An uncommon PC problem with common symptoms...?

[mNY12]

I am turning to Yahoo! Answers because any search for "choppy computers" turns up a bunch of useless results.I know computers pretty well. I'm running Windows XP. I run into a problem where my mouse pointer skips and video is choppy, etc...all along the same interval (ie, they will all chop at the same time).Listening close, I can hear this constant rhythm as a very quiet whining sound from the hard drive. I know it's not a virus, and it's not a rogue process that I didn't know was running.But then, all it takes to get everything back to normal is to enter standby or restart. Then wait about 20 minutes for the problem to come back again. I've been monitoring my usage to see if it's a program but there's no luck.So before I go out and get a hard drive, does anyone have any ideas? Is it really a hardware problem if I can solve it with standby?

 

[Harley Drive]

Either the drive is on the way out or the drivers are missing or corrupted, or one of the connections is not 100% check in device manager for the dma settings