Hard Drive making loud sounds when rendering tiff images

Not sure where to put this as I'm quite sure it isn't a hard drive issue per se...

I've a weird issue with Windows 8.1 and my mechanical hard drive. I've a 2TB Western Digital hard drive that's partitioned with one of the partitions being a Media partition (H) containing over 107 gig of images, mostly tiff files ranging from 80-700 meg. I'm a photographer who tends to edit it layers.

Anyway for some odd reason when I access a folder containing these files, my hard drive goes into a frenzy and starts making loud vibration noise as though the drive is thrashing rapidly. Additionally I get a green bar going across the address bar as though it's establishing access permission. I've checked the drive and initially it just had "Everyone" listed so I added Administrators, and myself. But it still acts as though it's seeking permissions...



Interestingly enough no other folder or partition goes into this frenzy; just the folders under H partition containing the tiff images.

My initial thought is it's a caching issues as the PC is trying to cache and display the thumbnails for these files but I'm not sure. And if it is, how do I fix?

BTW this is a replacement drive as I thought my other drive was defective since it was doing the same and had it RMA'd.

Also this is basically the same partition/orginization structure that was under my Win 7 machine and I never had this issue.

Thoughts???

Thanks

Hey Drew,

Not sure what may be causing this, but you might see if defragging the HDD may help any.

In addition, it wouldn't hurt to test the HDD with Data Lifeguard Diagnostic to see if it passes and reports anything.


WD Support / Downloads / SATA & SAS

Thanks Shawn,

I've done both these things (Defrag, WD diagnostics), in fact they were also done on the drive that was subsequently RMA'd for this issue

Yet I have the exact same behavior with the replacement, this is why I really feel it's a Window 8 issue.

Appreciate the help

Thanks

Do you have any other hard drives to see if it does the same on them as well?

As a test, turn off thumbnail previews to see if it may just be it trying to load them for these large files in this folder.

Brink said:

Do you have any other hard drives to see if it does the same on them as well?

Click to expand...

Yeah I do, but none of them does it, not even my SSD drives. This only happens in the folders having the large tiff files.

This is interesting...

Brink said:

As a test, turn off thumbnail previews to see if it may just be it trying to load them for these large files in this folder.

Click to expand...

Did that and no issues; Folders open right away without a peep from HD. Don't know if I want to go with this as a permanent solution as I need my thumbnails, but your suspicion panned out

Ok. Copy that folder to another HDD to see if it does it on that HDD with thumbnail previews turned off. This will help to see if it's just that drive or the size of the folder causing it on all HDDs. No need to try this on the SSD since this shouldn't be an issue for it at all.

For now as a workaround, you could use the context menu below to make it easy to toggle on/off thumbnail previews. This way you could toggle it off before opening the folder, and toggle it back on when finished.

Thumbnails - Enable or Disable - Add to Context Menu - Windows 7 Help Forums

OK, so I didn't copy the files over to another drive, but what I did do is stick in my backup drive containing all my backup and original images, and that drive does the same so it's definitely a caching issue. And yeah, with thumbnails turned off, no issues.

Now the question becomes why is Windows 8.1 doing this when no such issues existed under 7

A BIG thanks for helping me sort this out. I would rep, but I haven't spread enough

Now what?

You're most welcome Drew.

You might see if clearing and resetting the thumbnail cache may help when it's turned on, but I don't think it will.
If not, then you might see if disabling the thumbnail cache may. This way you can have thumbnail previews turned on, and have it load each time instead of from the cache.

Yeah I'll give those suggestions a try. I'll also do some net snooping to see if this issue is prevalent or just unique to me.

Thanks; at least I now have a clue.

And I did get a new hard drive out of it

System Cleaner?

Are you running a system cleaner (e.g. CCleaner)?

If yes, check that the clean "Thumbnail Cache" option isn't selected.

Tif file previews take a long time to generate on my W7 setup.
I suspect that it is related to the file size.

Another option is to work on smaller groups of pictures.
Create a folder and only copy a small number of files to it and set that folder's View to thumbnails.
Keep the rest of the pictures in a separate folder and set the View to something other than thumbnails.

Install Icaros and set it to handle .tiff files and whatever else you want it to do thumbnails for.

You'll never look back. Good job Brink.

lehnerus2000 said:

Are you running a system cleaner (e.g. CCleaner)?

If yes, check that the clean "Thumbnail Cache" option isn't selected.

Tif file previews take a long time to generate on my W7 setup.
I suspect that it is related to the file size.

Another option is to work on smaller groups of pictures.
Create a folder and only copy a small number of files to it and set that folder's View to thumbnails.
Keep the rest of the pictures in a separate folder and set the View to something other than thumbnails.

Click to expand...

I don't use any reg cleaners; in fact advocate against them.

I've a 36.3 meg Nikon camera (D800E) in which I shoot in a RAW format that produces 70+ meg files. During Photoshop edits, some of those files can grow upwards to 850 meg as I use layers to do edits at times. Not the most efficient way to work but it works for me.

Anyway whether I keep them on the PC drive, or on a backup dive, they still need to be read when I view them. And regardless of viewer used they still need to be cached to view them as thumbnails. Seems Window 8 has an issue with large tiff files where 7 didn't, or if it did, it wasn't so noticeable.

MasterChief said:

Install Icaros and set it to handle .tiff files and whatever else you want it to do thumbnails for.

You'll never look back. Good job Brink.

Click to expand...

Well at this point in time it seems it doesn't matter the viewer... I've tried Photoshop, Adobe Bridge, Windows Photo Viewer. None of them will work if 8 has to struggle to read large tiff files.

Anyway I'll do some net research and see what I can come up with.

Thanks for the inputs.

It's not a viewer. It's an Explorer hook that handles thumbnails instead of letting Windows do it.

In my experience, sooooooo much quicker/better, including from network shares.

Thanks but I prefer to figure out why 8 isn't doing what it's supposed to do instead of just ignoring it. However I'll keep your solution in mind.

Peace

MasterChief said:

Install Icaros and set it to handle .tiff files and whatever else you want it to do thumbnails for.

You'll never look back. Good job Brink.

Click to expand...

Perhaps I'm missing something because Icaros doesn't seem to be working. Installed Sharky's Codecs which Contains it....



Perhaps it doesn't work under Windows 8.1?

Enable thumbnails.

How? I thought I did???

I didn't install the newest version you have yet, but probably click enable thumbnails button.

In the version I have, it looks a little different, but basically, there is an option to enable it or disable it. (In effect, a toggle switch.)

In your pic, the 1 looks lit up which I guess would mean on, but I'd play around with clicking stuff anyway, to see. lol

Oh yes, I know now. Stop explorer.exe with Task Manager. Start it again with Task Manager. (Type explorer.exe)

I'm actually having a conversation with Sharky now over here - About Icaros

Anyway this it the package I installed which contains the newest version of Icaros (2.3.0 alpha)...

I know of his work over the past many years and am aware of the attention to detail he exhibits in his packages, but I think this statement is a little overboard and misguided:

"Yep, but it is my opinion that any site the promotes registry cleaners as good things
is a bad site to get assistance from because they have an obvious lack of knowledge."

That's technical profiling (as in like, racial profiling.) lol