So...I think my hard drive is failing...quite hard.

AmuletOfNight

New Member
So just in the past two days my computer has become ungodly amounts of slow, and the hard drive shoots up to 100% read/write capacity in as little as 10 MB/s. The SMART data is looking pretty sketchy also. So is my hard drive failing? No tools report an issue.

LDuGsBN.png

Notice the very high usage at low tasks
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Notice the very high (18 years, impossible) power on hours, plus the error rates


Dell refuses to replace my hard drive because their tools cannot find a problem, but yet my computer is barely operable.
 
You could always give seatools a go, also maybe test the hard drive in another computer, if you can, then you maybe able to rule out other causes.
 
Have you tried scanning for any sort of malware? That can make your PC slow and sometimes do a lot of reading and writing to your disk. Download Malwarebytes and run a full scan with it.

Do you know what hard drive you have? Make and model no? Once you know the make, you can download their diagnostics tool and scan the drive for errors. A list of tools to use can be found here http://www.computerforum.com/211596-list-hard-drive-diagnostic-utilities-test-your-drive.html
 
You could always give seatools a go, also maybe test the hard drive in another computer, if you can, then you maybe able to rule out other causes.

I cannot test the hard drive in another computer, unfortunately.

Have you tried scanning for any sort of malware? That can make your PC slow and sometimes do a lot of reading and writing to your disk. Download Malwarebytes and run a full scan with it.

Do you know what hard drive you have? Make and model no? Once you know the make, you can download their diagnostics tool and scan the drive for errors. A list of tools to use can be found here http://www.computerforum.com/211596-list-hard-drive-diagnostic-utilities-test-your-drive.html

It's a Seagate, the model is listed in the screenshot. SeaTools doesn't report a problem once it takes FOREVER to test.

I'm running MalwareBytes now, but it can barely clamp down on 1.6 MB/s at 100% disk usage (most of the time, can shoot up to 6.1 occasionally)

8blMFhd.png
 
According to your screenshot you have a Toshiba branded drive not a Seagate. You will need to run toshiba or possibly hitachi drive tools. For some reason the toshiba drive utility won't detect certain models.
 
Also do the following so I can see whats running on your system.

Download the HijackThis installer from here.
Run the installer and choose Install, indicating that you accept the licence agreement. The installer will place a shortcut on your desktop and launch HijackThis.

Vista and Windows 7 users must right click on the hijackthis icon and click on run as. If the run as option doesn't appear then press and hold the shift key while right clicking on the icon to get it to appear.


Click Do a system scan and save a logfile

Most of what HijackThis lists will be harmless or even essential, don't fix anything yet.

When the hijackthis log appears in a notepad file, click on the edit menu, click select all, then click on the edit menu again and click on copy. Come back to your reply and right click on your mouse and click on paste.

Post the logfile that HijackThis produces
 
Are you using the "Comodo Internet Security" as your anti malware app?
I had this exact same problem (not SMART errors, but 100% HDD usage by a process called "system"). I removed Comodo Internet Security, and the issue was resolved!!
If not, follow John's advice, his solutions, almost always, work!! :good:
 
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1. Does hard drive do so many read/write operations when you are in SAFE MODE?

2. Load Linux Ubuntu from CD and try to copy some data and see if the drive is working faster?

If the answer to these both questions is YES (or at least for the second one) then it is not a hard drive (hardware) issue.It is a software issue caused by something such as a running process of a software which does a lot of reading/writing or something else.

Usually when this happens people always think it is a hard drive when in fact in MANY cases it is not and instead it is related to a software issue running on OS.
 
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