Windows 98 & ME - Reading HDD is Sluggish (not related to "fragmented")

You are going to have to test the hard drive, but don't use Scandisk for that. I
suggest you run the diagnostics from the hard drive manufacturer's web site. An
8-GB drive should test fairly quickly (or fail fairly quickly), but no
matter.....you need to test it. The links below were valid a couple of months
ago....hopefully they all still are.

If you don't know what brand the drive is, you can download the limited-use free
edition of OnTrack Data Advisor from this location:
http://www.ontrack.com/freesoftware/#dataadvisor

When you click the download link on that page for Data Advisor 5.0 Free edition, you
will be taken to a page to register with the OnTrack site, then you will be able to
download the diskette creator file.

The downloads are diskette creators. They are to be run once from a working Windows
system and will guide you through the process of extracting the Data Advisor onto a
3.5" floppy disk.

Download and Use Instructions:
http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/h...-download.aspx

As far as I know, Maxtor's diagnostics will also work with any brand of drive, and
the older versions of Seagate Seatools also, but I am not sure about the new
version.

The older version of SeaTools, for creating a bootable floppy disk or for creating a
bootable CD if you don't have a floppy drive, is he
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download2858.html

Hard Drive Diagnostic Programs by Vendor:

OnTrack Data Advisor:
http://www.ontrack.com/freesoftware/#dataadvisor
IBM/Hitachi Drive Fitness Test:
http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm
Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools:
http://support.wdc.com/download/
Quantum/Maxtor PowerMax:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/Maxtor_Powermax_d1386.html
Seagate SeaTools for DOS:
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/sup...loads/seatools
--
Glen Ventura, MS MVP Shell/User, A+

"Brad" wrote in message
...
Hi,

Recently, I started to have trouble with my HDD (slow access).

When I performed a "surface scan" (via scandisk), accessing clusters was
slow and "jerky". I aborted the surface scan because it was going to take
a very long time. Note: The HDD is 8 Gig.

Note: Last year, when I performed a surface scan, it was fast and
"smooth".

Is this a sign that the hard disk is going bad or could this be a
controller problem?

Thanks in advance, Brad

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