My H/D is behaving really wierd, any thoughts?

[Ekan]

Hi, after having a go at some of the forums here in Sweden (where im from) i now turn to you since i still havent got any suggestions on how to solve my problem. Your competence here at Anandtech has helped me out just fine once before!
I am extremely grateful for any thoughts you might have regarding this issue.

My drive, an old Seagate 'cuda approximately 27 gigs, is causing my desktop performance to drop way, way below what it used to be. I can hardly surf the web, since only starting the browser takes about 15 seconds. In general, my screen seems to update reeealy slow in any software im trying to run.

The drive is now reading in small "portions" of data, and kind of like "ticks" when trying to load stuff. It takes these short silent breaks inbetween every burst (which is going in cycles of about a second). Is my drive about to crash or what is happening? It is perfectly defragmented and does not display a single error when i run windows (2K) checkdisk on it.

My computer is a Dell XPS B733r with a pIII@733 and 512Mb RIMM. (DMA supported & enabled)

Please help me becuase i have some really important schoolwork i need to get done with and regarding the state my computer is in now, it is simply impossible to work with it!

Many thanks in advance!

// Anders

 

[kanderva]

Ekan,

This sounds like a very unusual problem. Please note up front that I use Win 98SE and Win XP; I have no experience with Win 2K.

"My drive ... is causing my desktop performance to drop way, way below what it used to be." Has this drive been working well and begun misbehaving only recently, or did you transfer it from another system? Also, have you recently changed anything on your system? Is the drive SCSI or IDE? Is it your primary or secondary drive? Is it the only drive on your system? These are all questions that may have a bearing on your problem.

If I were experiencing this situation, I guess my first step would be to look in my BIOS to be sure that the drive is being identified properly and that the info for the drive is correct.

The next thing I would do is reseat the drive cable at both ends (and, if it is connected to another device, reseat that connector too). If I had an extra cable, I would swap out the existing cable to see whether that cleared the problem.

The third thing I would do is look in Windows Device Manager to see whether Windows is indicating any error with the drive or its device driver. I might try reinstalling the device driver, but only after analyzing every other scrap of information I could find about the status of the drive. If the device driver has become unstable, it may point to instability elsewhere in the system.

If the drive is IDed correctly and simply started exhibiting this behavior, it is possible that a physical component, perhaps in the controller, has failed.

Have you been to the Seagate site to check troubleshooting tips? It is quite possible that Seagate has a diagnostic program you can use to identify your problem. Maxtor has such a program (for use on its drives only); it will even check your cable! Hopefully, Seagate has a similar program.

I hope these ideas help so that you can get back to your schoolwork in a hurry!

Ken

 

[Ekan]

Ok, thanks for the input Ken! I think that i got all your points checked before posting this thread tough. The BIOS is recognizing my drive, i switched to a different ata-cable, and i also ran the "diagnostic tool" that is on Seagates site. The devicemanager has no problem what so ever with any of my hardware, so im still in panic over here!!

Any other hints perhaps?

// Anders

 

[monckywrench]

Is your data backed up?
Even if nothing shows up uder diagnostics I'd be wary of possible failure.

 

[Ekan]

Hey Monkeywrench, i am currently struggeling to backup my critical files here. It seems to take forever to archive them (.rar) but some of my stuff is really crusial for me. Not to mention how long it took for me to run the adware/virusscan at my current diskspeed.

I am starting to feel as if i am losing my faith here so i am thinking about installing win 2K over my current installation. I have a really n00bie question tough... Will the folder "my Documents" on the desktop "survive" a reinstall (if i just install the OS, not doing any formatting on c:, that is) and still be there after the reinstall??? I have always done "clean" reinstalls including formatting my drive prior to this...

Thanks for any advise!

 

[thorin]

The sound you seem to be describing is the drive dying. Purchase another drive and install it as a slave. Partition and format it. Copy everything important off your older drive to the new one. Swap the drives (make the new one master and the old one slave) re-install your OS on the new drive as well as your important data. Use the older (now slave) drive for games and crap that you can recover/reinstall if it dies.

Thorin

 

[Ekan]

Thanks Thorin, maybe i just have to relize that my HDD really is dying... one strange thing though:

After having my system off for an hour or so, the drive was acting perfectly well when i started my computer again! Them after abour 2 min or something like that it quickly slides back into this slow performance again, could it be heat related? But why is that happening now? It has been running perfect under same conditions for 2-3years (same chassie fans etc). Now i am running with the side of my chassie removed to improve airflow and i have to say the drive gets kind of hot , but not alarmingly hot...

Anyone else here that knows about wether the "my documents" folderis destroyed during a reinstall of win 2K (without the format ofcourse)

 

[DimZiE]

i think your drive is dying... probably some of the components on the HDD is started to failing..

and yes if u reinstall w2k without formatting it your "my documents" folder will stay the way it is (Repair a previous W2000 installation)