Replace HDD or not?

[sorcerer]

I've got an Acer Aspire 5732Z in that the customer said is running slow. It started as Windows 7 but has been upgraded to 10 by the owner and it's 64-bit with 3GB RAM.

I've tried the usual suspects, ie, clean out temp files, get rid of a couple of PUPs that were present, no viruses, it's not overheating, RAM tests good with Memtest86+ and the hard drive completes tests without error in GSmartControl.

But it's still slow so I decided to run HDTune and see what that told me and you can see the results below. The customer's drive is a 250GB WD Blue and that is the first picture below. I have a spare drive that I keep for testing purposes so I imaged the original drive onto my 1TB WD Blue in a 300GB partition that I created for it and the result of the HDTune test can be seen in the second picture below.#

Am I correct in thinking that the customer's original drive needs to be replaced?

 

[Alexey]

Can we see a S.M.A.R.T. information for the drive in question?

 

[Markverhyden]

All I can say is 3TB and 250gb spindle screams of Vista. But it may have been shipped right at the transition. But yes, you conclusion is accurate, looks like the original one is heading south. Personally when I run into a situation like this, and all software stuff comes up clean, I usually recommend upgrading to an SSD. Kill two birds with one stone, new drive and better technology. It'll be like night and day.

 

[sorcerer]

Can we see a S.M.A.R.T. information for the drive in question?

I didn't record the SMART data Alexey but I'll run the test again and record it this time. It'll be later on before I can post as we're going out now, but I can tell you that it showed no errors at all in GSmartControl. I'll post back later.

 

[sorcerer]

All I can say is 3TB and 250gb spindle screams of Vista. But it may have been shipped right at the transition. But yes, you conclusion is accurate, looks like the original one is heading south. Personally when I run into a situation like this, and all software stuff comes up clean, I usually recommend upgrading to an SSD. Kill two birds with one stone, new drive and better technology. It'll be like night and day.

Thank you Mark, that's a good suggestion.

 

[Altster]

Can the memory be upgraded? Sure sounds like it needs to be - if at all possible!

That and an SSD and the unit will fly!

 

[Porthos]

The ram was already skimped out on by the MFG. The CPU is just a low end pentium. Of course it is slow.

https://www.cnet.com/products/acer-...mium-64-bit-3-gb-ram-250-gb-hdd-series/specs/

 

[Sky-Knight]

Drive is over 4 years old? Strange things that hint at possible drive fault?

SSD it... or trash it.

 

[mikeroq]

Jeeze almost 10 year old laptop. I would tell them they need to replace the computer. If not replace with an SSD bare minimum.

 

[johnrobert]

I just put an SSD in an old laptop that had win 7 starter very cheap processor 2 gigs ram could not go any higher, I advised against it but the customer is always right
Amazingly it runs great much better than expected

 

[Kitten Kong]

Yup definitely time for the ssd upgrade talk.

I hardly ever install a spindle drive now. It’s ssd all the way.

I’ve lost count on the amount of ssd drives I’ve installed this year.

Must be getting close to the 100 mark.

 

[Markverhyden]

I just put an SSD in an old laptop that had win 7 starter very cheap processor 2 gigs ram could not go any higher, I advised against it but the customer is always right
Amazingly it runs great much better than expected

People tend to forget that hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys are on the drive and enabled by default. Having those on SSD makes a big difference.

 

[Alexey]

People tend to forget that hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys are on the drive and enabled by default. Having those on SSD makes a big difference.

There is/was also a widespread concern that having a page file on SSD will wear that SSD down quickly. Which does not happen.

 

[sapphirescales]

The ram was already skimped out on by the MFG. The CPU is just a low end pentium. Of course it is slow.

https://www.cnet.com/products/acer-...mium-64-bit-3-gb-ram-250-gb-hdd-series/specs/

Technically they didn't "skimp" out on those old Vista Acer's. Most of them had Windows Vista x32 so wouldn't benefit from more than 3GB of memory anyway. It's when they started coming with Windows 7 64 bit and they were still trying to sell old inventory of Vista machines with Windows 7 and 3GB of RAM that these were a bad buy.