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Is my hard drive f**ked?

cleanup

cleanup

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jun 26, 2005
2,643
10
Toronto
I've been spending quite a bit of money upgrading my PC lately. I've noticed micro-stuttering in games, even micro-stuttering during general usage. The general usage stuttering went away with an OS upgrade. A new CPU made everything a bit snappier. But now I notice the following:

Copying a file from the drive to itself; write speeds casually and gradually drop to 20 MB/s, worse than USB transfer rates.

I'm extracting several files right now that are each several gigs, and my computer slows to a CRAWL. Text takes forever to appear on the screen. Windows become unresponsive. Also the files, for some reason, take up to 10 minutes to extract; it really shouldn't take that long. My CPU never goes above 20% usage and yet everything is slow as molasses.

Watching an HD movie is laggy and jittery despite that my computer is more than capable of playing these.

Is my hard drive bulloxed? The only thing I haven't bothered to upgrade is my motherboard, and I'm leaning towards the hard drive being the real culprit. It's a 500GB Hitachi Deskstar with only a 16 MB cache. I'm not sure on the model number... is it failing me?

Thanks!
 
There's a chance that it's failing.

Give HD Tune (the free version) and Crystal Disk Info a spin. HD Tune can even do disk benchmarks. Both read off the SMART reporting.
 
What am I looking for? Both HDTune and CrystalDisk give me a "Good" health status. :( But it sure doesn't seem that way. I'm purchasing an SSD later today, but I still need a hard disk for all my music and etc. I figure I'll backup at least my music and other important documents onto my external, pronto.

Some HDTune info:

Code: 
HD Tune: Hitachi HDP725050GLA360 Health

ID                               Current  Worst    ThresholdData      Status   
(01) Raw Read Error Rate         94       94       16       27        Ok       
(02) Throughput Performance      100      100      54       70        Ok       
(03) Spin Up Time                112      112      24       22479188  Ok       
(04) Start/Stop Count            100      100      0        735       Ok       
(05) Reallocated Sector Count    100      100      5        0         Ok       
(07) Seek Error Rate             100      100      67       0         Ok       
(08) Seek Time Performance       100      100      20       144       Ok       
(09) Power On Hours Count        100      100      0        5809      Ok       
(0A) Spin Retry Count            100      100      60       0         Ok       
(0C) Power Cycle Count           100      100      0        726       Ok       
(C0) Power Off Retract Count     100      100      0        741       Ok       
(C1) Load Cycle Count            100      100      0        741       Ok       
(C2) Temperature                 162      162      0        1114149   Ok       
(C4) Reallocated Event Count     100      100      0        0         Ok       
(C5) Current Pending Sector      100      100      0        0         Ok       
(C6) Offline Uncorrectable       100      100      0        0         Ok       
(C7) Ultra DMA CRC Error Count   200      200      0        0         Ok       

Power On Time         : 5809
Health Status         : Ok

HD Tune: Hitachi HDP725050GLA360 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 65.9 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 88.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 
Access Time           : 
Burst Rate            : 
CPU Usage             : 


HD Tune: Hitachi HDP725050GLA360 Error Scan

Scanned data   : 476748 MB
Damaged Blocks : 0.0 %
Elapsed Time   : 1:26

Could it be my motherboard by any chance? I don't believe it's a fantastic one...
 
Eidorian said:
What motherboard is it and how old is the drive? SMART reporting isn't the end all to be honest.
Click to expand...

The drive is only a year old. The motherboard is, to be honest, I'm not sure. Haven't got the box anymore. Any way to quickly find out? I'm running Windows 7.

[Edit] It's an mATX Gigabyte G31M-S2L.

DxDiag info attached below, if you're interested.
 

Attachments

  • DxDiag.txt
    34.4 KB · Views: 60
cleanup said:
The drive is only a year old. The motherboard is, to be honest, I'm not sure. Haven't got the box anymore. Any way to quickly find out? I'm running Windows 7.

[Edit] It's an mATX Gigabyte G31M-S2L.

DxDiag info attached below, if you're interested.
Click to expand...
That's still a relatively new motherboard. Is it a "green" hard drive? If you're under Windows 7 take a look at the Resouce Monitor too.
 
Eidorian said:
That's still a relatively new motherboard. Is it a "green" hard drive? If you're under Windows 7 take a look at the Resouce Monitor too.
Click to expand...

Nope. It's a Hitachi Deskstar HDP725050GLA360. 500GB. 7200 RPM. Only 16 MB buffer, though. But I get abysmal write speeds, and judging from HD video performance, abysmal read speeds too.

what am I looking for in Resource Monitor?

[Edit] This is my HDD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145215
 
cleanup said:
Nope. It's a Hitachi Deskstar HDP725050GLA360. 500GB. 7200 RPM. Only 16 MB buffer, though. But I get abysmal write speeds, and judging from HD video performance, abysmal read speeds too.

what am I looking for in Resource Monitor?
Click to expand...
Did you run the HD Tune read benchmark?

It might be time to warranty the drive if even reinstalling Windows doesn't fix it.
 
cleanup said:
I ran the Benchmark, yeah. The results, I posted above.
Click to expand...
It's a little lower than I expected but it looks normal. Hard drives can be tough to diagnose if they're not almost completely dead.

Make a backup and reinstall Windows. Maybe try the latest drivers from Intel for the SATA controller.
 
Eidorian said:
It's a little lower than I expected but it looks normal. Hard drives can be tough to diagnose if they're not almost completely dead.

Make a backup and reinstall Windows. Maybe try the latest drivers from Intel for the SATA controller.
Click to expand...

Well, when I reinstall Windows it'll be on a new G-Skill Falcon, so I imagine that'll be good. :) I'm just a bit concerned about the data I'll still have on my hard drive. And honestly, there's no reason why copying files should be so slow or HD video should lag.

Thanks Eidorian. I'll reply to this thread with updates later!
 
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