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Computer Help and Support

Tasmanian Devil

(148 posts)

1. Super slow disk?

Reply to Marthe48 (Original post)

Fri Mar 20, 2026, 01:00 PM

Friday

This might not apply to you, but if your disk seems really really slow, it could be in the process of failing. If reads or writes to the disk fail, the operating system will automatically retry several times until it works. This is good, but it can hide that your drive is in the process of dying.

Suggestions:

(1) Make sure you have backups. Files stored in only one place are in danger of being lost.
(2) Run some disk performance tests (diagnostics) and see if the speed is reasonable.

Cautionary tale: I recently was in the middle of helping a friend do (2) on their slow laptop when the disk changed from just being slow to not working at all. Then I found out they had no backups. Oops.

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UPDATE: Doing a disk cleanup [View all] Marthe48 Friday OP

Super slow disk? Tasmanian Devil Friday #1

Thanks for the tips Marthe48 Friday #2

Highly recommend backup(s). usonian Friday #3

It's more than likely canetoad Friday #4

I think the main thing is most of the drive is full Marthe48 Friday #5