Hard disk about to fail?

[J-man]

My parents have an old computer, it's old and slow. Recently it has slowed down even more. I think the HDD has deteriorated, which explains the slowdown (it uses lot of swapfile). It could really benefit from some extra RAM (so it uses less swapfile). However that would be rather useless if the HDD would fail in a couple of months. If that happens it would be better to nuy a new computer.

I remember I've seen some articles on the internet which could estimate if the HDD was about to fail. I don't remember how those programs where called or where I could download them. Does anybody have any ideas?

FYI: It has a PATA HDD.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I use HDD health, but its only for newer HDDs which have SMART built in:
http://www.panterasoft.com/ (scroll down)

Also, if it's making funny noises, thats a sure sign.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Have you done any defragmenting? It may prove to be quite useful. You should also look into the SMART data if the HDD supports it. Any number of apps can read it, such as SpeedFan or HDTune

 

[GoodGame]

Louder than normal noises, repetitive accessing, sudden rise in corrupted files---all together would suggest imminent hard drive failure. Slowness might just be due to adware, a duplicating virus, disk is too full (should try to keep about 25% of the drive unused), or needing defrag.

This is pretty good advice (http://www.windowsbbs.com/windows-95-98-me-nt/14141-my-computer-stutters.html), though your hard drive maker might have a diagnostic program to determine if the drive has damage

Configure CleanMgr to max settings and run
Go to Start-Run and type

cleanmgr /sageset:1
The above need only be ran once (these settings will be remembered as the default until another sageset is ran).

It will present a menu select all except compress, then

Go to Start-Run and type

cleanmgr /sagerun:1
As long as /sageset above has been ran on this computer from now on the /sagerun is the only thing that needs to run.

Step 2. (most likely the problem)

Spyware and adware removal

SpyBot http://security.kolla.de/index.php?l...&page=download
Run this twice delete all it finds, always run this before AdAware

AdAware http://www.lavasoftusa.com/downloads.html
Delete all it finds

Step 3.

Startup control panel

You can play with what processes the computer loads on start-up using: MSCONFIG in the runtime window. Examine the processes vs. ones in an online search, such as processlibrary.com to see if they are suspcious or not---such as trojans or adware. You can also do the same in Windows Task Manager to see if any processes being loaded are unwanted.

 

[Perfection]

It's never the hardware.

 

[GoodGame]

It's never the hardware.

No, but sometimes it's the malware.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

It's never the hardware.

It's only the hardware when you don't think it is.

 

[J-man]

Thanks for the tips. I'm almost certain the HDD doesn't have smart. But it doesn't make funny noises (no more then usual) and there is no rise in corrupt files. I have defragmented it. I think more RAM will solve the problem.

 

[Perfection]

It's only the hardware when you don't think it is.

No, it's never the hardware.

 

[lndm]

I think more RAM will solve the problem.

Has it always been this slow?

RAM might help but it won't fix all problems. How much do you have, what is your windows version and is it a lightly or heavily used system?