HDD Response Time App

I have a Toshiba MK1234GSX ( http://sdd.toshiba.com/main.aspx?Pat...Specifications ) HDD on my HP laptop with Vista Home Premium 32 . It would appear that when accessing certain areas of the disk the response is very slow .
1. Is this an indication that there may be trouble up ahead ?
2. Is there some application available that can access the disk , checking response times , that can automatically copy data from a poor to a good area , and even include the poor areas in the "bad block" list ? If not , shouldn't this be an easy app to write up , for someone with disk know-how ?

There is no way to definitively tell if your hard drive is about to die. Typically, the only definitive indication is when your hard drive has already died. However, very slow response times, or the inability to read certain files is certainly a good clue.

There are only a few tests that are relevant to detecting impending hard drive failure. One such tool is SMART monitoring. Try this tool here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/smar...p.exe/download. But be aware that even SMART monitoring isn't 100% accurate, just because of the nature of the different kinds of hard drive failure that there could be.

Another way to check is to run scandisk on the drive. To do this, go to My Computer, and right-click on the drive letter. Go to Properties --> Tools --> (error checking) Check Now. I would run two sweeps - one sweep with the default checkbox options (only Automatically Fix File System errors checked), and another sweep with full options selected ( Automatically fix + Scan and recover bad sectors). Note that any errors reported on the FIRST sweep are ok - any errors reported on the SECOND sweep (bad sectors) is bad news.

If you have any data on the drive, if SMART reports a problem, or if the 2nd Scandisk sweep (bad sectors), then stop using the drive and back up whatever data you can to an external USB drive. Hard drive crashes happen fast and ugly. So if you were lucky enough to catch any early indicator from any of the tests I mentioned above, then you have a small window of time before the drive becomes unusable - use that time to back up your data.

Thanks for your reply , kent1146 . I will try the SMART monitor . The Vista Disk error check tool shows all as OK .