USB Hard drive acting strange

[cornick]

I have a 500gb USB drive that has been acting funny lately. I open it up, and as soon as I try and open a sub folder it just sits there, doesn't actually respond to anything I do.

If I do a dir /s in a cmd prompt it scans everything.

So I'm not sure if it's a windows problem or a drive problem or what....

Any ideas?

 

[atomic tofu]

what's the os? I'm guessing drive problem and not windows problem.

 

[cornick]

XP
(sorry, for that important detail)

Also should mention I'm not a complete computer dolt.

 

[atomic tofu]

well...aside from it all...you either have malware or a highly fragmented drive

 

[cornick]

I don't have malware. It's a fresh install of windows as of about 3 days ago and I haven't really touched it since.

I'll check the fragmentation of it I guess.