Slow Laptop and HD errors

Sounds like a bad disk. If you start the laptop try putting your ear up to the HDD bay and listening for spinning and clicking sounds. If you do, it is probably fail soon.

You can also try to open the HDD bay and disconnect and then reconnect the drive, it is also possible that the HDD interface has come loose. Make sure it is well connected and in place then restart.

If none of the above are true, definately try to slow format and try to re-install windows as a last resort!

I will try all of the above and get back to you. Thanks.

But first backup your data!

+1 to ngrego

Which SATA controller does your motherboard use? What do you see in Device Manager?

I ask this because some controllers have a bug that results in numerous UDMA CRC Errors.

I would also run the internal SMART self tests, eg DST. This test scans the drive without sending any data across the SATA interface. It could be that the 10% error rate for your surface scan is due to interface errors rather than bad sectors, in which case the DST will help to narrow down the fault.

Ok I opened up the laptop and reconnected the HD and ran some bios diagnostics. The Confidence test results came out:

Device Initialization Error
Error Code 5D00:0009
MSG: UUTUSBTM-DEVICE_INITIALIZATION_FAILURE user must reattach unit on HUB port 1 and re-start test.

after the error it continued to test the blocks and toward 85% completion I got Block errors:

Error Code 0f00:1344
Msg: Disk- Block 696283609: Can't read, replace disk

and these errors continued on 20+ more blocks so i just canceled the remainder of the test.

The Drive Self Test (short): passed with no errors.

Is my HD gonna fail on me? Everything seems to be okay for now, but I get frequent hang ups. Oh, and I already backed up!

If you have backed up and you are prepared for a failure, you could probably try doing a clean install before throwing in the towel.
Try doing a slow format on the disk and then installing again. If the errors persist then just ditch the HDD and get yourself a new one. Drives don't fail that often but it really sucks when they do...

The "UUTUSBTM-DEVICE_INITIALIZATION_FAILURE" is a red herring. It is telling you that the system cannot find the "Master I/O board". Apparently this little board is responsible for fan control and temperature sensing. It appears to be internally connected to a USB port on the motherboard. Perhaps you disturbed the connection?

See http://en.community.dell.com/owners-club/alienware/f/37...