I've got an issue with one of my hard drives. Up until a few days ago it worked perfectly.

Now, whenever I open it to explore the contents etc, it takes like 3-5s to load up the files. It's extremely annoying and I'm not sure what is causing it.

I know this is obvious, but I have to ask... have you tried defragging the drive?

Yep it defrags daily.

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

OK, that gives me a lot to work with. I just purchased the drive around six months ago so I hope it isn't physically busted. I will update the drivers then check if the cables are all firmly connected and see if that does it.

thanks

I did nothing and all of the sudden it stopped misbehaving. Have I formed a telepathic bond with my PC?

So I have a Toshiba Satellite L300D-043 laptop, Windows 7 32-bit Home Premium edition. When I turn it on, the display remains blank. However, when I connect an external monitor or projector to it, everything shows up on the screen. So I don't think there is anything wrong with the graphics card, or perhaps it's on it's last legs. The graphics card is an ATI Radeon 3100 HD. I'm so confused LOL!

Either that, or you unwittingly performed the "magic restart"?

Before looking at the laptop screen and/or screen connection, you may want to check to make sure that the button you use to send the display output to an external source isn't pressed or stuck. Boot up the laptop and hit the function key for that, toggling it on/off to see if that's the issue. If you're unsure which button it is, check your manual or do a google search. It's usually a function key with a little monitor symbol on it.

Everything is as it should be. However, when I hook the computer up to an external monitor, it shows only that monitor as an output source. So there's no way for me to know if my laptop's display has been disabled in some way. Also, when I hook the computer up to a projector, the screen should be on (as that is the setting I chose to facilitate the use of Power Point presentations). But now the information is displayed only through the projector - the computer is treating it like an external monitor I guess.
I also tried toggling the function key for the monitor, nothing happened.

Looks like I'll be making a trip to the computer store tomorrow.

Thanks for your help anyways, Freebase. It turned out to be a problem with the video card, which is attached to the motherboard. Apparently that is a $500 - $600 repair, totally not worth it when I can get a way better, brand new laptop for nearly half the cost of repairing mine. I'll probably be getting a new one anyways as this one seems to now be completely fried. It doesn't even turn on anymore.