HDD Crap out?

[Statik]

Hey guys,

 

So a while back I passed on my old rig (FX-8350 + GTX 770) to my SO. I went to install a program onto it today and it was painfully slow. I'm talking wait times to minimize tabs, small wait time after CTRL + ALT + Delete.

 

The only HD in it is an old WD Blue (1TB), and in the task manager it was pinned at 100%, even though the most used program was maxed out under 10MB/s. Is this an indication of a failing drive? I'm planning to get into it this weekend and do some digging/testing, but I figured I'd ask around in the mean time.

[flibberdipper]

Not necessarily. You said something was slamming it with 10MB/s of activity in task manager which can very easily tap out a hard drive (since it's almost certainly not a sequential operation). Might be worth seeing what process was slamming it and go from there.

 

Though with how cheap SSDs are, that also might be worth a looksie. That'll help avoid things like Windows/programs obliterating your system's responsiveness by hitting the drive hard.

[Statik]

Just now, flibberdipper said:

Not necessarily. You said something was slamming it with 10MB/s of activity in task manager which can very easily tap out a hard drive (since it's almost certainly not a sequential operation). Might be worth seeing what process was slamming it and go from there.

 

Though with how cheap SSDs are, that also might be worth a looksie. That'll help avoid things like Windows/programs obliterating your system's responsiveness by hitting the drive hard.

I was almost thinking that, I just haven't dealt with an old system/HDDs in a while. It was Chrome for a while, but after I closed that it was "System" running about 8MB/s. There was basically nothing open.

 

I'll do some more testing, then I might just have to get myself another M.2 SSD, and donate her my old 250GB 840 EVO.

[Eighjan]

Just now, Statik said:

I was almost thinking that, I just haven't dealt with an old system/HDDs in a while. It was Chrome for a while, but after I closed that it was "System" running about 8MB/s. There was basically nothing open.

 

I'll do some more testing, then I might just have to get myself another M.2 SSD, and donate her my old 250GB 840 EVO.

CrystalDiskInfo should get you a disk health check... is the WD Blue a spinner or SSD?

[flibberdipper]

3 minutes ago, Statik said:

I was almost thinking that, I just haven't dealt with an old system/HDDs in a while. It was Chrome for a while, but after I closed that it was "System" running about 8MB/s. There was basically nothing open.

 

I'll do some more testing, then I might just have to get myself another M.2 SSD, and donate her my old 250GB 840 EVO.

Sounds like fairly normal Windows things, honestly. May as well give a clean Windows install a shot to see if that'll buy some time since you'll probably wanna throw your SO an SSD. Only the lowest of the low criminals deserve to suffer through Windows on a hard drive.  

[Statik]

1 hour ago, flibberdipper said:

Only the lowest of the low criminals deserve to suffer through Windows on a hard drive.  

When she told me it was acting normal, I almost felt like an abuser.

 

She hasn't used it much but I'll look into the drive and fresh install windows, and more than likely upgrade her. Because it's also an upgrade for me.