hmm, after struggling with this issue for over a month now, go figure... as soon as i make a post about it, i find out whats wrong on my own.

 

for those who are interested.. here is what was going on:

 

The DMA transfer mode of my primary IDE channel was reduced to PIO mode by windows. I remember now when this happened.. I was carrying my laptop in my bag still on while it was doing some intensive file transfers.. It shook, caused errors.. windows got mad. Apparently after a certain number of errors Windows automatically downgrades your transfer mode for you. Nice to know. After correcting this, my laptop is performing incredibly once again. I'm so happy. :smileyvery-happy:

 

Here are some links to where I found this all out:

http://www.sysinternals.com/Forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=255&PN=1

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;817472

 

Hope this helps anyone who runs into this. These threads sshould have been google searchable!!

thanks for your concern. i did run a bunch of diagnostics after this happened and the drive checked out. i think i ended up with a bad sector or two. but its been working fine for months now since then. i just ran diagnostics again now to be sure, still checks out.

 

the moral.. dont shake your laptop while its doing stuff with your hard drive.

 

but like it i said, it has been working since then just very slow because of this transfer mode step down that windows gave me no warning about. now that this is corrected, the laptop performs beautifully once again.

I ran Dell's Diagnostics plus Fujitsu's on the drive... both check out. I also used HD Tune so that I could copy the stats for you. Here are the S.M.A.R.T. values:

 

HD Tune: FUJITSU MHU2100AT Health

 

ID                              Current  Worst    ThresholdData       Status  
(01) Raw Read Error Rate        100      100      46       134697     Ok      
(02) Throughput Performance     100      100      30       34144256   Ok      
(03) Spin Up Time               100      100      25       1          Ok      
(04) Start/Stop Count           100      100      0        141        Ok      
(05) Reallocated Sector Count   100      100      24       0          Ok      
(07) Seek Error Rate            100      55       47       1487       Ok      
(08) Seek Time Performance      100      100      19       0          Ok      
(09) Power On Hours Count       97       97       0        5973718    Ok      
(0A) Spin Retry Count           100      100      20       0          Ok      
(0C) Power Cycle Count          100      100      0        141        Ok      
(C0) Power Off Retract Count    100      100      0        12         Ok      
(C1) Load Cycle Count           98       98       0        29974      Ok      
(C2) Temperature                100      100      0        1114151    Ok      
(C3) Hardware ECC Recovered     100      100      0        8765       Ok      
(C4) Reallocated Event Count    100      100      0        282984448  Ok      
(C5) Current Pending Sector     100      100      0        0          Ok      
(C6) Offline Uncorrectable      99       99       0        2          Ok      
(C7) Ultra DMA CRC Error Count  200      200      0        0          Ok      
(C8) Write Error Rate           100      89       60       2187       Ok      
(CB) (unknown attribute)        100      100      0        20643804   Ok      

 

Power On Time         : 5973718
Health Status         : Ok

 

And here is the result of the surface scan:

 

I was wrong, I dont have any bad sectors. Is this enough to convince you that my drive is ok?

Failure modes and characteristics vary. It is somewhat common for a drive experiencing bad sectors to continuously degrade, but that may be due to head-to-surface contact damage and loose particulate contamination, causing further damage and contamination. I have also occasionally suspected platter surface deterioration not caused by head-to-surface contact, but yielding similar symptoms. Then again, the absence of any obvious external cause of head-to-surface contact may not necessarily exclude it.

 

 

GM

Yeah, it was symptoms like that which caused me to speculate that spontaneous surface deterioration was an occasional factor with some drives. Some brands/models may have had better chemistry than others, 'cause some old drives seem to just keep on chugglin'.

GM