Hard drive lags/freezes upon loading programs

[Aaron D.]

I've been using my Maxtor "DiamondMax Plus 9" 250GB HDD for about a year now, and recently after defragmenting & then restarting one day, my HDD started to completely lag behind on loading programs (took about 30 min. to load one friggin' program, or it wouldn't even load a program at all!). Maxtor HDDs are usually quiet by nature, but I've since noticed a repetitive, silent-like "clicking" noise now, as if it's "stuck" trying to initialize a program that I try to run (such as MusicMatch or SoulSeek, or even when I would try to open folders). I have a plentiful 320MB of RAM, and I'm using Windows XP Pro, so I know it's not that. My PC restarts and loads the desktop just fine, and it doesn't lag when moving my mouse around, only when loading ANY program on my computer. What sucks even worse, is I couldn't even backup anything onto data discs because I couldn't even load NERO or MusicMatch to do it! I couldn't even load Norton to scan for viruses, either. But I've ruled out viruses/trojans/worms as being the culprit, because I decided to just wipe my whole HDD clean and reinstall Windows XP, but when it got to the second phase in installing XP (loading files in), it wouldn't even move past 0%. It just sat on 0% for an hour. My HDD's warranty is expired, so now I'm back to using my old, measely 30GB HD. I do not want to toss my 250GB HDD in the trash, nor do I want it to become obsolete, because I paid alot for it, and it's only a year old. Since this happened right after defragmenting, I'm not sure if it caused the problem, or if it's just a "coincidence" that my HDD went out right after I defrag'd. Again, it would restart and load Windows just fine, but not any programs, nor does it get passed the second phase when reinstalling Windows XP. Any suggestions or similar experience?

[alfie2]

"the click of death" as we call it; your HDD has gone to a higher plane of existence. have get a new one.( I had 3 WD hdds went clicking on me after warranty expired, arrrrrrrgh) bad thing seems to happen after warranty expiry dates. like my cars, they always break down after the warranty. :rolleyes:

[Cricket]

Go to the Maxtor web site and download the diagnostic utility and test the hard drive with it. It sounds as if it's developing bad clusters. If it's out of warranty then the only thing to do is replace it and throw this one out (remove the magnets from it first...makes great refrigerator magnets, very powerful).

Oh, if you need a replacement Seagate hard drives have 5 year warranties.

:) Cricket

[glc]

The Maxtor diagnostic is called Powermax. It may be possible to restore functionality by doing a "zero fill" with it - this may also be called a low level format.

[Aaron D.]

Awesome... I installed the PowerMax software from Maxtor, like you guys suggested, and "zero-filled" my whole corrupt drive, then I installed a fresh copy of XP, and now my drive works like brand new and faster than before. Good thing I didn't toss it in the trash. Saved me a couple hundred $$! Thanks again.

[glc]

Did the drive pass all tests after the zero fill?

[Aaron D.]

Yes, that was the first thing I did after reinstalling XP, was running that HD utility again (when I ran it the first time it basically said my hard drive was failing, and to replace it). But after the zero-fill and a fresh XP installation, it said the HD was in perfect working order--passed with flying colors. So I guess it was failing because of bad sectors lurking within. ...But isn't deleting a partition naturally "resetting" all the HD sectors back to 0, too? Not sure how it all works, but I thought by deleting the contents of your hard drive (such as the partition-delete option before XP installation), it would naturally delete any bad clusters/sectors, too.

[glc]

Not necessarily - the only way to truly clean a drive up is with a zero fill. Deleting a partition does not physically write zeros to all sectors.

[Aaron D.]

Thanks for all the info. If I had learned about this whole "zero fill" concept a few years ago, I probably could have "revived" NUMEROUS hard drives that I've gone through over the years--that were probably just obsolete due to (apparently, easily fixable) bad clusters. ...Bummer, ah well.