Hard drives kind of work or dont work. Sectors can drop out, and the SMART bit of it can manage this, and move the data, but I dont think they are going to slow down over time.
You say you reformatted the machine? And that didnt solve anything? No speedup at all?
It might be some of your RAM is conked out, and your machine is thrashing the HD cause it has nowhere to store anything. Do a mem test on it, see what teh craic is with that.
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