HDD slow, but no bad sectors found!

[Nikos Match]

Hello to the community!
I have an old laptop (with old components as well). My HDD is a hitachi travelstar
http://www.cnet.com/products/hgst-travelstar-5k100-hts541010g9sa00-hard-drive-100-gb-sata-150-series/specs/
For the last 2-3 months my laptop slowed down a lot, so i suspedted the drive (also, the slow-downs occured mainly when i tried to access something, like a program, a file, settings etc)
I ran a low-level DFT test tool by hitachi, and it found bad sectors. I formated, reinstalled windows xp, and the it ran smoothly...for a while... So, I ran windows (reboot) CHECKDISK with both the fixing-options checked. The test itself took more than 4hours, with occasional halts (meaning, that it started testing, halted for 20mins, then went up 6%, halted again for 20mins etc etc)... So, I expected at least half the disk to be bad-sectored...BUT, this is what checkdisk logged:

Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.

A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.
Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.
Cleaning up 51 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 51 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 51 unused security descriptors.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
Usn Journal verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
Free space verification is complete.
CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the
master file table (MFT) bitmap.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.

97675168 KB total disk space.
13716356 KB in 23034 files.
6416 KB in 1576 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
97860 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
83854536 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
24418792 total allocation units on disk.
20963634 allocation units available on disk.

Internal Info:
00 62 00 00 2e 60 00 00 1e 76 00 00 00 00 00 00 .b...`...v......
4b 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 34 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 K.......4.......
c0 80 2b 01 00 00 00 00 a0 44 d0 27 00 00 00 00 ..+......D.'....
a0 2b f7 08 00 00 00 00 f0 d1 d5 74 06 00 00 00 .+.........t....
40 18 26 17 19 00 00 00 20 73 97 f4 1f 00 00 00 @.&..... s......
99 9e 36 00 00 00 00 00 88 38 07 00 fa 59 00 00 ..6......8...Y..
00 00 00 00 00 10 2e 45 03 00 00 00 28 06 00 00 .......E....(...

Windows has finished checking your disk.
Please wait while your computer restarts.

As far as I am concerned, these faults are minor.. Could they be slowing my laptop down?By the way, after the disk check, now the laptop -again- runs smoothly, but I am still concerned. Here are my full specs (dxdiag).

Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp.080413-2111)
Language: Greek (Regional Setting: Greek)
System Manufacturer: FUJITSU SIEMENS
System Model: AMILO M Series
BIOS: Phoenix NoteBIOS 4.0 Release 6.0
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.60GHz
Memory: 2038MB RAM
Page File: 865MB used, 3068MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.5512 32bit Unicode

 

[turkey3_scratch]

It's probably all the bloatware and crap that builds up in Windows over time that is slowing it down.

 

[Nikos Match]

It's probably all the bloatware and crap that builds up in Windows over time that is slowing it down.

That was my initial thought, yes, but then again that doesn't explain why it was so slow at the checkdisk, or that it slowed down 1 day after the clean install 🙁

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there Nikos Match,

As there may be something wrong with the drive, it would be a good idea to back up the data stored on it.

Apart from that, you can try attaching the drive with different cables to a different port. Then, you can test the drive with some HDD testing tool: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility

In case the test results show that the drive is in poor condition, then I guess you will need to get another HDD. You can use this one for storing non important data.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD