daz is running my hdd too hard
j_stnk
Posts: 205
since i got started with daz, my pc makes a whining noise only when i process the data. i went to yahoo answers and one person told me that;
a) my graphics card is outdated NVIDIA GeForce 9200
b) that my hdd is too slow to process the data WDC WD 10 EADS-22M2BO SCSI
c) get an SSD for speed
computer specs
AMD Phenom II X 4 820 quad-core
1TB storage, 4gig RAM
running DAZ 4.6, Pinnacle Studio 17.5 (AVID/Corel), and Corel CDGS. (not at the same time)
does anyone have any suggestions, tech info, a link?
thanks
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Comments
What do you mean by process? Rendering makes your CPU work flat out, so if the fan is temperature-controlled it will spin up then.
hello richard,
maybe i'm using the wrong terminology. my computer is making that noise now on my pc after my pinnacle studio upgrade scanned for usable files for video editing. it is now importing the data in it's data base like daz does when you scan for usable files from other 3d parties you might have when you prompt it to. i got an alert from norton that my pc is in high memory usage now.
One of the noises you are hearing is probably the CPU fan, AMD processors run a lot hotter than Intel. I have an AMD 8 core machine that I don't use because when rendering in Daz the CPU gets too hot and the fan is going at max revs making a lot of noise. I am going to buy a better cooling system when I can afford it (one day).
If you are maxing out your ram then it could be the swap file that is running on the hard drive. When windows runs low on memory it starts swapping data between the memory and the swap file, hence the name, to speed up processing. Having only one hard drive means that all the work that windows needs to do is on the single drive so the heads will be moving from sector to sector across the drive and it will sound like you have a dozen helicopters inside the computer. If you can afford to get another drive for data and use that as the swap file drive too then it will reduce the work the main drive has to do. It also means that you wont wear out the drive and end up with it failing and if it does then your data will be safe on the other drive and you will only need to re-install windows and your programs.
I have three drives on my main computer.
Partitioned
1) Programs and Windows
2) Data and Scratch Disc
3) Swap File and Spare
The reason for the scratch and swap discs is that I tend to be using more than one program at a time and it means that if one of them uses a scratch disc and I max out the memory then the swap file is on a separate disc and they don't clash with each other
A couple of comments:
Your graphics card doesn't have to be the latest bells and whistles version, or even anything close to that — mine is a GeForce GT240, and it still works fairly well with D|S. The important thing is keeping your graphics drivers up to date (and get them from NVidia, not through Microsoft Update).
4GB is a bit marginal for using DAZ|Studio; it's likely that a moderately busy scene will cause your system to run out of RAM, and you'll start getting swap file problems as described upthread. If you can afford it, and if your system can physically handle it, you should at least double that amount of RAM.
are you running an external SCSI drive? If your system has an internal SATA this is going to address any speed issues. SSD will be fast but far from necessary.
AMD Phenom II X 4 820 quad-core
1TB storage, 4gig RAM
running DAZ 4.6, Pinnacle Studio 17.5 (AVID/Corel), and Corel CDGS. (not at the same time)
does anyone have any suggestions, tech info, a link?
thanks
Again, what Kitty said: 4GB is the bare minimum of RAM for this program to be happy, your HD is making a lot of noise because it's writing swap file and it probably wound't hurt to quit out of everything and do a optimize which could take 10 minutes or overnight depending on how cluttered the drive is. This wont stop the drive from spinning but it might help with some of the speed in which it does this.
I don't see anything wrong with 4Gb. I have 6 on this laptop and I have never seen DAZ take more than 2.5. I can be rendering a scene in Bryce, be working in DAZ rendering and viewing WIP's and still be surfing the web with my browser, viewing .jpg images in IrfanView and fixing an image in CS4 :) It is an i5 quad core processor and a 1 TB hard drive partitioned in three.
i plan to get 4 more gigs of ram . i also have 112gigs on an external drive waiting to be used. so i should be good to go. thanks, let you know how all turns out.
Some fans are much quieter than others. If everything is running ok but the noise just bothers you, you could swap it/them out for a more expensive, quieter one. If you have had it for a while, you could also clean out the processor's heat sink, and any case air intake filters which probably look like rabid dust bunnies by now and could be causing the fan to run at a faster speed (if yours does that) to keep things cool; probably won't help much, but it might and it's easy to try. Also check to make sure no cables or anything are jammed in the fan. I freaked myself out the other day for a half second after putting in new memory and turning it on and it sounded like a car grinding a gear. A power cable next to the fan got moved slightly and the fan blades were hitting it.