technical issue Internal Hard Drive (Seagate Barracuda 2tb) is acting strange

[Hubi]

So I recently installed the Seagate Barracuda 2tb into my PC and I am trying to download Rainbow 6 Siege on steam. But when I start the download it peaks at about 90mbps. Then will drop off gradually hitting 0 Mbps and then will climb back up to 10-20 before going back to zero. And when I pause it and resume the same cycle repeats. 

 

I also have a nvme which does a consistent 100mbps when I download games on battle.net (haven't really used it on steam). 

 

Does anyone know a solution? 

[RONOTHAN##]

That sounds pretty expected. Seagate Barracuda drives are SMR and have very poor write performance to them, even worse random reads like you'd get when installing games, so your limited by how fast the HDD can write the game to it. This behavior is not out of the ordinary for these sorts of drives.

[Hubi]

14 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

That sounds pretty expected. Seagate Barracuda drives are SMR and have very poor write performance to them, even worse random reads like you'd get when installing games, so your limited by how fast the HDD can write the game to it. This behavior is not out of the ordinary for these sorts of drives.

Would transfering games to the hardrive that are already downloaded on my nvme be faster or would it be the same problem

[RONOTHAN##]

8 minutes ago, Hubi said:

Would transfering games to the hardrive that are already downloaded on my nvme be faster or would it be the same problem

It'll likely be the same speed or slower overall since you do still need to download the game.

[FRD]

It could be that some sectors are waiting and the HDD could be stuck there too.

To make sure you should check your HDD health with Crystaldiskinfo. You can see if your drive is totally fine or has a warning.

Even if it's long in use, you could have a not so good sample from the factory. In general Seagate Barracuda are good and long lasting drives.

[manikyath]

always worth checking smart data on a seagate barracuda, wont be the first time that the drive is just very quietly dying.