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How-To Geek Forums / Windows XP

Is My HDD or Power Supply bad?

(10 posts)
  • Started 6 months ago by rgeford
  • Latest reply from germ-x
  • Topic Viewed 373 times

rgeford
Posts: 3

Acer laptop Aspire 5100, Win XP Pro SP3 - Accessing HDD is very slow (4 min to sign on screen then two minutes to desktop). Loading programs is just as painful. However, once programs are loaded (i.e. Firefox, Spreadsheet, email, Solitaire & Task Mgr.) switching between these and using them is snappy.
Have defragged multiple times, run chk disk, checked for virus & malware using several sources. Clean booted but no change. I suspect the HDD or could it possibly be a power supply problem?

Thanks for any comments or suggestions

Posted 6 months ago #
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hArLtRoN
hArLtRoN
Posts: 766

Welcome to HTG,

What are the full specs of your computer? Once those are posted it help will be easier to help you

The PSU has nothing to do with the read and write speeds of your hard drive.

MODS: post should be moved to Windows XP section

Posted 6 months ago #
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afuhnk
afuhnk
Posts: 309

To check if your hard disk are healthy, I suggest Crystal Disk info or Hd Tune.

Posted 6 months ago #
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rgeford
Posts: 3

It is an Acer, Aspire 5100, AMD Turion 64 Mobile, 2.194 MHZ, 768 MB RAM, Toshiba 8034GSX 80GB Hard Drive, Windows XP Pro with SP3. I thought if the 12v section of the Power Supply was low, The turn speed could be messing up both read and write.

Posted 6 months ago #
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vistamike
vistamike
Posts: 10945

PSU will not affect the spin of your HDD.

As everything appears to be fine one you have booted into windows then this could suggest to many startup programs or might need a general cleanup
Stop unwanted programs from auto starting if they are not required (many are not).

Use this; http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

Let us know what the deleted file size equaled and whether it helped,

Mike

Posted 6 months ago #
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rgeford
Posts: 3

The specs on my Toshiba HDD show a Transfer Rate of 150MB/Sec. I used HD Tune Pro and learned that the rate is only 1.1MB/Sec. Any time the HDD is being accessed, the CPU usage is at least 97%. This explains why using the HDD is so painfully slow, but not why. Once things are loaded, operating out of RAM is very crisp and normal.

Posted 6 months ago #
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gedstar
gedstar
Posts: 521

You could try testing the hard drive with this

http://storage.toshiba.com/sto.....-utilities

Posted 6 months ago #
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vistamike
vistamike
Posts: 10945

HD Tune Pro is not really a good tool for your situation. (and I would not trial or buy)
Consider that more ram is required for your system.

Have you done what I requested above regarding startups and cleaning?

Posted 6 months ago #
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hArLtRoN
hArLtRoN
Posts: 766

I would get more RAM. Other than that there's not that much more that you can do other than getting a new hard drive that is faster..

Posted 6 months ago #
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germ-x
germ-x
Posts: 5310

You have not stated how long this has been a problem.
With the current ram installed has your system run ok until this problem started?
Have you added any new software around the time this slowdown started?
How much of the 80gb HDD is used?
Have you run any HDD diagnostics on your HDD?

Posted 6 months ago #
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