Hard drive troubles

[Richard Wayland]

Numerous hard drive errors. No data in bad sectors, assortment of bad clusters, index errors, orphan files. VERY SLOW disk operation most of the time. After my last check disk and defrag, it ran fast for a short while, now slow again. Last few days, unable to create Norton image backup of C drive, IDE controller error.

Sounds to me like time for a new hard drive?

HP 513n
1.8 GHz clock, 1 Gigabyte RAM, 60 Gig hard drive, running about 79 % free.

Advice?

[Ed Fielder]

Richard,
There is the possibility that the drive controller is the problem. checkdisk won't pick up virus infection. I don't know what OS you are using but if it's XP SP2 there are an abundance of know issues. Is this problem reletivly new(maybe something you recently installed or virus)or did the system always run slow? I would run PC Doctor to eliminate the virus possibility or go to Pandasoftware.com and try their evaluation virus scan. I will watch this thread for any updates you leave. Good Luck

[Richard Wayland]

Well, the problem was solved by replacing the hard drive. The system runs quite perfectly. Now faster than when new. I can not pinpoint exactly when the problem began. But at least I was finally able to pin the problem to the drive. I moved all my data to a different hard drive, installed an external hard drive for system backup, then discovered that all problems were directly attributed to the C drive. I have many times run Norton Utilities tests, as well as PC Dr. Also, spyware tests, virus scans, done a few back to factory specs with the recovery disks. Finally, when I managed to get a clean disk using Norton, I made a backup of the system, replaced the drive, and was amazed at the improvement. My suspicion is that the drive was defective from the beginning, but since it ran so much faster than my previous, it was an improvement. The new drive has the same specs, is a Maxtor 60 Gig drive. Speed is incredibly faster. A system backup that previously required 2 hours average, now is completed in about 15 minutes. Analyzing defrag is now done by the time my finger has completed the mouse click. Loading sample files that previously took MINUTES now requires only seconds, etc.

I have XP, SP2, but observed all the caveats and preps before installing, and have seen no change. Main thing, I now have a fully functional computer. Cost was only 49.99 plus tax, I did the installation in just a few minutes. Used the sytsem restore disks, plus Norton image restore, and was running in an hour or so.

The original hard drive was enclosed in a rubber jacket, with opening for connectdors and mounting hardware. Sounds to me like a recipe for overheating.

Thanks for your response and interest. The system has been running beautifully for about 4 days now.

Richard