Braided refers to a cosmetic covering on the wires in this case. Some wires (usb cords etc) have a layer of shielding which can be braided, but that's not what it means in game. Here's an example of braided psu wires https://www.amazon.com/Clovertale-Sleeved-Cable-connectors-White/dp/B078WQWVJZ?th=1
http://www.hdtune.com/download.html
You can grab this, it's free. Open it and select your D:\ drive with 140 GB free, then click the + tab. If there are any warnings (yellow) or errors (red) then your drive is dying. If there are no errors you can do a full error scan with the error scan thing but it's a very slow process so maybe you could start the error scan just before sleep, leave it running overnight and wake up in the morning. You want all green squares in the error scan. If there are any red spots then your drive is dying.
If you don't turn up any errors there then you can run a windows disk scan to check for general corruption. Click the windows 7 magnifying glass for search -> type in command prompt -> right-click on command prompt and run as administrator -> type: chkdsk /f d:<enter> like that, press enter after : for D:, and it will run a check disk on the drive or schedule it for the next time your computer reboots, one of the two. If you see any errors from hdtune health check or error scan then you'll have to replace the hard drive and back up / copy anything off of it that you can.