I'm running windows XP and I've noticed it has become quite sluggish in the past few months.
Background: I have suspected a few programs, but I haven't found anything conclusive. By viewing my CPU and memory usage history (using process explorer) I don't think either of them are to blame. I'm thinking that accessing the HDD is taking up a lot of time. I have noticed that operations that require reading a lot of files (such as launching a large application with many dlls to load), and also switching between running applications take particularly long.
Is there a way I can test my hard drive to see if its performing where it should be?
CPU: dual core 2.8 GHz
Memory: 4GB
HDD: 160 GB, WD Raptor 7200, with 2 partitions:
partion C: 45 GB total - 2.3 free (used for XP and program files)
partion D: 103 GB total - 25 free (used for all other other files, i.e. all my source code)
Thanks for any thoughts.
Edit: Tried using HD Tune Benchmark and here are my results. HD Tune: ST3160812AS Benchmark
Transfer Rate Minimum : 2.9 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 73.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 54.7 MB/sec
Access Time : 17.7 ms
Burst Rate : 137.2 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 5.6%