Computer Hardware and Software

Tips for Slow hard drive

I suggested three steps, with the last one probably running overnight:

1. First, we need to make sure that the hard drive is not failing.
1. Download, install and run HDTUNE ( http://www.hdtune.com/ , freeware).
2. Check the Health tab and make sure it all shows OK in he Status column.
2. Run a file system check (used to be called scandisk).
1. Start > My Computer, right click on C:
2. Select Properties.
3. Clck on the Tools tab.
4. In the Error-checking box, click on the "Check now" button.
5. Click the checkbox "Automatically fix file system errors" (If you knew you had a hard drive failure, you might not want to do that).
3. Defragment the hard drive.
1. Next box down, click the Defragment Now button.
2. Select the partition you want to check (you might have only one big C: partition).
3. Click Analyse, which will take maybe 1-10 minutes.
4. Then, click Defragment.
5. This will probably run several hours.
6. Reboot.

At this point, if the problem was hard drive fragmentation, it's probably been solved.