Hard Drive Hangs After Clicking Folder

[glasssplinter]

Hi,

I've got a Maxtor 6L250SO hard drive that hangs whenever I click on a folder. Sometimes it's really short, other times longer (20 seconds or so). Basically I double click the folder and the system pauses, but CPU usage doesn't spike, and then eventually opens the folder. If I click on the folder again while its "loading" the window will go into in a non-responsive lock up. Checked the S.M.A.R.T. status with SpeedFan and noticed a normal overall "score" for spin up time. The power cycle count is listed as a watch though. Checked all of the settings in device manager and it's using SATA DMA transfer mode with write caching. Speed test in device manager lists 62.6 for the sustained speed. I can play games and music off of it without any problems. I just seem to have these problems in Windows Explorer (XP Home)

■Tried restarting, nothing changes.
■Checked it using Error Checking (both options enabled)
■Erased the free space
■Defrag
■Checked MOBO settings but both SATA channels are set the same.

I would like to format it but unfortunately, it has all of my program files and games so it would be a REAL pain to reinstall all of that...again. I don't have the software to make an image of the drive either.

Any thoughts or insight on this would be appreciated!

System

AMD Athlon 64 3700+
Epox 9NDA3I
Windows XP Home
1 Gig Ram
2 SATA drives
2 IDE drives


Thanks!

 

[SomeJoe7777]

Since it's a Maxtor, that probably means the drive is failing.

That may sound facetious, but older Maxtors are famous for eventually failing. Every last DiamondMax 9/10 that I've ever had has eventually failed.

Even though SMART may not show anything wrong, SMART can predict a failure only about 30% of the time. If I were you, I'd copy your data off this drive as soon as you can (and/or image it: Acronis TrueImage has a demo version that I think is fully functional for a certain number of days). Then run Maxtor/Seagate's diagnostic tools and see if the drive is really failing.

 

[glasssplinter]

That's what I was afraid of. I bought that hard drive BEFORE I knew about the high failure rate of some of the Maxtor lines. Thanks for the info, guess I know what's going on this weekend! Hopefully it's still under warranty.