Problems with hard drive

I seem to be having some problems with one of my hard drives which I just cannot put my finger on. It is a Seagate 320 GB sata hard drive. It has been running perfectly until the last few weeks. Normal tasks such as copying or moving files to the hard drive just take forever. Unzipping a compressed file onto the hard drive also takes absolutely ages.
I thought it could be that it needs defragmenting, but I run diskeeper in the background, and analysing it shows no file fragments.

The steps I have already taken are:
I have defragged it regardless of what diskeeper was telling me.
I have run an error checking scan and that showed no errors also.

This is really frustrating, I just can't work out what is up with it. The hard drive is definitely within warranty, however I want to be sure there is a fault before sending back. Also, the drive is not even that full, only 81.2 GB being used.

Any help/suggestions would be most appreciated.

Thanks.

Have you tried chaning SATA cables, tried connecting it to a different SATA port on the mobo? If connecting to a diff SATA port yields the same then it points to a drive type problem.

Firstly, backup everything on the drive "in case the worst happens".

Could there be a background application that is taking up some of the drives capapbilities (indexing etc)

Have you checked with a good anti-virus and spyware sweeper?

Try copying a large file from one disk to another and time it. Now try copying it back to original disk - is there a huge difference in time taken? If so maybe time to RMA the disk.

try checking with seagates tools before RMAing:

http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/

Just thought of something else, check in the event logs to see if Windows is reporting any problems. Also check in device manager to see what mode the drive is running in.

I'm going to try changing the sata cable later. I have checked the event log, only errors I am getting are to do with Matlab server not being able to connect. I really doubt that has anything to do with the hard drive problems

Quote:

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Try copying a large file from one disk to another and time it. Now try copying it back to original disk - is there a huge difference in time taken? If so maybe time to RMA the disk.

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This is the main problem, files are taking ages to copy over on the seagate drive, and I am not just talking about 5 seconds more, I mean the system hangs waiting for it to complete the task.

The only thing I can think of is that I set Photoshops scratch disk to this drive as it is the one drive I have with the most amount of free space. I was experiencing alot of slow downs and lag using photoshop so I read that this could solve that. Well it did solve that problem, but now this problem with the hard drive has occurred. I tried setting the scratchdisk back to default which is startup, still no luck. I have since uninstalled photoshop, still no joy.

Suggest trying the seagate diagnostic tools mentioned earlier then. May be best chance to pinpoint if prob with disk.

Seagate tools reported no problems, but would take ages to run, literally slowed the computer right down, left it unusable. I was very close to chucking the drive out of the window due to frustration but I changed the sata cable.

All seems to be working fine now! :)

Thanks everybody for the helpful suggestions. Still going to keep any eye on the drive for the time being.

This is a typical issue we face on regular basis as data recovery specialists. The new HDDs with hi capacity, are not well designed and not fully tested. please read the thread in this forum on http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=102492&page=2
& http://www.unirecovery.co.uk/disk.php
I would avoid usaing any drive over 320GB. The initial slow down of the HDD, merely indicates the development of bad sectors. By defragmenting the HDD during that stage, you have probably caused more "bad sectors". the next stage is going to be the damage extending to the head, then if you presist the head will dammage the platters, which will be the end of the data on the HDD.
You can either repair the "bad sectors" with the use of softwares that are not windows based, or send the drive to capable data recovery specialists.

Well I had what I thought were hard-drive problems, but they turned out to be ram issues. If the hard-drive isn't making any funny noises and all the tests are coming up ok then try a memcheck just in case!