Hard Drive Read Speed goes below 20MB/s on a regular basis

[DigitallyDoomed]

According to this graph, my read speed can reach a minimum of 2.3MB/s which I don't think is normal. I play games alot including PlanetSide 2 which is a very resource heavy game. Since the game has large maps, the hard drive probably has to load a lot of things at the same time but recently, I've been getting random freezing for 1 or 2 seconds sometimes continuous freezing leading into slideshowcity.

*Image link because it's not showing up for me
http://imgur.com/SF4Ig8E

I have two partitions on the hard drive with both having 17.5GB and 24GB storage left respectively. Page File is on 6144MB which is slightly above what Windows recommends.
Furthermore, I have enabled write caching on the disk. Is this a sign my HDD is failing after 3 yrs of gaming?

Add. Info:
Laptop
Intel i3
Nvidia Geforce 610M
4GB Ram
500GB HDD @ 5400 rpm

Based on the specs, gaming even on lowest settings these days takes a huge toll on the laptop.
Unfortunately I have no plans at all to purchase or even consider a new computer
Also, I noticed it takes more time ( several seconds more) to access files and folders

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there DigitallyDoomen,

Most probably there are some bad sectors on the drive that cause these minimums. What does it show when you click on the "Health" tab which is next to the benchmark(the picture you provided).

Cheers,
D_Know_WD