Is my hard disk failing?

Solution 1:

I don't have a necessary reputation to comment so I'll answer here with my personal experience. I had the same problem, but not just with the Downloads folder. Any action in the operating system was slow. I enabled the S.M.A.R.T diagnostics in the BIOS and it said at boot time that the disk was dying.

Also, what you can do is run a live linux distribution and check your hard drive with specific tools, such as smartmontools. I did it and it confirmed what BIOS said, i.e. that the disk was close to death.

Solution 2:

You should NOT check for filesystem corruption first (i.e. using chkdsk), especially if the hard drive is failing, it could only make it fail faster.

The first thing to do, is to run a livesystem (CDRom, USB key), (you can also test the disk on another computer if you feel at ease with handling disks) then you can proceed to :

• A) Identify the problem

  using sudo gnome-disks (see https://askubuntu.com/questions/283559/how-can-i-run-disk-utility-in-terminal-via-a-comand-line)

  • 1- check disk SMART status (should be a green status), if it is failing, jump to B) backup the data
  • 2- run a disk self SMART test (click on fast self test), if it is failing, jump to B) backup the data
  • 3- run a disk read performance test (**), if the performance is abnormal, jump to B) backup the data
  • 4- check kernel error messages (command dmesg) : if there are KEY SENSE errors, jump to B) backup the data

If all the tests are successful, the physical disk is not the culprit, it is probably just a "normal" windows problem.

(**) It is a good professional practice to benchmark your new disks, and save the test results, in order to be able to compare the performance later.

• B) Backup the data

Using the live system, connect a spare usb key or other disk, then you can make an exact disk-to-disk copy using dd_rescue (https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/80370/how-to-clone-a-ntfs-partition-winxp-from-a-damaged-disk-to-a-new-one), or a disk-to-image using ddrescue (Recovering data from failing hard-drive using ddrescue).

If you have no spare disk, power-down everything, and go buy a new disk (optionally with a larger size).

In any case, don't be optimistic about a failing hard drive (i.e. what if I re-format ?) : if there are smart errors, do not use it.

Solution 3:

How many, and how large, are the files in your Downloads folder? Opening that folder triggers your anti-virus software to scan ALL the items in the folder, especially if your "view" of the folder is showing "icons" or "tiles". Change to "list" or "details" view to avoid the virus-scan.

Google-search for 'DOWNLOAD SPECCY' and download the FREE version from the PIRIFORM web-site (not from any other "hits"). Run it, to display the detailed 'SMART' statistics for your disk-drive.