Aging hard drive slowing entire computer down tremendously?

[Raziaar]

Hey guys. I have a hard drive from late 2003. Never upgraded it. It's just one I bought for Half-Life 2 when I made this computer.

I am really thinking that it's one of the biggest things slowing my computer down, even though I've added more ram, a better video card etc. I am believing that it's giving me crappier framerates in games that I play, as well as the read access times freezing my computer for long moments at a time when I'm downloading or installing something.

I literally sat here waiting for my browser to refresh as I'm installing a patch for a game, that took 3 minutes for it to actually draw the entire page. And two minutes after that my task manager actually game up.

I don't ever remember having these issues when the computer was new. Can an aging hard drive, even if it's well defragmented, cause so much slowdown like this with games and the computer in general?

EDIT: Oh and I forgot to add, in addition to keeping it well defragmented, I also always try to keep 30 gigs free, and sometimes even 40. I never have it filled up all the way. It's a 120 gig hard drive.

 

[huntingbear]

maybe....what's the rest of your computers specs? this may be signs of a hdd about to fail or your cpu might be too old to handle your software. Are you running Vista or XP or Linux? Do you stay on top of your anti-virus and anti-spyware software or have you let that slide?

 

[Raziaar]

I'm running Windows XP.

3 gigs of G.Skill pc3200 DDR ram
2.8ghz pentium 4 processor(I know it's old)
x1950 Pro 512MB AGP video card

I keep my computer healthy and babied when it comes to keeping it clear of spyware and adware and viruses/trojans etc.

Really the programs I run most of the time run fine. It's like when I'm doing even the most mundane hard drive tasks that it seems to chug and lock up.

 

[Vegeta897]

Sounds more like RAM.

Edit: On second thought perhaps not, looking at those specs.

CPU!

Also get on AIM.

 

[huntingbear]

I'm running Windows XP.

3 gigs of G.Skill pc3200 DDR ram
2.8ghz pentium 4 processor(I know it's old)
x1950 Pro 512MB AGP video card

I keep my computer healthy and babied when it comes to keeping it clear of spyware and adware and viruses/trojans etc.

Really the programs I run most of the time run fine. It's like when I'm doing even the most mundane hard drive tasks that it seems to chug and lock up.

What do you consider HDD task? Like defraging? exploring folders? saving files? If you can take me step by step with what your doing when it's running fine than what you start to do when it runs like shite.

Sounds more like RAM.

Edit: On second thought perhaps not, looking at those specs.

CPU!

Also get on AIM.

and also yes if you can get on AIM and chat me or Vegeta up I (not gonna speak for Vegeta) would be happy to try and walk you through some fix or solution.

 

[Vegeta897]

Actually I just want to shoot the breeze with him.

 

[Raziaar]

What do you consider HDD task? Like defraging? exploring folders? saving files? If you can take me step by step with what your doing when it's running fine than what you start to do when it runs like shite.

Typically when I'm saving large files, or doing installations. I know there's a lot of hard drive activity when doing installations, but in the past I haven't had as much issue before even with the same games.

Another thing is hard drive access when playing games.

 

[huntingbear]

well it sounds like its slowing down when your doing PROCESSOR intensive stuff which means.....CPU is prly the culprit. sry mate but damn good CPU's are cheap now...not top of the line but stuff that'll make XP run like warm butter.

 

[Raziaar]

Yeah well... I can't and won't afford a new CPU until I can get a whole new motherboard and doing that I believe I need a whole new everything, including graphics card, ram, etc.

It's just that the things i'm doing now, some of them are the same things I've done in the past(including the same games installed), are running more crappily now than they have in the past.

 

[Asus]

3GB is more than enough RAM. Are you running dual channel mode (even count of memory sticks and motherboard support for dual channel) rather than single channel? I'm guessing that's 3 sticks so probably not. Dual channel would be quicker assuming 2GB is enough RAM for what you do. The difference between dual channel and single on the older systems (p4, a64) is pretty big. On todays systems the memory controller is a lot better and has faster memory so it isn't as big of an impact.

The hard drive is probably slow but a fresh install would probably speed things up good without spending money.

Also, how you have your IDE/SATA drives configured with DVD drives can make a difference. And different IDE/SATA controllers use more or less CPU usage. But that would take a bit of digging to figure out where you stand there.

 

[Raziaar]

3GB is more than enough RAM. Are you running dual channel mode (even count of memory sticks and motherboard support for dual channel) rather than single channel? I'm guessing that's 3 sticks so probably not. Dual channel would be quicker assuming 2GB is enough RAM for what you do. The difference between dual channel and single on the older systems (p4, a64) is pretty big. On todays systems the memory controller is a lot better and has faster memory so it isn't as big of an impact.

The hard drive is probably slow but a fresh install would probably speed things up good without spending money.

Also, how you have your IDE/SATA drives configured with DVD drives can make a difference. And different IDE/SATA controllers use more or less CPU usage. But that would take a bit of digging to figure out where you stand there.

Just running in single channel. It's something that always bugged me. I read up and saw that people said single channel performance loss wasn't that significant compared to dual channel mode.

Must have been reading information for more modern sytems I guess.

I did make sure that my DVD drive and hard drive are each on a separate ribbon.

Think I'd be better off then taking out my third gigabyte of ram? Wish I had a fourth then, even if I couldn't utilize all the extra memory.

 

[Sedako]

If you haven't reformatted lately, it may be due to a buildup of data on the hard drive contributing to the slowdown, whether it is malware, registry entries, or something else. Like Asus said, I would try a reformat before you do anything else if you can.

 

[AtomicSpark]

Hard drives have always been the bottleneck of any computer. Then again, I just think it's in your head. The same paranoidness that requires people to defragment their hard drives monthly.

 

[Asus]

Do you know if your 2.8GHz CPU is the Northwood version with 800MHz FSB or the older 533MHz FSB?

 

[DEATHMASTER]

i wish i knew wtf that meant, i guess the higher is better though

 

[Asus]

Took a lot of searching but I finally found dual vs single channel memory benchmarks on a somewhat dated machine. Not quite as old as your Intel though. And it's an actual review and not just forum comments... hehe

A64 4000+ benchmarked with dual and single channel (2x512MB= 1GB)
Same amount of memory in both configurations, just enabled/disabled dual memory mode probably by changing the slot configuration.
Read / Write averages and maximums.

Half-Life 2

 

[Raziaar]

Do you know if your 2.8GHz CPU is the Northwood version with 800MHz FSB or the older 533MHz FSB?

When I bought it I made sure it was 800mhz FSB. And my motherboard is also 800mhz capable I believe(Intel D865PERL).

 

[Omnomnick]

Its your operating system getting old ;(

Happened to me and I had to rewrite XP onto a new HDD to save all my stuff - I recommend it, still got my stuff from years back but on a new 500GB hard drive.
Otherwise - Reformat.

 

[Asus]

Yeah, reformatting always makes it run like new.

 

[Souseiseki]

It could be windows being stupid too, permanently reducing itself to only use PIO mode (CPU INTENSIVE) for disk access after some several CRC failures in reading files. You'll probably have to force Ultra DMA on your drives.

 

[Raziaar]

It could be windows being stupid too, permanently reducing itself to only use PIO mode (CPU INTENSIVE) for disk access after some several CRC failures in reading files. You'll probably have to force Ultra DMA on your drives.

I try keeping and making sure my drives, hard drive and DVD are on ultra DMA mode. thanks though, it's a great suggestion.

 

[Sir Phoenixx]

Took a lot of searching but I finally found dual vs single channel memory benchmarks on a somewhat dated machine. Not quite as old as your Intel though. And it's an actual review and not just forum comments... hehe

A64 4000+ benchmarked with dual and single channel (2x512MB= 1GB)
Same amount of memory in both configurations, just enabled/disabled dual memory mode probably by changing the slot configuration.
Read / Write averages and maximums.

Half-Life 2

Most of the tests on there showed little to no improvement with dual channel over single channel. The average FPS improvement in their game tests was only 4.93. 7 of their game tests showed 3 or less average FPS improvement, only 4 game tests showed any significant improvement (3 of those 4 were HL2), and 4 showed slightly better performance with single channel.

Dual channel is slightly better (most of the time), you should obviously run in dual channel if you can, but don't worry if you can't.

 

[Asus]

But game FPS wouldn't be fixed by a better HDD or RAM for the most part. FPS is still mostly determined by the GPU / resolution etc rather than sub system. I was linking to those benchmarks to show 'old' benchmarks vs current benchmarks which he said he saw about dual vs single memory. The fact that a difference shows up in a game (Half-life 2) on these old systems means that the single channel bandwidth on these older systems is low enough bandwidth that some apps that are not purely memory intensive are passing that bar and approaching the average that dual channel provides. I'd imagine that reading and writing to RAM (e.g. loading a game) would show even more of a difference since it is more memory intensive than just playing.

Those P4 systems back then just upgraded to 800 FSB which had 6.4GB/s of bandwidth (same with A64 and HT) and just used DDR400 memory. DDR400 in single channel theoretically can do 3.2GB/s and dual channel is 6.4GB/s. Memory never performs 100% of theoretical performance *as my previous link shows so going dual channel would help make sure to fill as much of that 800 FSB as you can. Especially with memory intensive programs (read/writing to RAM, loading but not playing games) that take advantage of it. In todays situation, bandwidth available is double (DDR2 800 is 6.4GB/s in single channel) so you would have to use a more demanding program to show differences today.

*compare the MAX lines to the AVG, which is a rate it can hold, between single and dual channel memory.


It's too easy not to try. Not saying this is your issue but it's a possibility looking at your sytem (p4 800FSB w/ ddr memory). If you do take a stick out just remember to power down and turn the switch off on the back of the power supply (not the red). Otherwise you could short the board or parts. That goes for pulling any thing out (PCI slot, GPU, RAM).

 

[Raziaar]

It's too easy not to try. Not saying this is your issue but it's a possibility looking at your sytem (p4 800FSB w/ ddr memory). If you do take a stick out just remember to power down and turn the switch off on the back of the power supply (not the red). Otherwise you could short the board or parts. That goes for pulling any thing out (PCI slot, GPU, RAM).

In all my years of swapping parts out I never switch off the back of the CPU. I just have everything unplugged while I'm working on it. Haven't had any issues with shorting, but I guess it'll be safer switching the back off if that has an internal effect on the PSU.

 

[Asus]

For any card that goes into a slot or RAM etc part or all of their power comes from the slot itself. And even though a PC is 'off' there is still power being supplied to parts of the main board. So to cut that power from the main board you would need to switch off the PSU.
When you wiggle a card to try to get it free it is possible for the contacts to cause a short.
Also, there could still be a trace of power with capacitors on the card and main board being able to hold some charge for a little while after power off.