Laptop HDD issue

[Thanir]

I have a Inspiron 6000 witha 60gb hdd. A few days ago the comp really slowed down anytime it had to access the hdd. First I thought I didn't have much space left on it, but I had 10gb free on it, so I ran a speed test on it using HD Tach. Results:

Random Access: 21.8ms
Avg Read: 1.1MB/sec

So it seems my HD is dying? I then ran Active Smart 2.6, and the SMART report says everything is good. So is it actually my harddrive that is the issue, or could it be my motherboard?

I am going to buy a new hdd for the lappy, but I don't want to waste my money if the actual hdd isnt the issue.

Any thoughts?

[Beavis68]

Windows creep?

Windows bogs down after a while. If you have the ability to back up or get your data off easily reformatting and reistalling the OS isnt a bad idea. I just did this to a 6 year old machine and it is running better.

My current laptop is in about the same shape as yours and needs it, but it is a work laptop and I can't do it myself.

[Thanir]

Feels like its way more than just windows creep...I thought the same thing, but have run a couple of adware/spybot programs, and have chked my strtup items and nothing seems to have changed. Also nothing really new in my task manager is running. Anything I try to do to the hdd is just taking forever. Trying to backup PT files should taken a couple of mins and it took 30-45 mins for the hd to get the info to the cd.

It's reading at 1.1mb/sec and it looks like it should be in the 12mb/sec range? Can my hdd be bad and not show up as bad under SMART tests?

Also my sequential and burst speeds are rated at 1.1mb/s