PC doctor, checking storage

[burns334]

Morning folks, I have a T43 that runs kind of slow, no freeze ups just slow, checked for virus's and adware and did a disk fragmentation etc. Anyway when I run pc doctor it passes but very slow to get thru hard drive scan. I ran next to another T43 with same size drive and it takes about 5 times as long. So is this a hard drive problem or maybe and xp problem. Is there a way to sort this out without swapping drives or reloading windows?

burns

[rkawakami]

Same sized drive does not necessarily mean the same performance. One could be a 4200RPM drive that will be a lot slower than a 7200RPM model. Given that you say it's a 5X difference, you might be looking at the slow drive having some damaged and/or difficult to read sectors. In order to determine if it's a drive problem versus a system (motherboard) issue, you should take the same drive and test it with PC Doctor for DOS in both systems, keeping track of the amount of time it takes to run through all of the HD diagnostics.

[burns334]

Thanks Ray, I found an .iso and burned a bottable cd. So many tests to run, which ones are the most important? or usually most problematic?

burns

[rkawakami]

PM'ed you earlier about the .ISO but it appears you have everything in hand.

At a minimum, this is what I would run in your case (all are located under the Diagnostics heading on the left of the screen):

- CPU/Coprocessor: run all tests 10 times. You can use the F2 option and change the Set Pass Count value to make the diagnostic loop as many times as you want. Pressing CTRL-Enter will start the diagnostics running on all "selected" tests. Those are the ones with the ">>" next to the column. You can select/deselect tests by pressing the Space key with that field highlighted.
- Systemboard: run all tests 10 times
- Hard drive: in order to run all tests, a drive needs to be installed. None of the tests are intentionally destructive to the data. However, be aware that the heads will be moving across the entire storage area of the drive. If there's a physical defect in the platter(s) surface, it could lead to a head crash and data loss. This is true with any hard drive diagnostic you'll run on a drive.

I typically use a separate memory diagnostic (memtest86+) but you can run the PC Doctor memory tests.

[burns334]

Ray, thanks for the helpers, I found the interface kind of confusing. I ran lots of tests and found nothing wrong but with your help I will repeat. I ran lots of the diagnostics but did not see one error but will try again on the weekend as I am away

burns