uhhh guys is my hard drive dying? things were working well, I went to get some food and I came back to a slow as hell PC. restarting took forever and my disk is showing 99% usage. trying to do anything on the computer is painfully slow. it just constantly locks up.
help?
was just browsing gaf as usual.
Sorry to hear man
Does it make clicking sounds?
To make sure it's your HDD try following. Of course if you have a spare HDD laying around (or an old external HDD for disassembly) you could connect that, install Windows there and see if it stays the same.
When my optical drive became defect, my PC wouldn't boot into Windows and even posting took a long time similar to you. If you feel OK with tinkering, open up your PC and remove the SATA cable from your HDD (narrow cable).
Go ahead and
download the Ubuntu ISO file here. Doesn't matter which version really. Now,
go read this guide and make a bootable Ubuntu USB.
Now plug that USB in your PC and restart. While your PC is booting up, press F12/DEL/whatever your mobo needs to get into boot options. Select USB as a first boot option. Restart again and you should be greeted with Ubuntu.
Now you can use Ubuntu from USB without having to install to your HDD. Try it out if the PC is still performing very slow to be sure whether your HDD is the cause.
Sometimes when my Windows gets totally broken, I use this bootable Ubuntu USB to back up my HDD. Maybe it will help you in that way too.
Good luck!