PC Freezing for a few seconds randomly

Techa · October 20, 2020

I’ve recently been having an issue with my almost 3-year-old PC randomly locking up for 2-3 seconds before coming back like nothing happened. I currently am running a 250gb Samsung 970 evo boot drive, along with an 860 evo 2tb, Seagate barracuda 1tb and a barracuda 2tb as storage. The freezing can occur while I am gaming or even when I’m just browsing the web. When only the two Samsungs are connected everything runs fine with no freezes. I have tried reformatting both Seagate drives, checking the drives for errors, checking for registry errors, updating drivers, updating windows, and replacing cables to no avail.

I have researched this problem and the last possibility is that my power supply could be failing. Is this a fair assessment? I am currently running an EVGA SuperNova G3 750W PSU, which, theoretically, should enough for my system. Should I start shopping for a new power supply or are there other solutions that I could try?

Here is my build on PC part picker for reference: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/4bqJVc

MewMew · October 20, 2020

This is going to sound mediocre but have you checked for any malware?

truescot · October 20, 2020

Being that it all works when the platter drives are unplugged it is almost definately one of those that are the problem. It is not uncommon for a computer to freeze like you are mentioning when one of the platter drives that has been parked decides to spin up, it is not normally noticed on a system that is using the platter drive all the time as it does not go to sleep but as you have got 2 ssd's most likely doing the lion's share of the data access the hdd's go to sleep and sometimes wake up just because windows chose that moment to poll them. There are 2 ways to approach this, the first is to get rid of platter hard drives completely out of that system and just keep your big stuff on a nas or something else externally, the second way is to stop your hard drives going to sleep, you can do this in the windows power options and changing the plan so that the hard drive never goes to sleep.

Techa · October 21, 2020

4 hours ago, truescot said:

Being that it all works when the platter drives are unplugged it is almost definately one of those that are the problem. It is not uncommon for a computer to freeze like you are mentioning when one of the platter drives that has been parked decides to spin up, it is not normally noticed on a system that is using the platter drive all the time as it does not go to sleep but as you have got 2 ssd's most likely doing the lion's share of the data access the hdd's go to sleep and sometimes wake up just because windows chose that moment to poll them. There are 2 ways to approach this, the first is to get rid of platter hard drives completely out of that system and just keep your big stuff on a nas or something else externally, the second way is to stop your hard drives going to sleep, you can do this in the windows power options and changing the plan so that the hard drive never goes to sleep.

The thing is, when either one of the platter drives is plugged in the freezing occurs. I've tested this by plugging them in one at a time to see if it's only one of the drives that causes the issue. Is is possible that both of them could be bad? I'll also try changing the windows power options to prevent the drives from going to sleep to see if that solves the issue.

truescot · October 21, 2020

13 hours ago, Techa said:

The thing is, when either one of the platter drives is plugged in the freezing occurs. I've tested this by plugging them in one at a time to see if it's only one of the drives that causes the issue. Is is possible that both of them could be bad? I'll also try changing the windows power options to prevent the drives from going to sleep to see if that solves the issue.

It is possible they are both bad but I doubt it, in fact i am doubting from your description either of them is bad, I was not actually saying either one is bad just that windows is probably putting them to sleep then spinning them up occasionally when it polls them.

Techa · October 21, 2020

1 hour ago, truescot said:

It is possible they are both bad but I doubt it, in fact i am doubting from your description either of them is bad, I was not actually saying either one is bad just that windows is probably putting them to sleep then spinning them up occasionally when it polls them.

I changed the setting in windows to prevent the drives from going to sleep and so far there has been no freezing with them plugged in. Hopefully the story will be same at the end of the day. Thank you for your suggestion.