How slow is slow? Have you tried running HDTach on the drive?
A laptop drive will be nowhere near as fast as a desktop one, even the new 7200rpm ones are let down by the size of the platters - big platters mean more data under the head per revolution which gives better transfer rates.
I doubt low level formatting will do anything, it's not something that should be attempted at home as it can lead to suspect areas of the disk which have been soft mapped out under normal usage being reallocated.