hard drive (windows drive) slower all of sudden - help

aardvark · 25 Apr 2006 at 21:49

i've had my pc over a year with the same hard drive (a seagate sata 160gb) but since the weekend its started playing up.

windows loads and seems to be fine but the drive is slower than it should be in certain tasks.
i had a machine_exception_error twice at the weekend (see another thread below) but that seemed to be solved by checking the cables.

but...the drive has since been slow - scanning and defrag are a lot slower than normal. even analysis using o&o defrag is slower on both the partitions of the drive. i also appear to be getting some chkdsk errors which get fixed but then come back 9and prevent me from doing a full degraf in o&o)
a full chkdsk using the winxp boot cd found no errors.
a quick seagate tools found nothing wrong.
i changed the sata connection from 3 to 1 but that has made no difference
i haven't had time time to do a full seagate tools scan from the boot disc but i should be able to do that tomorrow.

but i'm at a bit of a loss to explain whats going on - any ideas?

thanks

FirePhoenixCtk · 25 Apr 2006 at 22:12

im inexperienced with hd's but id say it was dying.

SiriusB · 25 Apr 2006 at 22:57

FirePhoenixCtk said:
im inexperienced with hd's but id say it was dying.

I would highly recommend you backup anything important currently on that drive.

I completely agree with Phoenix, that drive sounds like its on its way to the big RAID Array in the sky lol.

Backup your stuff then run the advanced seagate tools and see what happens. I certainly wouldn't use that drive for anything. Should count yourself lucky... most HDDs go out like a light, you have some warning and should act now.

SiriusB

aardvark · 25 Apr 2006 at 22:59

SiriusB said:
I would highly recommend you backup anything important currently on that drive.

I completely agree with Phoenix, that drive sounds like its on its way to the big RAID Array in the sky lol.

Backup your stuff then run the advanced seagate tools and see what happens. I certainly wouldn't use that drive for anything. Should count yourself lucky... most HDDs go out like a light, you have some warning and should act now.

SiriusB

thanks - i'll give the drive a scan tomorrow.

but 'not use the drive for anything' - i'm using it right now - its my windows drive!

SiriusB · 25 Apr 2006 at 23:03

Ooops lol

Well, as long as you're backed up... should be fine. But it is in my opinion a drive on its way out and its being used a lot since its your system disk.

Dont be shocked if you get a nice BSOD out of the blue [no pun intended.... okay maybe a little bit

]

SiriusB

aardvark · 26 Apr 2006 at 08:05

damn - i hate it when PC things go wrong - it seems to stress me out more than real problems!
well, i have to go to work now so i'll have to scan in the evening.

ironically i just ordered a new hard drive yesterday but that was to replace my secondary drive (which is old and and noisy and small), so i may end up buying another pretty soon! At least with this new drive i have more than enough space to backup everything.
anyway, i'll let you know what the seagate tools says tonight.

stvmor · 26 Apr 2006 at 11:03

I wouldn't give up just yet!

If you havn't already done so, disconnect from any nwk or internet connections and run at least two anti spyware prog's (Adaware & Spybot Search and destroy seem to work). Run a complete, fully updated virus scan (AVG is good) and restart your machine.
Now the important bit! Clean out and compact your registry. I use Registry Mechanic, which I purchased, but i think you can get a trial version.
When you have done all this I suggest you try DiscKeeper and do a full boot-time defrag including chkdsk (unless your own defrag' package can do this?).
I have 'rejuvenated' a lot of hard drives this way and, from what you say, I don't think your's is dying! It's probably just a bit sick with a bloated windoze installation.

Sorry if this was teaching granny to suck eggs but sometimes we 'skip' the simpler things if favour of the worst case senario. :eek:

stvmor · 26 Apr 2006 at 11:10

P.S. Have you partitioned that drive as it's a bit big to manage?
I use:
C: Windoze and essentials ~ 10-20 Gig
D: Applications ~ 10-20 Gig
E: Games ~ 60 Gig
F: Data ~ Whatever is left (Don't use the Widoze default 'MyDocs' folder on C

I use a second drive plus a nwk'd machine for backup and this makes makes maintenance and defragging much more efficient and speedy.

aardvark · 26 Apr 2006 at 11:59

it is partitioned - i've got the C drive as 40gb and D drive as 120gb
winxp on C and some backup stuff and mp3's on D.
i just got the new hard drive i ordered early yesterday to act as my new secondary drive (to replace an old ATA120gb) so the stuff on the D drive can go to this new drive. - so if the worst happens i'll only lose windows.
i have notron ghost and it had a backup from feb. - i made another last night (which took a lot longer than usual) and put it on the secondary drive.

so, the plan is:
move everything over to my new backup drive tonight, then do a full seagate tools scan on the main drive and see if it finds anything wrong. if it is knackered then i'll just order another and do a ghost restore (never had to do this before but it sounds easy) - if it doesn't find anything wrong with the drive, then i'll have to try some of the things mentioned - i do like to keep my spyware and antivirus software uptodate.
it just seems odd that this has only occurred since i got those two bsod on saturday due to a loose cable - maybe it damaged it when this happened.

anyway, i'll find out soon, hopefully tonight and let you guys know (i might be needing more advice either way!)

thanks

stvmor · 26 Apr 2006 at 14:24

aardvark said:
it is partitioned - i've got the C drive as 40gb and D drive as 120gb
winxp on C and some backup stuff and mp3's on D.
i just got the new hard drive i ordered early yesterday to act as my new secondary drive (to replace an old ATA120gb) so the stuff on the D drive can go to this new drive. - so if the worst happens i'll only lose windows.
i have notron ghost and it had a backup from feb. - i made another last night (which took a lot longer than usual) and put it on the secondary drive.

so, the plan is:
move everything over to my new backup drive tonight, then do a full seagate tools scan on the main drive and see if it finds anything wrong. if it is knackered then i'll just order another and do a ghost restore (never had to do this before but it sounds easy) - if it doesn't find anything wrong with the drive, then i'll have to try some of the things mentioned - i do like to keep my spyware and antivirus software uptodate.
it just seems odd that this has only occurred since i got those two bsod on saturday due to a loose cable - maybe it damaged it when this happened.

anyway, i'll find out soon, hopefully tonight and let you guys know (i might be needing more advice either way!)

thanks

Sound plan, I would just do the registry check 1st as any problems will follow the Ghost image and I have increased the speed of 'duff' PC's by amazing amounts by doing this!

aardvark · 26 Apr 2006 at 18:37

just a quick update
- i'm formating my new drive right now, and will then transfer my files from the old secondary drive to the new one - but thats not important right now.

i went into the winxp recovery console from the boot disc and realised that the drive letters where screwed so when i was running a chkdsk on the C drive it was infact the second HD (the K drive in windows)
so i tried to run a chkdsk on the correct drive and the system just hung and i had to reset - not a good sign imo.

anyway, after i've set up this second drive i can do a proper seagate scan on the 'seemingly' faulty one.

i'll be sure to keep you all uptodate with my ongoing hard drive saga

edit: doesn't really deserve a new post, but i formated the new drive last night (this is only to replace my secondary drive - its the primary that is having problems just to recap

). so i copied about 100gb from the secondary drive and that took about 1 hour. i then copied 50gb from the primary drive but that took about 1 hour 20 mins - this gives you some idea of the problem and the slow speeds i've been experiencing. thats all i had time to do last night but at least all my stuff is backed up and anything i would hate to lose from the 'failing' drive is backed up - more scanning to be done tonight.

aardvark · 27 Apr 2006 at 22:03

ok, more details:
the seagate online full scan found no errors,
but i downloaded HDtune to test the speed of the drive - my new drive was expected - 65mb/s transfer, and a high burst rate (i think it was 250mb/s or something really high) - cpu usage was low.
the drive with the problem had a transfer of only 10.4mb/s
and the burst was also 10.4mb/s
the cpu usage was also very high when the burst was done.

pretty odd - but i still have no idea why its doing this - is there a possible reason why it is limited to that particular speed??
if seagate tools doesn't find an error does that mean the disk is physically fine??? - i.e. how reliable is it???

thanks a lot

aardvark · 28 Apr 2006 at 11:30

more info:

i rang seagate and talked to an indian call centre for 10 minutes (waste of time) until they transfered me to a german or dutch guy who knew what he was talking about - and he reckoned it was drive problem (corrupt firmware or controller board) and so i've arranged an RMA and will send it back.

so all i have to do is have norton ghost copy the winxp drive to my old drive (the one i've recently replaced and is therefore spare) and make it bootable - sounds simple - i hope it is, haven't done it before.

anyway, phew.
thanks for all your help.