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Hard Drive is slow all of a sudden.

Hello all,
I've been using a relatively old SATA I hard drive from an old PC in my new PC that I built. I should probably get a new hard drive soon, but I'm just wondering why my hard drive decided to run ridiculously slow one day. It's never been the same since, and so I checked what was wrong. No spyware, and I defragmented the disk, but it was still super slow. Is there anything else I can do, or is it time to get a new hard drive?
9 answers Last reply Best Answer
More about hard drive slow sudden
  1. run hdtune look at the smart warnings on the health tab. run a vendor tests tools. also update your mb chipset drivers..could be a damaged driver. (use msconfig...turn everyting off in start up) or boot into f8 safe mode see if the speed changes.
  2. It's probably time for a new one. Backup any needed data as soon as you can. You could probably run HDTune and see what kind of errors there are, but it sounds like it's dying - the disk may not be spinning as fast as needed.
  3. Best answer
    You could run a trial of HD Tune (http://www.hdtune.com/). From here first check your smart stats and see if any of them aren't marked as "OK", i think the newer versions might even highlight problems in red. After which you could run an error scan to see if there are any bad sectors (smart will inform you of when the drive comes across one, error scan actively finds them) or benchmark the speed using the benchmark option.

    MOST IMPORTANTLY THOUGH AND I CANT STRESS THIS ENOUGH unless you have experience in hdds you might be better of buying a new one and copying your data off before the tests (they tend to be intensive and may be the last straw for a failing hdd). Considering you were going to replace it anyway this is your safest bet. After backing your stuff up to the new hdd feel free to thoroughly test the old one out and see whether its good.

    it may also be a good idea to check your drive activity if you get a low benchmark since that will indicate if an app is overutilising it. You can do this in performance monitor in windows 7 or just in task manager on windows 8.
  4. llkashll said:
    You could run a trial of HD Tune (http://www.hdtune.com/). From here first check your smart stats and see if any of them aren't marked as "OK", i think the newer versions might even highlight problems in red. After which you could run an error scan to see if there are any bad sectors (smart will inform you of when the drive comes across one, error scan actively finds them) or benchmark the speed using the benchmark option.

    MOST IMPORTANTLY THOUGH AND I CANT STRESS THIS ENOUGH unless you have experience in hdds you might be better of buying a new one and copying your data off before the tests (they tend to be intensive and may be the last straw for a failing hdd). Considering you were going to replace it anyway this is your safest bet. After backing your stuff up to the new hdd feel free to thoroughly test the old one out and see whether its good.

    it may also be a good idea to check your drive activity if you get a low benchmark since that will indicate if an app is overutilising it. You can do this in performance monitor in windows 7 or just in task manager on windows 8.


    Thanks! It looks like everything's ok, it's just a slow as crap hard drive. Thanks for the help anyway, is there a recommended 500GB drive I could get? I'm on a non-SSD budget.
  5. Here is a very good 500 GB HDD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148767
    For 10 bucks more you can double the size to 1 TB and increase the cache from 16 MB to 64 MB: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148840#
    This is the drive that I have in the system in my sig and it is a very fast HDD! Highly Recommended!

    Yogi
  6. I'd definitely advise on going 1tb as yogi mentioned, for an extra $10 you get almost double the capacity and a significant boost in speed. 1tb's and to a certain extent 2's are the sweet spots for pricing since, in 3.5 inch drives, they're a very common configuration. 500gbs are a bit of a niche for desktops now.

    I'd personally recommend going with wdd blues, the speed is almost identical but anecdotal evidence on forums seem to place wdd's as superior in terms of reliability than Seagate. I have to stress that's anecdotal and never really settled officially.

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236339
    http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1773934/blue-hdd-seagate-barracuda.html

    Also you may be tempted to get a wdd green since they're usually cheaper, please don't. They're predominately storage drives and will perform abysmally as an operating system drive.

    Best of luck, feel free to reply with any other questions you might have.
  7. Y0GI said:
    Here is a very good 500 GB HDD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148767
    For 10 bucks more you can double the size to 1 TB and increase the cache from 16 MB to 64 MB: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148840#
    This is the drive that I have in the system in my sig and it is a very fast HDD! Highly Recommended!

    Yogi


    Awesome! Planning on ordering within a week, thanks so much.
  8. llkashll said:
    I'd definitely advise on going 1tb as yogi mentioned, for an extra $10 you get almost double the capacity and a significant boost in speed. 1tb's and to a certain extent 2's are the sweet spots for pricing since, in 3.5 inch drives, they're a very common configuration. 500gbs are a bit of a niche for desktops now.

    I'd personally recommend going with wdd blues, the speed is almost identical but anecdotal evidence on forums seem to place wdd's as superior in terms of reliability than Seagate. I have to stress that's anecdotal and never really settled officially.

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236339
    http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1773934/blue-hdd-seagate-barracuda.html

    Also you may be tempted to get a wdd green since they're usually cheaper, please don't. They're predominately storage drives and will perform abysmally as an operating system drive.

    Best of luck, feel free to reply with any other questions you might have.


    Yeah, I think I'll go with the WD. There's a plethora of hard drive horror stories on the Seagate reviews on Newegg, and there are not as many on the WD one. I might get a 500GB Seagate for storage, and thanks for this info :D
  9. No problems man, enjoy the new HDD's!
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