Hard Drive Dying???

Soldato
Joined
14 Oct 2007
Posts
2,738
My PC is LAGGING and lagging badly.
I open any application, it struggles to load.
I open up IE or Firefox and it goes to Not Responding.
I open up Dreamweaver (Which I rely on working) and it goes very slow, hangs, lags, etc.

I recovered my PC back to factory settings but still doing it.

In my PC, I have 2 x 500GB HDDs, should I swap it over and install Windows on the other HDD or could it be something else?
 
Get a software (loads free on the web) and read the smart data from your HDDs. Run chkdsk and check them.

I've seen this issue with a lot of Apple iMacs when the disk is on its last legs.
 
Does this give you any answers as it just tells me there are no bad sectors...

C:\Users\Kencs>chkdsk
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is HP.

WARNING! F parameter not specified.
Running CHKDSK in read-only mode.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
226368 file records processed.
File verification completed.
803 large file records processed.
0 bad file records processed.
0 EA records processed.
60 reparse records processed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
303974 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
0 unindexed files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)...
226368 security descriptors processed.
Security descriptor verification completed.
38804 data files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
33657048 USN bytes processed.
Usn Journal verification completed.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.

476413220 KB total disk space.
63683468 KB in 175381 files.
102260 KB in 38805 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
347924 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
412279568 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
119103305 total allocation units on disk.
103069892 allocation units available on disk.
 
I have ran the System Test and HDD Tests from PC Doctor - which came pre-installed and all passed. I still cant work out why my machine is lagging so badly just lately
 
I downloaded and made a boot cd for the Hitachi HDD Fitness Test and came back with no errors.

Any other ideas? I had to wait 6 minutes for 1 photo to load yesterday and it's stupid...
 
I had a similar problem a few weeks ago, everything took an age to load. I used the manufacturers diagnostic to check the drive and it passed... however 2 days later I noted on boot that the drive was highlighted in orange and was reporting a SMART event. I rechecked it and the diagnostic confirmed it was likely to fail... it did 30 minutes later.
For the price of a new drive I would change it.
 
If it was the cable or a failing HDD, wouldnt it be constantly slow on everything?

I am using Google Chrome and my internet doesnt seem to be crashing.
When I turn the PC on, it hangs for about 30 secs before it shows me the login screen.
I open up some folders, they load OK, but when trying to open a file then it takes a while...

wouldnt this be software related more?
 
Cheers mate, just running it now - all good so far.

Would re-installing Vista on the 2nd HDD instead of the 1st HDD make any difference?
Also, I have recovered the PC about 6 times in a year, would this cause any problems? Was thinking would it be worth completely wiping clean the drive and fresh install but then again the recovery process does that so probably wasting my time.
 
Sorry for the late response. Not been on in a while. Memtest OK then?

I would give the full reinstall a go. Give the drive a full format and start from scratch. See how it goes. The backup may be corrupt in someway.

If the drives have passed the test and so has the memory. It may well just be a software issue. Which I suppose is a good thing as it means you don't need to fork out any cash for new parts.
 
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