I think there is something wrong with my harddrive:

And I've never really paid attention to hard drive health so I could use some help in diagnosing this problem.

The reason I started to suspect something was up was because it was taking forever to save things like Office files. I initially shrugged it off, but it's become bothersome. I feel like my HD just isn't writing fast enough. Is that even possible?

I ran a chkdsk and Vista defrags it weekly.

I've just downloaded HDtune and run a benchmark, the results are attached.

Also, I would like to check my HDD write speed but can't seem to find a convenient program to do so. Any ideas?

 

Probably running something in the background; those look like regular HD accesses, from a virus scanner or something. Run it again with everything shut off, in safe mode, disconnected form the internet.

 

Looks the minimum is a bit less.t.Higher temps too.

 

Here's a link talking about that hdd, there's a hd tune of it too in one of the tests and looks a bit like yours without the spikes that go to 5mb/sec minimum. So I'd say you have someone that really wants something from your hdd, check what processes you have running around.

edit... I mean here's the link http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1371/6/hitachi_travelstar_5k250_2_5_hard_drive/index.html