Barracuda XT, Barracuda, Barracuda Green, DiamondMax and other desktop SATA and IDE drives

[vegasmazza3]

Here's my story.

I bought this 2 TB drive because I had a 500 GB drive that seemed slow and I was hoping this one would speed things up a bit, and if not, at least I'd have the extra capacity (since I was pretty close to full on old one)

I had all my data transferred to the 2TB, and it actually had less data than the old one, but that didn't concern me too much because everything was there.

So it's been about 2 months now, and over the last few weeks I've noticed that when you restart the computer, it runs fast, but as you stay on longer it slows down a lot - I didn't have this problem before

In trying to see what was behind this problem, I noticed that my hard drive reported free space at ~ 500 GB, ie: used space ~1.3 TB, which was impossible since at most I had put 200 GB on it.

With lots of research some people said it could be system restore but I doubt it. I ran three programs, WinDirStat, SpaceSniffer, and Defragger. Both WinDirStat and SpaceSniffer came up with an "unknown" of ~830GB with data used at ~500 GB.

Defragger showed that a lot of the clusters(?) had some weird thing like $BadClus:$Bad which some people say could mean that their is something wrong with the drive or the NTFS file system thinks that there is... (yah not sure what that means)

So I have no idea what to do... I'm ready to just get a replacement and hope that a new one doesn't have this problem... but I'm not sure if its just a software thing that can be fixed somehow without having to go through all the hassle of changing hard drives and data transfer, etc.

Thanks in advance.

[Cantbecanit]

Put HD Sentinal on it and see what it says, I think you have an O/S problem myself and that is causing the slowdown.

[vegasmazza3]

Can you give me specific directions? I tried HD Sentinel and it seemed a bit complicated... multiple versions, and then when I installed it, I forgot exactly why I couldn't figure it out. 

It's also not just a slowdown. I would have thought it was an OS problem too then, but 830 GB of unusable space... that might by hardware

Also. I tried to use SeaTools, and it doesn't even pick up the drive (nor does it pick up the other internal drive, but it picks up the two connected externals) 

[vegasmazza3]

HD Sentinel doesn't want to seem to do anything unless you buy it, so I don't know you use it. It SAYS its 100%... but if my hard drive is not going to be able to use 40% of its space due to bad clusters I don't think it's 100%

Before I give up on the drive, I might so a Windows Vista repair install since apparently you can download something to do it (without disc) and it won't delete your data. If that doesn't work... well then I'll probably be getting another drive. 

[Cantbecanit]

Look at the drive listing in the top left, this shows the health and temp, then look at the tab that says S.M.A.R.T and look for a warning in any of the lists,

Don't use wonder no disk repair sites, they are normally attack sites which place you a trojan instead of fixing anything.

This is your best course of action, if HDS says the drive health is good 90+ % do a full wipe and fresh O/S from a proper Windows disk, also I must ask what the rest of your machine is, i.e Processor, Memory amount etc.

Also get this http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download and do a full clean and a reg check with it.

[vegasmazza3]

HDS seems to show that everything is fine. 

A full wipe? Should I try a repair first since I'd rather not lose all my data... 

I have no disk, so I'd have to either get one or download something to do it.

I have a quad core intel processor, 4 gb ram, GTX 280 video card. 

I've tried CCleaner before and it seems like sometimes it can mess things up, but I'm not sure. 

[Cantbecanit]

Buy yourself some time for now if cash is tight and install this http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/consumer-preview it will work until Jan 2013 and by then you can decide to have the latest or get the old at reduced prices.

[vegasmazza3]

I'm not going to buy an operating system that I already own... I just don't have a disk.

Anyway, is there a way to get SeaTools to actually see the drive? (especially since it's a Seagate...) It doesn't see my other internal drive either... 

[Cantbecanit]

Windows 8 is free, use it to see if you still have problems.

If you have Vista and no disk then you need to go to the site of the company who made the PC and read up on how to restore it back to original using the hidden partition.

TBH I'm guessing at straws here, I've no idea how old or what chip your MB has, there was an issue with Nforce chipped MB's a while back (if you do a serch you'll find the solution) this is why we really need a full listing of specs to be able to help properly, or it becomes Dr I have a pain, where? you guess.

[vegasmazza3]

What other specs do you want me to post that I already haven't posted other than the nForce? How do I find that?