Hmm.. Well, hard-drives being mechanical and all, the armature for the read/write head is usually the first thing to go. Is it an old drive? If not, there may be some sort of defect. The fact that it seems to have started up so suddenly is concerning.
Another idea is updating the drivers for the motherboard's SATA controller. Basically, updating all your drivers, if possible, is a good idea regardless.
As far as any other physical aspect, it could be possible that the SATA (or IDE) connector on both the drive and the motherboard need to be cleaned of any corrosion and/or reseated. Software-wise, I can't really think of anything that would cause such a slowdown besides shotty drivers unless there's some third-party at play. Have you done the obligatory virus scans and all?
Overall, I'd suggest first updating all your drivers, as that will be the easiest to do. The ones you need to be concerned with are your computer's chipset driver, and any SATA controller drivers. And while you're at it, you can update your NIC, Audio and Graphics driver just out of good practice. If all your drivers are up to date, and your comp is free of viruses and all that, then you might look at the physical side of it
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