hard drive gets caught in a "loop", applications starved of resources

[gkline]

I have an HP Pavilion dv6 (dv6-6145dx) with Windows 7 x64 installed, 500Gb HD (Hitachi brand, 40% free) and 4Gb RAM.  It has been running just fine for a long, long time.  Recently installed Office 365 last month for business use, which I was concerned might be a resource hog, but is generally working fine.  I also have AVAST! Antivirus Pro installed.

Last week I started to notice a strange problem I hadn't seen before.  Some applications were becoming unresponsive.  I noticed the hard drive light was on constantly.  So I attempted to close down some applications (including Outlook), figuring I was running out of resources.  But the unresponsiveness continued.

Listening to the hard drive, I could hear it "stuck in a loop".  Something like "click--[bunch of rapid clicks]--click-click--[pause].  Repeats every 2 seconds.  Keeps going on and on.  If I leave the computer alone for about 15~20 mins, I may discover it recovered.  But once I launch any disk intensive program, this would repeat.  Doesn't matter if it's a 3rd party application or system (like launching Event Viewer).

In an attempt to narrow this down, I booted up in SAFE mode with networking.  I figured if it was driver related, it wouldn't happen.  I launch Event Viewer and again, the hard drive loop happens.  Everything sluggish.

My anti-virus is up to date. I ran a complete system scan (F2) and no errors.  I ran Resource Monitor and Process Explorer hoping to identify whatever process was doing this... couldn't see any obvious culprit.  I also created a new user and logged in with that account... was still able to run into this problem.  So it's not user account related.

I'm at my wit's end.  I'm thankful that I have another computer I can use, but this shouldn't be happening.  

Anyone familiar with this kind of hard drive behavior consuming resources?

[gkline]

OK... I did a system restore to a point earlier than when the problem was first noticed... and now things are worse.

Previously, the hard drive looping was manifest after the desktop was initialized and software was being executed.  Now, it is happening during boot-up, which is increasing the boot time by a factor of about 5 times as long.

So I suspect that there's some oddity with the hardware then.  No way could it be any programs gone wrong, if it's happening during initial stage of boot-up.

[gkline]

Still no luck resolving this.  I bought an external USB 3.0 hard drive SATA III enclosure and attempted to use the drive that way, but I couldn't get it properly recognized.  It kept coming up as having raw partitions.  Does that mean the disk is encrypted?  I don't recall doing that (it's not a work laptop).  I was able to load a 2.5" internal drive from another laptop, so the enclosure works... although Windows absolutely SUCKS in how it manages permissions.  You have to go through all kinds of crazy gyrations just to get proper access.

Anyway, I was able to boot up into command line and copy files to a USB drive (eventually got 16Gb to be recognized).  So at least that worked.  I was able to copy over about 50Gb of files at this point.  No file errors.  So, I'm not quite sure what's going on with this drive.  If it was failing, wouldn't I be running into bad sectors and file copy errors?

I ran the repair menu and went to undo the system restore, as previously uninstalling some software created all kinds of broken references.  But, that triggered the hard drive loop and the process took a painful 4 hours to complete.  I can boot up normally to the desktop, but keep running into that hard drive looping, which causes significant lag with everything.  I've searched on-line for anything like this, especially for Hitachi drives.  NOTHING.  How could I be the first to encounter this?

[gkline · Accepted solution]

I ran another system test, and finally got more details:

"Hard Disk Test" Failed

"Hard Disk 1 Quick" (303)

"Hard Disk 1 Full" (305)

OK, so from what I've found this is a serious error that means the hard drive is failing.

This is a 4 year old computer.  I've never had a hard drive failure in a laptop before, and I've had several laptops up to nearly 8 years , with no hard drive problems.  The drive inside is made by Hitachi... they don't exactly have the best reputation.  Anyway, all searching I've come across never goes into detail as to what might have caused the failure and if certain drives have a reliability issue.  The responses is always "you need to replace your hard drive."

Anyway, I won't try to diagnose this further.  I'm sending my laptop in for repair (still under warranty--running out soon, whew!).