Internal hard disk really slow to write new files

Hi
I've had some problems with my mac lately;
it was running really slowly so I ran tech tool deluxe and it detected a bad surface sector.
I wasn't sure how to fix this so I copied everything from my internal hard disk onto 2 external hard disks.
Then I deleted all documents, files and most apps from the internal hard drive and zeroed out all free space using disk utility. (Which took four days).
Finally I did a re-install of leopard and ran tech tool deluxe again, which came back with no problems.
However, now I'm trying to copy all the files back onto hard disk it's taking a very long time e.g. iTunes files totaling 31.41GB would take 14hours
Trying to move the same iTunes files to the other external hard disk takes 25 minutes.
Any help would be appreciated

Then I deleted all documents, files and most apps from the internal hard drive and zeroed out all free space using disk utility. (Which took four days).
It should not take four days to zero out free space. And it should not take 14 hours to write 30GB of data from a directly connected external drive. There is probably a problem with the part of the drive that was not deleted and zeroed; in the system installation. Or the problem could be in the disk directory structure.
The only way to fix it is to erase the entire drive. You should not need to zero out data, although doing so would do no harm and should take no longer than a few hours (depends on size of drive). Then reinstall a fresh copy of Mac OS X. After going through the updates and installing your apps, restore your personal data from those external drives.
If the drive is still acting slow, you may have a hardware problem with the drive.

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