Is my hard drive dying?

[Sureshot324]

I have two hard drives in my system, a 60 gig and 13 gig, both maxtor. I have windows and all apps installed on the 13 gig, and have music, movies, and other stuff on the 60 gig. Recently the 60 gig started behaving very strangely. Whenever I do something that accesses the 60 gig hd alot (including defrag), ussually after a minute or so windows partially freezes. The app that was accessing the hd stops responding and windows becomes slow and unresponsive, sometimes completely locking up. A few seconds later I always hear a "click" from my computer (I'm guess it's the hard drive). If windows hasn't completely locked up and I do a warm reboot, my system won't detect the 60 gig hard drive. However, if I shut the system down completely and do a cold boot, the hard drive is detected again. I have reformatted the drive and this did not solve the problem (though the process of reformatting was trouble free). I have also tried completely disconnecting both hard drives from my system and reconnecting them.

I have stressed this drive pretty hard since I use kazaa a lot, downloading and uploading many things at once. Still, it is only about a year old. Is the hard drive the problem or could it be a problem somewhere else in my system. Should I try to get it replaced under warantee (I can't remember how long the warantee was)?

Here are my system specs:

Athlon xp 2100+
msi k7n2-l
512mb pc2700 ram
maxtor 13gb and 60 gb hd
ati radeon 9500 pro
sblive value
us robotics 56k modem
antec 350 smartpower psu
nec 12x cd burner

 

[mooojojojo]

well.. not sure. but it wouldn't hurt to backup what's important for you. also you can try reseating the cable, or trying another one. doing an antivirus check too..

in the operation systems forum there was a thread (a sticky - not sure if it's still sticky though) about a XP update that would make your PC really sluggish. you can look into that one too.

 

[Sureshot324]

What are some typical symptoms of a dead or dying hard drive?

 

[dunkster]

I believe Maxtor has a utility for checking Maxtor drives (MaxBlast?).

Dial up the maxtor site, download their utility and check both drives.

Hope this helps!

 

[NumbaJuan]

Go to Maxtors website and download their drive test utility (Powermax) and check your drive. If there is a problem this utility should detect it.

Here is a Linky for ya