Gosh that's an old drive. Seems its capable of some speed, tho: Data transfer rate (buffer to host) Mode 5 Ultra ATA4 100 MB/s Mode 4 Ultra ATA4 66.6 MB/s Mode 2 Ultra ATA4 33.3 MB/s Mode 2 DMA4 16.6 MB/s Mode 4 PIO4 16.6 MB/s John Pierce is right - if you don't use a dma mode, the cpu has a lot more work. SMART says your drive is good, but it still could be failing. Or the cabling is wrong - very common if there's both a master and slave present, but even possible if only one drive is attached. The ide port on the mainboard could be failing as well. Also, but not as likely - how the drive is defined in the bios, or how other things are set in there. (if you have always used the defaults, then nothing to worry about)