Hello everyone, A few days ago I wanted to copy some files from a DVD to my hard drive, when I heard some very disturbing clunking sounds coming from the computer. I thought it was the DVD, but actually I was able to use that same disc on another computer with no problems, and as it turned out, the sounds were actually coming from my hard drive. Every 20 minutes or so it would make this short sound, like a hiccup or a beep of some sort. At one point I got a blue screen (BSOD), unfortunately I did not write down the error code. After restarting, it went into chkdksk. I let it do its thing but then after each subsequent restart it would ask to chkdsk again. It's only today that I first had a chkdsk-free boot-up. Now my hard drive is not making noises anymore, but if I am to insert a CD/DVD and read from it, the sounds appear again, and I'm not sure whether it's from the DVD-ROM or from the HDD. I tend to think it's the HDD but I don't see why DVD-ROM activity would trigger it. I even took a look under the hood to see if there were any loose IDE or power cables - everything looked fine, both for the HDD and for the DVD-ROM! The problem is, however, that my computer has become very slow ever since all of this started. I can still use it but it is much slower than usual, especially with tasks that require fast dataflow from the HDD. Looking at "Loading" progress bars for example, it seems that the HDD reads in "bursts" rather than continuously as it's supposed to. Also, something that I never experienced before is having an MP3 playing in the background while I work, and the sound occasionally becoming horrendously distorted, presumably because the HDD cannot keep up with the dataflow required by the song's bitrate. I tried running the error checking tool included in Windows XP, however after Phase 2 it gives me the cryptic message "Unable to complete disk check.", which I know can have any number of causes. My HDD is a Seagate so I downloaded their SeaTools software and ran all the tests, only to get a PASS on all of them. At this point, probably the only test that would reveal a problem is a HDD read/write speed test, which - I don't have to run it to know - it would flunk miserably. Does anyone have any suggestion what I might do to fix the problem? Or at least find out for sure what the problem is (software/hardware), so I can at least face it and maybe consider getting another HDD if it's serious enough, rather than living with a problem that the computer does not seem to recognize? Anticipated thanks for any help.
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