how to detect laptop hardware/drive problems?

[Tyler <tyler.smith@mail.mcgill.ca>]

Hi,

I have noticed that my laptop is starting to slow down quite noticeably, 
although irregularly so. Basic tasks like opening xterm in fluxbox 
sometimes take a few seconds or more, and there's even a noticeable 
delay with command line stuff like ls. Not always, usually after I've 
been running for awhile (hours). I also notice that sometimes my 
harddrive seems to 'rev' (spin for a second, pause, spin for a second, 
pause, repeated continuously over a minute or more), even when I'm not 
doing anything (just reading documents in xpdf or a browser window.

Maybe this is just normal for a laptop, but I don't know. Is there some 
way to check to see if I'm having any non-trivial hardware issues?

I'm running etch, fluxbox, 2.6.17-2, Thinkpad R60.

Cheers,

Tyle