My hard drive is acting up! I need *HELP*

[DonIsHere]

My home has been having blackouts lately. Now I think my computer is beginning to take a hit from it. Since the blackouts have eased off, my primary hard drive has been running VERY slowly. Before the blackouts, it would take my computer about 45 seconds from after POSTing to fully loading all XP startup programs. Now after the blackouts, it would take my computer about 7-8 minutes. When I run some other program for the first time after powering on, it would take forever compared to before the blackouts.

Does this sound like a hard drive that is about to fail or what?

I need help and advice for my should-be-kick~~~ box.

thanks,
don

(specs are in my sig if you need to look at them)

 

[warmachine]

Firs test drives with WD software but it sounds like Ur drives
are in dos compat mode, so drives should be ok.
sorry dont know how to check to see if thats the case here
but I bet someone does

 

[DonIsHere]

what?

 

[PH0ENIX]

>what?

Yeah, I was thinking that too...

'Dos compatability mode' is from the 9x days - when sometimes windows would use 16 bit device drivers for HDD access.

Naturally, this isn't an issue in XP.

Now, my system when I first built it, took about 3 'scrolls' of the blue bar on startup, and then it finished.
Without installing any additional software, it now goes across that bar about 10-11 times before it finishes...

But 7-8 minutes is a long time - especially compared to 45 seconds.

And you say all your software is loading slower?
It might be worth doing something that warmachine DID suggest - getting diag software for your drives.

Usually failing drives do need to re-read sectors a few times before they get the info, depending on how the drive is failing of course.

It doesn't bode well - but it's more likely to be cause by a surge upon the resume of power, rather than the power actually failing...