Possible hard drive problems?

Hey people.

Recently my pc has slowed down.It takes ages to startup windows,open firefox or media player for that matter.Used to be quicker.

Thinking it might be my hdd. I have got 1gig ram, asus m2v motherboard with amd 64x2 4200+ with a maxtor diamondmax 10 300GB sata-150

You guys think it would be worth replacing hte hdd or might it be something else?

I defrag every 3 days and do a system clean up every week.HAve run avast anti virus and no viruses have been found.

Any ideas would be welcome.

Thanks a lot.

 

Before you replace the hard drive, why not format the current one and do a fresh install of Windows. Load your drivers and software and see how it runs. Sometimes it doesn't matter how often you defrag or cleanup or whatever.... sometimes things just get slow. If there's anything you want to save (music, pics, docs, etc) burn it to a CD/DVD or move it to a flash drive or external drive; boot to your Windows install disc, format, and reload. If the PC is still slow after that, then I'd run a diagnostic on the drive; if it doesn't pass, it may be under warranty and you may be entitled to a free replacement. Most (if not all ) desktop hard drives are sold new with a 3 year warranty; Seagate has a 5 year warranty. Laptop hard drive warranties are usually 1-3 years.

 

Before doing something so drastic and expensive as replacing a HD on a MAYBE,
I'd be looking for some programs running in the background or some malware of some kind slowing things down.

I just worked on a Dell tower today that was getting slow, , , it had 79 pieces of spyware on it. Most of that was found and removed by "Spybot Search & Destroy v. 1.5.2."

So I'd definitely do a full tuneup, including Malware scan, on Windows first.

But, a tremendous slow-down in a HD is a well known HD failure mode. I have to replace several HD's every year, in customers PC's, for just that reason.

It doesn't seem to matter what brand or whether its an IDE or SATA.

Good Luck,
The Shadow :cool

 

Thanks for the info guys.I have spybot search an ddestroy and it came up clean.
Have also tried reinstalling windows before without it solving the problem.

Tired running diskcheck on it and it stalled out at part 4 of 5 so I think it might be my hdd dying on me.
Will try installing windows one more time before giving up on the disc.

I have it partitioned so should be able to just do the C: but not sure if that would be helpful or not as I won't format the whole disk.

 

That might be the problem right there. Anecdotal evidence only, but I find that for some reason, maxtors seem to have more problems than any other brand in recent times (IBM deathstars excluded). No brand/model is 100% reliable, but seagate seem to be better than the other IME.

Check your drive performance with HDTune or HDtach. IIRC, Seagate/maxtor itself have a free diagnostic utility; you may try running that too. Also check if your drive is reverting to PIO mode from UDMA, since that can slow down the drive considerably.

 

Thanks Deckard.I checked out the UDMA for my Primary IDE channel and it was on PIO.Found a script that reset it and when I rebooted the problem was solved.Seems to be working fine now.Thanks a lot. Saved me a bit of money there as I was gonna buy a new one tomorrow.

 

Glad to be of help.
But do note that HDDs that revert to PIO repeatedly may have deeper issues. I don't know the specific problem, but a couple of times, I've seen drives that give CRC errors repeatedly revert to PIO and then go down after a few days.

So you may still want to keep any eye on the drive. Backup anything important you put on it. And if it makes funny clicking noises, beware.
Good luck.:major

 

For us who probably knew how to do that check, at one time or another, would you recap the process? The older I get, the more those little routines escape me.

Thanks!
The Shadow :cool

 

Well I decided to replace the hard drive in the end but it is still doing the same things.Switching off for no apparent reason.Takes ages to boot up because it keeps switching itself off during reboot usually at the windows logging in screen and a lot of the time when it is off and I switch it back on it will start up for a second or two then switch off again.Can take upto 15 minutes to get it to log into windows when this happens..

any ideas guys?

thanks in advance

 

Sorry for the late replay shahow but have been a bit busy with things...

Here is a step by step tutorial on the whole subject.

http://winhlp.com/node/10

Hope that helps.Feel free to ask if you need help with it.

Silverice

 

I guess I've been a computer tech for way too long, because some things that people say to me just drive me nuts. For instance: A customer will say, "My modem is broke,,,it won't turn on".... or, "My hard drive is making a funny noise". Argggggg!
In both cases they are talking about the "Computer", not a modem, which is a plug in card, or a Hard Drive which is a small device that holds all their programs and data. It's the "COMPUTER"..... either the Tower or the Laptop.

When talking to a technician, especially on the phone or email, forum, etc., it's critical to properly identify the part you're talking about.
Don't call the entire computer a "Modem" or a "Hard Drive". That will just drive the tech crazy trying to figure out what you're talking about and waste his valuable time.:cry

When you say "my hard drive shuts off, and I have to restart it", I'm left scratching my head, wondering how you would even know if a "hard drive" actually shut off and how on earth would you restart it?

If you're talking about the entire Computer, that's a whole different problem.

The most common cause of a "Computer" shutting down is the Power Supply itself, that provides power to every device in the computer.
Replacing that power supply with one of a higher wattage rating, will usually solve that problem.

It usually requires a technician with good troubleshooting skills to solve those kind of problems, because the causes can be numerous.

Shadow :cool

 

Ouch!

This is going to have to be done one at a time to indentify and eliminate the problem.

-Most likely your mobo (bad capacitor?) or PSU is blown. if you can get another, good quality PSU to check with your system, it might help narrow down the suspects. I suspect the Mobo.

-Bad RAM. Similar incident with my friend's PC with similar symptoms. He had 2x512MB sticks running in dual channel mode. Turns out one of the sticks was bad. This is the easiest to check. Boot up with one stick at a time (or a different stick, if you are running on only one stick currently) to see if the problem occurs.

-Bad IDE/SATA ports or cables. Move to another connector and use another cable.

-Are the temperatures okay? is your CPU running too hot and shutting down on it's own?

Can't think of anything else at this time....