Hard drive VERY slow, dying?

My hard drive is super slow.

Windows boots up in about 30 seconds but after that, the hard drive keeps working and working and working, for like 5 minutes after boot the hard drive light is still solid.

During those 5 minutes it takes forever to launch anything.

Games that shouldn't lag do.

Like a move in Civilization could lag for 10 seconds with the hard drive lit up. Every move where it has to access the hard drive just halts the system waiting for I/O.

I ran a chkdisk starting last night at 6pm, it's now 9am and it's only %81 complete.

It's a SATA2 Western Digital.

I've already ordered a new HDD from Newegg, but just help me understand, has anybody seen a hard drive die like this?

Sounds more like a virus to me....

You're booting up fast and I hardly think a move in Civ is so hard drive dependent that it is causing it, sounds like your cpu/ram is getting bottlenecked to me. Check every process running in the background, get in your task manager and look for processes taking up the most cpu and make sure they are legit and not malware.

Do you maintain your pc? I recommend downloading the free version of advanced system care http://download.cnet.com/Advanced-SystemCare/3000-2086_4-10407614.html?tag=mncol;2 , I got pro for $12 and I love it but the free version has some good tools as well.

Either way, I think you just wasted upgrade money on a HDD you don't need to replace. Replacing it will solve the issue, but it will be because of what was on the old one, not the hardware itself. Just my hunch.

I just rebuilt this PC, brand new everything except the hard drive.

Reinstalled Windows on the HDD a week ago.

I'm running a full scan now with Malwarebytes and Spybot, will update in a few hours.

Update : Scanned with Malwarebytes and Spybot, nothing

Update : According to Speccy :

----------------------

Status Good

Temperature 30 °C

Temperature Range OK (less than 50 °C)

01 Read Error Rate 191 (191) Data 00000B5D45

03 Spin-Up Time 157 (139) Data 0000000C2C

04 Start/Stop Count 100 (100) Data 0000000111

05 Reallocated Sectors Count 200 (200) Data 0000000000

07 Seek Error Rate 200 (200) Data 0000000000

09 Power-On Hours (POH) 060 (060) Data 0000007261

0A Spin Retry Count 100 (100) Data 0000000000

0B Recalibration Retries 100 (100) Data 0000000000

0C Device Power Cycle Count 100 (100) Data 00000000BA

C0 Power-off Retract Count 200 (200) Data 000000003B

C1 Load/Unload Cycle Count 200 (200) Data 00000000D5

C2 Temperature 113 (083) Data 000000001E

C4 Reallocation Event Count 200 (200) Data 0000000000

C5 Current Pending Sector Count 199 (199) Data 0000000067

C6 Uncorrectable Sector Count 200 (200) Data 0000000004

C7 UltraDMA CRC Error Count 200 (200) Data 0000000000

C8 Write Error Rate / Multi-Zone Error Rate 001 (001) Data 000000F1C9

-----------------------------------

According to the internet, I might have a bad SATA cable so I'll try swapping that.

Open task manager, under view you can select columns. Activate some HDD ones and you can see which processes are causing it.

Normally when HDDs start going out they start making unusual clicking noises etc.

My laptop HDD is making the clicking noise. Crystal Disc says that it's okay. I'm gonna move my stuff to an external soon.

if theres nothing wrong with the drive, it could be a driver problem or even more simple fix is to try a different SATA port on your motherboard.

I know its kinda rare but I had a similar problem with my Asus motherboard a couple years ago, it had 4 sata ports go funky and either didnt work or kinda worked in a super laggy way.

Backup all the data you can and try another SATA port

If ur HDD is making clicking noises I wouldn't move my data "soon", I would move my data like yesterday, if you know what I mean...

lol yeah. I'm going to go with a cheaper method and just buy a few extra sata cables, hook it up to my desktop and put the stuff on my 2tb hdd.

1. Changed SATA port - no change

2. Swapped SATA cable - no change

3. Ran Advanced System Care (nice program) it did its cleanup and says everything is hunky dory (my system feels a bit more responsive now)

4. Ordered new HDD, it's in the mail

It's svchost (dcom) that's been hammering my HDD

I've stopped Steam from launching at startup and the problem seems to have subsided.

My HDD is still ungodly slow but more tolerable now.

I still think it's close to failing.

http://www.passmark.com/products/diskcheckup.htm

Try this....

@ZombieKiller7: I'd either defrag it or format it (format is most likely to help if you've got some sort of virus)

I did a format when I installed Windows a week ago

Just gonna wait for new hard drive at this point

"The last self-test completed with a failure of the read element"

Also currently testing with HDTune, it's giving me warnings

@ZombieKiller7: How many years you've got it running?

I bought the hard drive in 2009

@ZombieKiller7: Fair enough.