Hard drive suddenly reads

[Quantex_rox]

My parents are having a problem with the family's computer. For some reason, it will be just fine, then the hard drive starts reading like mad for about 5 minutes, and slows everything down. I checked the PF usage and everything, and that all seemed normal. I have spybot and avast! installed on it, and ran scans to see if a virus/spybot made its way into the system, but nothing.

Heres the stats:
Dell Dimension 4600
2.66 ghz LGA 775 Pentium 4
512 mb ram
All it says for the HDD is that is is a IC35L090AVV207-0, nothing for manufacturer (80 gig)
TSST corp DVD-RAM drive
128mb NVIDIA Geforce FX 5200

This computer was custom made by dell in 2003, but it still has SATA connectors on the motherboard, but it only has IDE drives.

 

[Quantex_rox]

BTW, it has Windows XP Professional SP2 on it

 

[Nodsu]

Often it is a sign of bad sectors on the HD. Test the drive with the manufacturer-provided diagnostics utility to be sure.

If bad sectors are indeed found, then you can mark them bad with chkdsk and make Windows work around them, but you should consider replacing that drive to avoid any nasty surprises in the future.

 

[mickzer]

You can find all HDD diagnostic programmes here:

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287

mickzer.