any data sector. You can hear this ocasionally, it sounds similar to the noise of the drive at computer start-up. So I assumed the occasional “clunk” noise was caused by self-calibration. But it didn’t seem right to occur as often as a few minutes in some occasions.

So, I rolled up my sleeves and began investigating.

Each device connected to a computer, inside or out, requires a software driver to provide the operating system with the specific instructions for controlling the hardware. Most versions of Windows are shipped with loads of “generic” drivers created by Microsoft. Windows XP is famous for its humongous collection of drivers — almost anything can be plugged in and will work without extra software.

The trick is in the name: “generic” drivers. Although some drivers embedded were provided by hardware manufacturers, many are created by Microsoft and provide minimal or limited functionality, compared to the full-featured drivers and software prepared by the hardware manufacturers. This is exactly why my hard drives were not running properly: Microsoft’s drivers for the laptop motherboards and hard drives were working — I was able to use the computer — but not at its full potential.

So here’s what I did. I knew the laptops had Intel processors, so they must have had Intel chipsets as well. Off to find the drivers for them on Intel’s support website… Searching around for a couple of minutes revealed a tiny utility for identifying chipset model; that’s how I found out that the laptops have Intel 830 chips in them, controlling everything on the motherboards. So I found and downloaded the drivers for this particular chipset. The downloads section also listed Intel’s Application Accelerator, which was created to enhance performance in laptops. I downloaded and installed it as well.

The result is amazing. By spending half an hour finding the proper drivers from the component manufacturer, the system’s start-up time has reduced with almost one half. Applications start much faster, the drives are quieter, they no longer make the “clunk” noises. The Intel Application Accelerator allows me to make choices over performance versus power consumption.

In what I’m concerned, at least Windows XP’s reputation of “all drivers included” no longer stands. It still is recommended to get drivers from hardware manufacturers and use them. For instance, Dell’s supplied drivers for the Synaptics touchpad are really, really old. Windows’ built-in drivers recognize it as a mouse but doesn’t allow scrolling or other smart options. The most recent driver from Synaptics’ website is much, much better. Or, Canon’s drivers for the digital camera allows me to preview photos in camera and download them sorted in separate folders by shooting date, as opposed to Windows’ built-in support for digital cameras which only allows basic download of image files.