Is this a hard drive problem or something else?

[iM8Pizza]

Hi there

 

I'm currently using my laptop as I have plenty of stuff to do outside and not just at home, one thing that I really notice about the laptop that I'm using is that it's painfully slow, as, for example, right now I am printing a document and even as I am typing this there was once where the screen froze for a little while and the continuing again afterwards (after a couple of seconds), there's also this case where I was browsing the web and it just froze for a while before continuing to operate again and this is just from switching tabs, there are many other cases like whilst I was playing a game (I barely could load a Cities Skylines save game that I made in my PC (it's quite big already)) but I suppose from those examples you guys will get the idea already.

 

So, what are your thoughts? What is actually going wrong with my laptop?
Thank you for reading this far, and have a good day.

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

What laptop specs?

 

A ssd will make it much faster.

 

 

[Od1sseas]

Scan for viruses (Malwarebytes/Hitman Pro/Zemana Anti-Malware)

Uninstall unwanted applications/Disable unnecessary services and startup programs

 

If you still have that problem just get an SSD

[ImAlsoRan]

Try defragmenting your hard drive.

[tikker]

Are you running Windows 10? Is disk usage at 100% in task manager? I remember Windows 10 not liking hard drives. Try something like disabling certain things like search: https://www.drivereasy.com/knowledge/100-disk-usage-windows-10-fixed/

[iM8Pizza]

@Electronics Wizardy i5-6200U, 8Gb of RAM (OEM, didn't bother checking what it is), 500gb of HDD.
@Od1sseas ah yes, I will install ClamAV now I guess, as for unnecessary programs, well, I only have the essential ones (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, VLC, Steam, and I suppose that's about it, and GIMP)
@ImAlsoRan how to do that? I'll check google for that

@tikker no, I'm using Ubuntu 18.10

 

as for SSD, well, I mainly use this laptop for work-related stuff and they mostly consist of documents which I don't think needs an SSD to runs well, but holy stuff the load even for the documents are so slow.

[tikker]

3 minutes ago, iM8Pizza said:

@Electronics Wizardy i5-6200U, 8Gb of RAM (OEM, didn't bother checking what it is), 500gb of HDD.
@Od1sseas ah yes, I will install ClamAV now I guess, as for unnecessary programs, well, I only have the essential ones (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, VLC, Steam, and I suppose that's about it, and GIMP)
@ImAlsoRan how to do that? I'll check google for that

@tikker no, I'm using Ubuntu 18.10

 

as for SSD, well, I mainly use this laptop for work-related stuff and they mostly consist of documents which I don't think needs an SSD to runs well, but holy stuff the load even for the documents are so slow.

Ah, well than that is out the window. How old is the drive? Never hurts to check its SMART status for impending doom.

[ImAlsoRan]

Defragging on Linux is really hard, but you might consider increasing your swap.

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 hours ago, iM8Pizza said:

@Electronics Wizardy i5-6200U, 8Gb of RAM (OEM, didn't bother checking what it is), 500gb of HDD.
@Od1sseas ah yes, I will install ClamAV now I guess, as for unnecessary programs, well, I only have the essential ones (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, VLC, Steam, and I suppose that's about it, and GIMP)
@ImAlsoRan how to do that? I'll check google for that

@tikker no, I'm using Ubuntu 18.10

 

as for SSD, well, I mainly use this laptop for work-related stuff and they mostly consist of documents which I don't think needs an SSD to runs well, but holy stuff the load even for the documents are so slow.

Since your on linux what does htop look like? 

 

Also look at what the disk usage is like with iostat.

[iM8Pizza]

@tikker I bought this laptop about 4 years ago or so in 2015, I'll check the SMART status after typing this

On 1/14/2019 at 1:35 AM, ImAlsoRan said:

Defragging on Linux is really hard, but you might consider increasing your swap.

 

*the @feature seems to stop working somehow so I'm quoting it instead* increasing my swap? never heard of that before, would you mind telling me about it?

 

On 1/14/2019 at 2:19 AM, Electronics Wizardy said:

Since your on linux what does htop look like? 

 

Also look at what the disk usage is like with iostat.

ah wow, this is the first time I know about such a thing, how should I tell you on how the htop looks like? (I just downloaded it earlier. I also just download dstat earlier (apparently it's a replacement for iostat or something, CMIIW) and I should tell you that I'm also confused with how to see these things, would you mind telling me more about it?

[iM8Pizza]

To everyone that is reading this, my laptop seems to be doing well now, it loads web and documents as it should be and I'm thinking maybe this is because I have not used my laptop for a long time? or is it something else? Please do tell me more about it if you know about this kind of thing

 

Thank you

[Electronics Wizardy]

30 minutes ago, iM8Pizza said:

@tikker I bought this laptop about 4 years ago or so in 2015, I'll check the SMART status after typing this

*the @feature seems to stop working somehow so I'm quoting it instead* increasing my swap? never heard of that before, would you mind telling me about it?

 

ah wow, this is the first time I know about such a thing, how should I tell you on how the htop looks like? (I just downloaded it earlier. I also just download dstat earlier (apparently it's a replacement for iostat or something, CMIIW) and I should tell you that I'm also confused with how to see these things, would you mind telling me more about it? 

htop and iostat and dstat should tell you what in the system is slowing your down by showing disk usage, ram usage and cpu usage. Use it until it gets slow and then see what the usage is like.

[iM8Pizza]

8 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

htop and iostat and dstat should tell you what in the system is slowing your down by showing disk usage, ram usage and cpu usage. Use it until it gets slow and then see what the usage is like.

Ah alright then, I will do so when I notice any slowdowns, thank you.

[Yvette222]

There may be some possible causes:

The hardware is out of date, the hard drive lacks free space, the computer is running out of memory, or the drive has physical issues such as bad sectors.