reviewing your hard drive
 

I just established an account and I'm not even sure this is the place I needed to go? I'm wanting to get comfortable with my computer and its components. Right now my computer seems to be quite sluggish. I'm wondering if the hard drive is getting too old. How would I check this?

Let's see...

Fire up your terminal (Konsole, Gnome Terminal), log in as root (su -) and see the output of this command:

(that is, if hda is your hard drive)

Try that command a couple of times, and the lower number is your hard drive's speed.