Slow Hard Drive

[octopus41092]

I have a hard drive and programs seem to load slowly. The hard drive, I think is about 4 years old so I don't think its broken or anything. Also I defragmented it many times with no difference so I was wondering if this could be because of bad IDE cables? I just found some that I had in my closet and if it were the cables I could fix it for like 5 bucks and that would be better than having to buying a whole new hard drive.

 

[Dorkenstein]

Some drives throw in the towel after just a few years, could be dying. I doubt it is a cable issue.

 

[octopus41092]

It's a Maxtor 6L250R0. I'm not sure about the reliability of those but still, aren't hard drives supposed to last really long? Also, I haven't been getting any errors so could that still mean that it's the drive?

 

[Mondoman]

You should be able to download free diagnostic software from Maxtor to test your drive.

 

[octopus41092]

I did download those and I passed all of those tests, apparently nothings broken, its just really slow.

 

[imported_wired247]

Just buy a nice 250GB 7200rpm drive with perpendicular recording, it will blow the current drive away.

 

[octopus41092]

I don't have that kind of money to spend right now and if I can just fix something... I don't really see then need to buy something new.

 

[DanMart25]

Doesn't look like a cable problem. How much RAM do you have; try loading the programs with some additional RAM in place if thats feasible. You may also want to take a backup of all the data in the hard drive, format it, reload the OS and push the data back.

 

[octopus41092]

Originally posted by: DanMart25
Doesn't look like a cable problem. How much RAM do you have; try loading the programs with some additional RAM in place if thats feasible. You may also want to take a backup of all the data in the hard drive, format it, reload the OS and push the data back.

I have 2 GB of RAM, says so in my sig. Anyways, its only the first time that it loads if I didn't mention that and loading things for the first time is from the hard drive. Also, I can't really format because I don't have anything to back it up onto and, its a really big hassle to format anyways.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I had a drive like that, it was dying very slowly (over the course of like 2 years) but still usable. Never had corruption or anything either. It only started showing signs of death near the end but even at that point it never corrupted data. It was a seagate 120GB if I recall. Best bet is just be sure to backup your data a lot and you can probably be safe to keep using it. I have a drive in one of my servers that similar, its not slow, just very loud like if theres not enough oil in the shaft so the metal is just rubbing inside. I'm sure its going to die eventually but so far so good! I like living on the edge. Just backup OFTEN. (daily backups, some critical stuff is even hourly)

 

[DanMart25]

2GB of RAM should be sufficient. Yes, I agree formatting is the crude way of getting the problem resolved. Could you also check if there is any startup-software-program which is making the entire environment to slow down. A few years ago, I had setup a few programs to auto-run after the OS loaded up; including the anti-virus program; and it took 15 minutes before I could load an application and start working.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Norton is brutal for that. Also get rid of the acrobat reader and ms office crap in startup, you don't need that. (I see that often as those two programs are rather common and both put those by default)

 

[Tweakin]

Have you thought about running HD Tune and seeing what your hard drive is really doing? You might find it is way out of spec of actually just fine, meaning something else is going on.

 

[octopus41092]

Originally posted by: Tweakin
Have you thought about running HD Tune and seeing what your hard drive is really doing? You might find it is way out of spec of actually just fine, meaning something else is going on.

Ok, so I just ran HD Tune and the results were ridiculously low.
Min: 1.2MB/Sec
Max: 4.3MB/Sec
Average: 3.9MB/Sec
Access Time: 16.8ms
Burst Rate: 4.1MB/Sec
CPU Usage: 55.9%

The rated specs from what I've seen is 133MBps and 9.0ms and even my older 80GB drive is getting around 50-60MB/s I'm probably going to be getting a new hard drive and after transferring everything over I'll be reformatting it and using it for storage.

By the way, does anyone know any programs that I could use to transfer all the data over so that I don't have to reformat my computer?

 

[pugh]

yes try cloning software. Acronis.. norton etc.