Hard drive making a knocking noise. No error. Windows slow 1

[phillyphreak]

2 days ago, when I turn on my pc, as Windows XP begins to load, I hear a knocking sound coming from the hard drive. Everything will come up on the desktop eventually, but it is extremely slow and the knocking noise continues. I do not receive any error messages. I have a 60 gig ultra ata hard drive from a Tiger direct Systemax pc. I have been trying to copy some files that I need from the pc before it crashes all the way. Is the drive gone at this point?

 

[GrowingHaze]

These sound like the symptoms of a full hard drive. When it is almost out of space, files are broken into hundreds of pieces, making the hard drive work A LOT more than usual. If this is the case, free up some hard drive space and run a defrag afterwards.

-Growing Haze

Gates giveth, Gates taketh away.

 

[phillyphreak]

The HD is a 60 gig, and I have 35 gig available on it. I can't run defrag because it is running too slow(a snails pace).
I am looking at getting a new HDD as I believe at this point it is toast.

Thanks for the response.

 

[GrowingHaze]

Just had a crazy thought. If it is that slow, check it both your cpu L1 and L2 caches are enabled in your bios. Just a thought.

-Growing Haze

Gates giveth, Gates taketh away.

 

[phillyphreak]

I will try that. Thanks for the tip!