Hard drive's performance has become VERY slow? Wassup?

NeilF · 7 Oct 2006 at 09:48

I have an old Pentium system which has been chugging away for years.

Recently I've noticed it's performance has become sluggigh to say the least. It appears its down to the harddrive?

Trying to do anything in windows tends to be sluggish, and opening a new program is VERY slow. Booting up takes ages.

It's an old 40gb Maxtor drive running on IDE33 (NTFS/XP Pro).

Is there anything obviously I can do/look at? Scan disk etc all look fine. Defrag (which takes AGES) again seems fine.

rpstewart · 7 Oct 2006 at 10:07

Is the drive making any odd noises, like it's repeatedly trying to access parts of the disk, odd clicks or the like?

EDIT: Have you tried running HDTach? The speeds reported aren't really of any consequence but the sustained read graph should show a curve which smoothly (more or less) trends downward towards the end of the graph. If it has a very spiky profile, especially towards the left it can indicate a drive on the way out.

NeilF · 7 Oct 2006 at 13:19

No noises, other than long periods of seemingly no activity (with the HD light still on).

In HDTach, random access made a good health sound and seemed to take a normal amount of time. Sequential was very quiet and loooong! Infact sequencial took over HALF AN HOUR to finish! Scary!!!! On the other drive (E) it took several seconds!

I have two drives in the machine, one is partitioned to C/D, the other is E. Here are the results...

Is there anything that can cause this scary performance? Seems to be just sequential that is suffering?

killer_uk · 7 Oct 2006 at 13:40

I think its fairly safe to say its on its way out. Backup your stuff ASAP.

Can't think of anything else that could be problem.....is it running in PIO mode? Go to device manager and go to the properties on the drive controller.

rpstewart · 7 Oct 2006 at 17:23

killer_uk said:
I think its fairly safe to say its on its way out. Backup your stuff ASAP.

Yeah, I'd agree with that. The burst speed looks fine for a drive of that age and type but the sequential read is way off where it should be.

The CPU utilisation is good so it's not running in PIO mode hence all fingers are pointing at the drive itself.

NeilF · 7 Oct 2006 at 17:37

killer_uk said:
I think its fairly safe to say its on its way out. Backup your stuff ASAP.

Can't think of anything else that could be problem.....is it running in PIO mode? Go to device manager and go to the properties on the drive controller.

Is it known for a drive to slow down like this before crashing? I would have thought a drive would just work or not!?

Seems to be in Ultra DMA 2 mode in device manager...

rpstewart · 7 Oct 2006 at 17:47

You could try something that reads the S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics off the disk (Speedfan is the first which springs to mind) or better yet the Maxtor drive fitness utility (should be a link in the sticky). The DFT will create a bootable floppy or CD which lets you run a series of tests on the disk.

Messiah Khan · 7 Oct 2006 at 18:41

I would deffinately check to make sure the drives arn't running in PIO mode.
Edit; Nevermind, just noticed you've already checked this.

NeilF · 7 Oct 2006 at 22:57

Well, just put in an old 80Gb drive I had sitting around, and did a fresh install on it. MY GOD! It boots up in a few tens of seconds even on this old crate!

So I can only assume the old drive is having problems, and its sequential reading has just got diabolical! Amazing it's still working really!

killer_uk · 7 Oct 2006 at 23:43

NeilFawcett said:
Is it known for a drive to slow down like this before crashing? I would have thought a drive would just work or not!?

Seems to be in Ultra DMA 2 mode in device manager...

Well I have heard of this happening before...anythings possible with computers

silversurfer · 8 Oct 2006 at 03:31

Have you tried defragging the hard drive or just seing its frag level anyway

NeilF · 8 Oct 2006 at 12:02

silversurfer said:
Have you tried defragging the hard drive or just seing its frag level anyway

Defragged! Perfect Disc'd it! All to no avail!

I'm currently copying stuff off the old drive onto my new one, but GOD IT'S SLOW! It's been copying my MP3 directory for over 12 hours!

When, I've set up the new drive, I'll reformat the knackered one and out of interest see if it gets better... But I don't think I'll risk using it again... I'll bin it

NeilF · 8 Oct 2006 at 12:04

killer_uk said:
Well I have heard of this happening before...anythings possible with computers

I'm just stunned, and EXTREMELY thankful, it hasn't just died.

I've not had a drive fail on me for several years or more. And if modern drives (well reasonably modern ish) battle on like this rather than just crashing, I'm impressed!

silversurfer · 8 Oct 2006 at 20:59

All the drives Ive had fail gave some symtoms beforehand. I then took it out to have a look and it failed alltogether, doh!

What does speedfan say, its very easy to use

NeilF · 8 Oct 2006 at 21:03

silversurfer said:
All the drives Ive had fail gave some symtoms beforehand. I then took it out to have a look and it failed alltogether, doh!

What does speedfan say, its very easy to use

I'm still copying stuff off of it to my new drive.... It's that slow

Once it's all done I'll do a SMART via speedfan... Will post back

( |-| |2 ][ $ · 9 Oct 2006 at 05:12

Once it's all done you could try a low level format. You can yet the software for the maxtor site.

quadboi · 9 Oct 2006 at 08:01

What you think of my hdd?

Erm, it has been running in my pc for 3 years a seagate. I did the quick test on HDTACH, sorry to hijack but better than opening another thread

NeilF · 9 Oct 2006 at 12:19

OK... Here's the SMART results. Te first is the replacement drive, the second is the one with the problem. It does seem to show something!

It does rate both drives as having a fitness of 99% and a performance of 100%...

silversurfer · 9 Oct 2006 at 17:27

NeilFawcett said:
It does rate both drives as having a fitness of 99% and a performance of 100%...

lol
its non too accurate then. Its been turned off and on over 2000 times ? Thats where the wear and tear is then.

Im not too sure what those two attributes relate to but any problem is too much and Ive never had a drive fail on any count so I guess thats a confirmation of a problem.
Try a format anyway and a retest but dont store anything you want to keep on it

NeilF · 9 Oct 2006 at 18:04

silversurfer said:
lol
its non too accurate then. Its been turned off and on over 2000 times ? Thats where the wear and tear is then.

Im not too sure what those two attributes relate to but any problem is too much and Ive never had a drive fail on any count so I guess thats a confirmation of a problem.
Try a format anyway and a retest but dont store anything you want to keep on it

2000 times isn't surprising on a machine that is used most days, and with a drive that's quite a few years old.

On the machine in question I tend to have it set to power down the drives when not in use. Do you recon those power downs when the drive's not in use count?

The SMART did pick up those warnings with "TA Increase" and "Run Out Cancel"... Wonder what they are!