My PC Has a Huge Problem

[BenjaminBRE]

My PC specs: https://pastebin.com/MHZSWJqQ (dxdiag)

 

So, I've actually been having this issue with my PC since over a year when I first pieced it together. I've troubleshot it off and on throughout the year. Basically, download and installing a 20MB update on Steam will straight up take 20 minutes, despite my DL speed being 100Mb/s. The download on Steam and spike from 12MB/s down to the hundreds of kilobytes. I've done some research and people have told me that the download speed is outpacing the SSHD write speed, and it has to pause the download creating the spiking phenomenon. For ease of access, I have a Seagate Firecuda 2.5" 2TB ST2000LX001. Despite suspecting the SSHD to be the issue, I've not found a way to fix it. I've ran SeaTools and it doesn't detect any issues. I've also reinstalled Windows, moved the SATA to a different 6GB/s port and no dice. I've tried defragmentation. I've network tested while download spiking has occurred on Steam and the connection speed is fine. The only thing I can maybe say that sticks out (but probably isn't relevant) is that for whatever reason, this is the only SSHD/HDD I've ever had that doesn't lock the SATA cable in when plugged in. It's totally loose-fit and will fall out via gravity if not for the tape I've applied over it. Maybe that's relevant? Probably not. Anyone have any suggestions at all? I'm totally defeated by this. I provided my entire dxdiag.txt because I don't care and I'm not omitting anything. 

[BenjaminBRE]

1 minute ago, Caroline said:

If your drive were an old IDE66 that would make some sense but 12MB/s is nowhere near the top speed for a SATA drive.

 

Is the cable too loose to the point of not making proper contact or it just jiggles a bit? You shouldn't need any tape to keep it tight, have you tried different cables?

Yep. A cable that clicks in to my SATA SSD or my WD Black doesn't click in to the ST2000. And despite the tape it is in fact all the way inserted.

[Founders]

First of all, buy a new SATA cable that makes a proper connection. Next run Crystal Disk Mark to see if your SSHD is actually functioning normally. I know you said it passed Seatools but I suspect that cable may be causing some issues in regards to connection congruity. Post a screenshot after the test concludes. 

[seagate_surfer]

The computer could also need some updates, the ethernet port to be more specific. That ethernet port is Intel or other brand? Have you checked to see if you have updates available on such a port? Have you tried to manually importing the .INF file for te driver of that port?

[Roswell]

There's nothing wrong with your machine.

 

100Mbit = 12MB/s~.

 

Speeds slow down because your mechanical drive can only do so much and will make the downloader wait periodically.

 

12MB/s of random writes while reading and decompressing sounds perfectly normal for a mechanical drive.

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, BenjaminBRE said:

My PC specs: https://pastebin.com/MHZSWJqQ (dxdiag)

 

So, I've actually been having this issue with my PC since over a year when I first pieced it together. I've troubleshot it off and on throughout the year. Basically, download and installing a 20MB update on Steam will straight up take 20 minutes, despite my DL speed being 100Mb/s. The download on Steam and spike from 12MB/s down to the hundreds of kilobytes. I've done some research and people have told me that the download speed is outpacing the SSHD write speed, and it has to pause the download creating the spiking phenomenon. For ease of access, I have a Seagate Firecuda 2.5" 2TB ST2000LX001. Despite suspecting the SSHD to be the issue, I've not found a way to fix it. I've ran SeaTools and it doesn't detect any issues. I've also reinstalled Windows, moved the SATA to a different 6GB/s port and no dice. I've tried defragmentation. I've network tested while download spiking has occurred on Steam and the connection speed is fine. The only thing I can maybe say that sticks out (but probably isn't relevant) is that for whatever reason, this is the only SSHD/HDD I've ever had that doesn't lock the SATA cable in when plugged in. It's totally loose-fit and will fall out via gravity if not for the tape I've applied over it. Maybe that's relevant? Probably not. Anyone have any suggestions at all? I'm totally defeated by this. I provided my entire dxdiag.txt because I don't care and I'm not omitting anything. 

 

Unless your drive is nearly full, there shouldn't be any kind of performance impact like that. When the drive is >90% full, you start running into thrashing-like performance loss.

 

Did you install "the chipset" drivers, may also be called AHCI or SATA drivers.

 

Because otherwise this sounds like the problem is simply the fact that it's a 2.5" drive.

https://www.seagate.com/www-content/product-content/firecuda-family/firecuda/files/firecuda-2-5-ds1908-1-1609us.pdf

 

2.5" drives are laptop drives, and laptops are simply never going to perform like a desktop due to cooling issues. Note it says "up to 140MB/sec" and is a 5400RPM drive, so unless you formatted it incorrectly, I'd look elsewhere.

 

Download any variation of S.M.A.R.T tools, like Crystaldiskinfo  and check if there's something under "Current" that is below "threshold", or you could download a benchmark tool instead and try benchmarking it and comparing it to other's benchmarks of the same drive.

[NineEyeRon]

Buy a 1TB SSD, hybrid drives only have limited use cases these days. They are legacy or niche solutions.

[Blue4130]

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

 

2.5" drives are laptop drives, and laptops are simply never going to perform like a desktop due to cooling issues. Note it says "up to 140MB/sec" and is a 5400RPM drive, so unless you formatted it incorrectly, I'd look elsewhere.

 

 

Enterprise would disagree. 2.5" is extremely common in storage servers. Density matters and 2.5 trumps 3.5. (with m.2 gaining market share) 

[Mark Kaine]

9 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

Enterprise would disagree. 2.5" is extremely common in storage servers. Density matters and 2.5 trumps 3.5. (with m.2 gaining market share) 

I have an old Toshiba 2.5 SSHD and it's performing wonderfully... way better than the Seagate barracuda (3.5) and almost as good (in practice even better)  than the Kingston SSD I have. 

 

 

I always thought it's an outlier,  but good to know as I'd actually prefer 2.5"  I also have an older Hitachi 2.5" (out of a PS3)  but sadly it's only 250GB so I use it as a backup for important files (aka mods,  videos and drivers) currently

[Mark Kaine]

10 hours ago, NineEyeRon said:

Buy a 1TB SSD, hybrid drives only have limited use cases these days. They are legacy or niche solutions.

You aren't completely wrong,  but I wouldn't call it "niche".

 

 

You just have to understand how they work...  For example an "open world cinematic sleeping pill game" that constantly loads new areas or "corridors" will not perform better than on a standard HDD,  but other games that usually only load the same couple of areas,  like lootshooters,  fps, or fighting games will load much faster,  have less stuttering and ideally less pop ins, because the 8GB or so fast NAND cache actually works for these situations (provided the SSHD isn't trash) 

 

 

[Kisai]

10 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

Enterprise would disagree. 2.5" is extremely common in storage servers. Density matters and 2.5 trumps 3.5. (with m.2 gaining market share) 

Enterprises don't put 5400 RPM "green" drives in their servers. This is not a SAS Segate Constellation nor a Exos drive. This is a Laptop drive, so depending on the device powermanagement it may even be spinning down the mechanical part of the drive until it fills up the NAND on a write access.

 

[Mark Kaine]

18 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Enterprises don't put 5400 RPM "green" drives in their servers. This is not a SAS Segate Constellation nor a Exos drive. This is a Laptop drive, so depending on the device powermanagement it may even be spinning down the mechanical part of the drive until it fills up the NAND on a write access.

 

Tbf I read firecuda has issues despite getting raving reviews at release... 

 

Probably a big reason why SSHDs didn't get mainstream because the tech is very good - at worst you get same performance as standard HDD. 

 

And opinions about 5400 vs 7200 vary wildly too.  Of course 7200 would be faster on average but is it even noticeable under realistic circumstances, I'm not sure? 

 

 

Here's my Seagate barracuda (3.5" 7200RPM)

 

 

Against my Toshiba SSHD (2.5" 5400rpm) for example 

 

 

The difference is massive,  especially 4k reads / writes,  of course it is because it's using NAND

 

 

 

[seagate_surfer]

SSHD is a better storage solution, the best type that is not SSD. If you can get an SSD then save for one, but if not, these types of units will deliver.

[BenjaminBRE]

Alright, I know this is old, but I am still having the problem. Don't think I've mentioned it before but I've correlated steam slowing down with my entire PC slowing down as well, in addition to task manager showing 100% disk usage even though it'll only show the top program using maybe 1MB/s. 

 

Oh, and here's why none of my SATA cables lock in. As you can see in the photo, there are literally no holes cut for it to even be possible. I'm yet to find out if this is standard design on these models or not, but either way, I'm 95% of the way there of me throwing this thing in the trash. I had an old 2TB Western Digital Caviar Black 10,000 RPM drive and that thing NEVER had issues like this thing does. I've also had the 3.5" version of this Firecuda drive and it didn't have any problems either.

 

Oh and BTW, my main PC is an HTPC form factor and that's why I didn't want to tear it apart for so long... It's a pain, like getting into a BMW.

[BenjaminBRE]

Oh, and here are my CrystalDiskMark results: 

 

Oh and more madness:

 

My disk usage is just floating around at 31%, even though literally NOTHING it happening on my PC, and the top program is using 0.4 MB/s! This thing is confirmed going in the trash and I'll be complaining to Seagate. It has to be faulty, right? 

[BenjaminBRE]

Bump. If someone could please let me know if my crystaldiskmark test is normal for my drive or if it is in-fact faulty/abnormally slow, that would be great. Pretty sure the crux of my issues lies right here. Anyone?