Jump to content

HDD 100% usage with 0KB/s read/write

RNT
By RNT
in Storage Devices
 Share
Go to solution Solved by Blue4130,

Start with a new sata cable. It's the cheapest and easiest fix and they are known to go bad randomly. If that doesn't work, move to step two.

Posted

Hi!

i was playing Arc Raiders recently which i had installed on my WD Blue 2TB hard drive. Everything seemed fine the first month and suddenly the game became to freeze profusely upon loading maps, with textures and sounds not loading at all. Upon entering task manager i saw that the disk was at 100% usage with about 1500ms latency, but speed was at 0KB/s and even got disconnected entirely at one point, having me to restart the computer; this was happening all of the sudden with no particular indication of the drive failing. Matter of fact i did test it with crystaldiskinfo and crystaldiskmark for both health and speed, seemed fine to me (about 300MB/s) and I also transferred big and small files (videos, pictures and txt files) from one drive to another without a single issue and the drive stayed consistently at around 90% when doing heavy tasks. It's only happening with some games that used to work flawlessly a month ago.

 

Arc Raiders was the first one so i had to move it to my nvme drive thinking that that was the issue. However when playing Hitman 3 the same thing started to happen all of the sudden as well when a couple of months ago it worked perfect. It's not even when loading the game or the maps, those showed about 90% usage with 100MB/s transfers as usual but when starting to play the 100% 0KB/s problem appears, although it's not constantly; it's like spikes which freezes everything and then comes back to normal, then after a couple of seconds later it does it again and so on. Sometimes it's the whole game and sometimes some sounds/music stops and come back afterwards or even textures load very slowly. I tried RE7 and RE8 also and those seemed to have no problems at all. Even Spider-Man Remastered and Miles Morales work fine, it's just a couple of games but i can't move everything to my SSD because i don't have that much space.

 

Finally i decided to defrag and do a full CHKDSK and waited a couple of hours, seem to work well for a while and then it started to happen again. I had failing drives before with 100% usage doing almost nothing, so i guess this is something else? I've read it has something to do with I/O issues or some AHCI wake link stuff from the power plan? I'm using the default balanced with hibernation and pci power management turned off since forever. 

 

I'm using Windows 11 and the drive is formatted as NTFS basic GPT 64K cluster size, and also can perform multiple tasks without issues (downloading stuff, recording stuff, copying/deleting stuff, and playing stuff apart from the examples mentioned)

 

Should i change sata ports/cables or dig into something else? HDDScan didn't really showed any defective spots and except with a couple of games, the drive is performing as day 1; but this is really annoying and im seeking for help to see if this is a fixable problem.

 

Thanks for reading!

Link to comment
https://linustechtips.com/topic/1630983-hdd-100-usage-with-0kbs-readwrite/
Share on other sites
Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted

how old is this HDD? 

 

it's most likely that your disk is either dieing OR could be that your disk isn't receiving enough power, i'm thinking more about the near death but i had a similiar issue with an HDD years ago and it died an awful death without actually ticking a single time due to a bad PSU (which later on killed my GPU too).

 

check the disks temps too, if the disk get toasy it might trigger some sort of protections

 

also windows is awful at checking disks, for me it appeared as "healthy"but after i switched to ubuntu i saw that it was actually dieing, i don't know if windows received some updates recently on this manner but i'm kinda confident that it's still awful. 

                   -`                    y0ur5h4d0w@Darkness
                  .o+`                   ------------------- 
                 `ooo/                   OS: Arch Linux x86_64 
                `+oooo:                  Host: Darkness
               `+oooooo:                 Kernel: Latest  
               -+oooooo+:                Packages: Only what i need to keep it simple
             `/:-:++oooo+:               Shell: ZSH
            `/++++/+++++++:              Main Monitor: LG Ultragear LG 27GS85Q 
           `/++++++++++++++:             Secondary Monitor: Asus MG28UQ
          `/+++ooooooooooooo/`           DE: Plasma Always Bleeding Edge  
         ./ooosssso++osssssso+`          WM: kwin 
        .oossssso-````/ossssss+`         Theme: Breeze-Dark [GTK2], Breeze [GTK3] 
       -osssssso.      :ssssssso.        Icons: Breeze-dark [GTK2/3] 
      :osssssss/        osssso+++.       Terminal: Kitty 
     /ossssssss/        +ssssooo/-       Terminal Font: Noto Color Emoji 17 FreeMono 13 
   `/ossssso+/:-        -:/+osssso+-     CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D (16) @ 5.307GHz 
  `+sso+:-`                 `.-/+oso:    GPU: AMD ATI Radeon RX 7800 XT 
 `++:.                           `-/+/   GPU: AMD ATI Radeon Graphics 
 .`                                 `/   Memory: 61830MiB

 

Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted

Show the CrystalDiskInfo results as it might give some clue.

Gaming system: R7 7800X3D, Asus ROG Strix B650E-F Gaming Wifi, Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 SE ARGB, Corsair Vengeance 2x 32GB 6000C30, MSI Ventus 3x OC RTX 5070 Ti, MSI MPG A850G, Fractal Design North, Samsung 990 Pro 2TB, Alienware AW3225QF (32" 240 Hz OLED)
Productivity system: i9-7980XE, Asus X299 TUF mark 2, Noctua D15, 64GB ram (mixed), RTX 4070 FE, NZXT E850, GameMax Abyss, Samsung 980 Pro 2TB, iiyama ProLite XU2793QSU-B6 (27" 1440p 100 Hz)
Gaming laptop: Lenovo Legion 5, 5800H, RTX 3070, Kingston DDR4 3200C22 2x16GB 2Rx8, Kingston Fury Renegade 1TB + Crucial P1 1TB SSD, 165 Hz IPS 1080p G-Sync Compatible

Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
  • Author
46 minutes ago, y0ur5h4d0w said:

how old is this HDD? 

 

it's most likely that your disk is either dieing OR could be that your disk isn't receiving enough power, i'm thinking more about the near death but i had a similiar issue with an HDD years ago and it died an awful death without actually ticking a single time due to a bad PSU (which later on killed my GPU too).

 

check the disks temps too, if the disk get toasy it might trigger some sort of protections

 

also windows is awful at checking disks, for me it appeared as "healthy"but after i switched to ubuntu i saw that it was actually dieing, i don't know if windows received some updates recently on this manner but i'm kinda confident that it's still awful.

The hdd is about 1 year old. i also was wondering what the event viewer was showing while this was happening and i've encountered the error 154 saying "The IO operation at logical block address for Disk 0 failed due to a hardware error", and i'm also hearing the disk turning on and off (that little beep when it starts or stops "spinning") that i clearly didn't noticed before with my headphones on. This is happening only when playing the game and running around the map, it doesn't happen in any other instance of usage, not even while doing a cipher /w which fills the whole disk with random files

Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted (edited)
9 minutes ago, RNT said:

that little beep

HDDs don't beep.

9 minutes ago, RNT said:

when it starts or stops "spinning"

By default, HDDs don't start/stop spinning under windows, it's not recommended either, it's better to keep them spinning.

By the way, a game on an HDD in 2026 ?

And I doubt your WD Blue 2TB reaches 300MB/s.

Edited by leclod

If you don't quote us, we won't know you answered

Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
  • Author
1 minute ago, leclod said:

I never heard an hdd make bleeps.

By default, HDDs don't start/stop spinning under windows, it's not recommended either

By the way, a game on an HDD in 2026 ?

It's not a beep per se, it's the drive stopping suddenly which sounds like a little beep but it's the spinning stuff i guess, which i also hear when i turn off the computer. By default the "balanced" power plan in Windows makes the HDD stop spinning after 20 min on idle. And yeah i agree hdd is not ideal for gaming nowadays but ssd's have become really expensive in my country lately (nearly 200 usd for 1tb) and i don't have that kind of spare cash right now

Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
  • Author
10 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

Start with a new sata cable. It's the cheapest and easiest fix and they are known to go bad randomly. If that doesn't work, move to step two.

Yeah i'll pick up some new sata cables from work today and try them out, also switching sata ports just in case. My brother have a problem with his HDD last week where opening anything (even a text file) made the drive go 100% and disconnect entirely, making windows unable to even turn off; so i asked him if he could change sata ports and it started to work well again

Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
  • Author
20 minutes ago, porina said:

Show the CrystalDiskInfo results as it might give some clue.

           Model : WDC WD20EZBX-00AYRA0
        Firmware : 01.01A01
   Serial Number : WD-WX52D242753N
       Disk Size : 2000,3 GB (8,4/137,4/2000,3/2000,3)
     Buffer Size : Unknown
     Queue Depth : 32
    # of Sectors : 3907029168
   Rotation Rate : 7200 RPM
       Interface : Serial ATA
   Major Version : ACS-3
   Minor Version : ACS-3 Revision 5
   Transfer Mode : SATA/600 | SATA/600
  Power On Hours : 6132 hours
  Power On Count : 2553 count
     Temperature : 34 C (93 F)
   Health Status : Good
        Features : S.M.A.R.T., NCQ, TRIM, GPL
       APM Level : ----
       AAM Level : ----
    Drive Letter : D:

-- S.M.A.R.T. --------------------------------------------------------------
ID Cur Wor Thr RawValues(6) Attribute Name
01 200 200 _51 000000000000 Read Error Rate
03 179 149 _21 0000000007F1 Spin-Up Time
04 _96 _96 __0 00000000131B Start/Stop Count
05 200 200 140 000000000000 Reallocated Sectors Count
07 200 200 __0 000000000000 Seek Error Rate
09 _92 _92 __0 0000000017F4 Power-On Hours
0A 100 100 __0 000000000000 Spin Retry Count
0B 100 100 __0 000000000000 Recalibration Retries
0C _98 _98 __0 0000000009F9 Power Cycle Count
C0 198 198 __0 00000000062C Power-off Retract Count
C1 197 197 __0 000000002DAE Load/Unload Cycle Count
C2 109 _87 __0 000000000022 Temperature
C4 200 200 __0 000000000000 Reallocation Event Count
C5 200 200 __0 000000000000 Current Pending Sector Count
C6 100 253 __0 000000000000 Uncorrectable Sector Count
C7 200 200 __0 000000000000 UltraDMA CRC Error Count
C8 100 253 __0 000000000000 Write Error Rate

-- IDENTIFY_DEVICE ---------------------------------------------------------
        0    1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9
000: 427A 3FFF C837 0010 0000 0000 003F 0000 0000 0000
010: 2020 2020 2057 442D 5758 3532 4432 3432 3735 334E
020: 0000 0000 0000 3031 2E30 3141 3031 5744 4320 5744
030: 3230 455A 4258 2D30 3041 5952 4130 2020 2020 2020
040: 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 8010 4000 2F00
050: 4001 0000 0000 0006 3FFF 0010 003F FC10 00FB 0110
060: FFFF 0FFF 0000 0107 0003 0078 0078 0078 0078 4D08
070: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 001F 970E 0006 004C 0040
080: 07FE 006D 706B 7461 4123 7069 B441 4123 007F 0062
090: 0062 0000 FFFE 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
100: 88B0 E8E0 0000 0000 0000 000A 6003 0000 5001 4EE2
110: 6B92 8D03 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 411C
120: 401C 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0021 0000
130: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 2020 2020 2020
140: 2020 0000 0004 8160 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
150: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0001
160: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0002 0001
170: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
180: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
190: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
200: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 3035 0000 0000 4000
210: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 1C20 0000 0000
220: 0000 0000 107E 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
230: 88B0 E8E0 0000 0000 0001 1000 0000 0000 0000 0000
240: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
250: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 59A5

-- SMART_READ_DATA ---------------------------------------------------------
     +0 +1 +2 +3 +4 +5 +6 +7 +8 +9 +A +B +C +D +E +F
000: 10 00 01 2F 00 C8 C8 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 03 27
010: 00 B3 95 F1 07 00 00 00 00 00 04 32 00 60 60 1B
020: 13 00 00 00 00 00 05 33 00 C8 C8 00 00 00 00 00
030: 00 00 07 2E 00 C8 C8 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 09 32
040: 00 5C 5C F4 17 00 00 00 00 00 0A 32 00 64 64 00
050: 00 00 00 00 00 00 0B 32 00 64 64 00 00 00 00 00
060: 00 00 0C 32 00 62 62 F9 09 00 00 00 00 00 C0 32
070: 00 C6 C6 2C 06 00 00 00 00 00 C1 32 00 C5 C5 AE
080: 2D 00 00 00 00 00 C2 22 00 6D 57 22 00 00 00 00
090: 00 00 C4 32 00 C8 C8 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 C5 32
0A0: 00 C8 C8 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 C6 30 00 64 FD 00
0B0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 C7 32 00 C8 C8 00 00 00 00 00
0C0: 00 00 C8 08 00 64 FD 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0D0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0E0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0F0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
100: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
110: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
120: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
130: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
140: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
150: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
160: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 28 14 01 7B
170: 03 00 01 00 02 16 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
180: 00 00 01 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
190: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1A0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1B0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1C0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1D0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1E0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1F0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 42

-- SMART_READ_THRESHOLD ----------------------------------------------------
     +0 +1 +2 +3 +4 +5 +6 +7 +8 +9 +A +B +C +D +E +F
000: 10 00 01 33 C8 C8 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 03 15
010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 04 00 00 00 00 00
020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 05 8C 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
030: 00 00 07 00 C8 C8 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 09 00
040: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0A 00 00 00 00 00
050: 00 00 00 00 00 00 0B 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
060: 00 00 0C 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 C0 00
070: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 C1 00 00 00 00 00
080: 00 00 00 00 00 00 C2 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
090: 00 00 C4 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 C5 00
0A0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 C6 00 00 00 00 00
0B0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 C7 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0C0: 00 00 C8 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0D0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0E0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0F0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
100: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
110: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
120: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
130: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
140: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
150: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
160: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 28 14 01 7B
170: 03 00 01 00 02 16 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
180: 00 00 01 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
190: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1A0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1B0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1C0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1D0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1E0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
1F0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 C5

Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
1 minute ago, RNT said:

By default the "balanced" power plan in Windows makes the HDD stop spinning after 20 min on idle.

So you've got your HDD start/stopping many times a day ?

I did that too for years and I ended up with drives with thousands of start/stop (HD Sentinel shows those)

I had no failures back then but still, now my drives are spinning all day.

 

Install Kitfox and run the short tests

If you don't quote us, we won't know you answered

Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
  • Author
2 minutes ago, leclod said:

So you've got your HDD start/stopping many times a day ?

I did that too for years and I ended up with drives with thousands of start/stop (HD Sentinel shows those)

I had no failures back then but still, now my drives are spinning all day.

 

Install Kitfox and run the short tests

Yeah i must have over 5000 start/stops; and to answer the 300MB/s thing, yeah i was wrong, but it is over 200MB/s still. Here's a crystaldiskmark screenshot, i don't know what those tests mean tho, and why are they so low on the last two. Is it normal for it to show as an SSD instead of HDD on hwinfo tho? I'll run the kitfox tests now

image.png.0d26428ddb9739affdf7b991402fc9f8.png

Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
1 minute ago, RNT said:

Here's a crystaldiskmark screenshot, i don't know what those tests mean tho, and why are they so low on the last two.

Thanks for the earlier CrystalDiskInfo. I don't see any obvious signs of concern. Try the things others have suggested as I don't have any new suggestions.

 

As for CrystalDiskMark, the last two tests are random tests. Hard disks will be seek limited as the head has to move around. Difference between the tests is the 3rd line is queued, and the 4th line is one request at a time. When queued, there is a chance for the drive to optimise accesses to improve overall performance.

Gaming system: R7 7800X3D, Asus ROG Strix B650E-F Gaming Wifi, Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 SE ARGB, Corsair Vengeance 2x 32GB 6000C30, MSI Ventus 3x OC RTX 5070 Ti, MSI MPG A850G, Fractal Design North, Samsung 990 Pro 2TB, Alienware AW3225QF (32" 240 Hz OLED)
Productivity system: i9-7980XE, Asus X299 TUF mark 2, Noctua D15, 64GB ram (mixed), RTX 4070 FE, NZXT E850, GameMax Abyss, Samsung 980 Pro 2TB, iiyama ProLite XU2793QSU-B6 (27" 1440p 100 Hz)
Gaming laptop: Lenovo Legion 5, 5800H, RTX 3070, Kingston DDR4 3200C22 2x16GB 2Rx8, Kingston Fury Renegade 1TB + Crucial P1 1TB SSD, 165 Hz IPS 1080p G-Sync Compatible

Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
1 hour ago, RNT said:

The hdd is about 1 year old. i also was wondering what the event viewer was showing while this was happening and i've encountered the error 154 saying "The IO operation at logical block address for Disk 0 failed due to a hardware error", and i'm also hearing the disk turning on and off (that little beep when it starts or stops "spinning") that i clearly didn't noticed before with my headphones on. This is happening only when playing the game and running around the map, it doesn't happen in any other instance of usage, not even while doing a cipher /w which fills the whole disk with random files

in the power plan change the option to poewr save on HDDs and disable it, let it run always and do some tests, it's unlikely that the issue is on the HDD at this point but this is a fast test you can do.

 

also, just to be 100% safe make sure you have BIOS, CHIPSET and everything else updated to the latest version, it's not vital in this process but for some reasons it could help fixing the issue 

                   -`                    y0ur5h4d0w@Darkness
                  .o+`                   ------------------- 
                 `ooo/                   OS: Arch Linux x86_64 
                `+oooo:                  Host: Darkness
               `+oooooo:                 Kernel: Latest  
               -+oooooo+:                Packages: Only what i need to keep it simple
             `/:-:++oooo+:               Shell: ZSH
            `/++++/+++++++:              Main Monitor: LG Ultragear LG 27GS85Q 
           `/++++++++++++++:             Secondary Monitor: Asus MG28UQ
          `/+++ooooooooooooo/`           DE: Plasma Always Bleeding Edge  
         ./ooosssso++osssssso+`          WM: kwin 
        .oossssso-````/ossssss+`         Theme: Breeze-Dark [GTK2], Breeze [GTK3] 
       -osssssso.      :ssssssso.        Icons: Breeze-dark [GTK2/3] 
      :osssssss/        osssso+++.       Terminal: Kitty 
     /ossssssss/        +ssssooo/-       Terminal Font: Noto Color Emoji 17 FreeMono 13 
   `/ossssso+/:-        -:/+osssso+-     CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D (16) @ 5.307GHz 
  `+sso+:-`                 `.-/+oso:    GPU: AMD ATI Radeon RX 7800 XT 
 `++:.                           `-/+/   GPU: AMD ATI Radeon Graphics 
 .`                                 `/   Memory: 61830MiB

 

Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted

 

7 hours ago, RNT said:

 

Arc Raiders was the first one so i had to move it to my nvme drive thinking that that was the issue. However when playing Hitman 3 the same thing started to happen all of the sudden as well when a couple of months ago it worked perfect. It's not even when loading the game or the maps, those showed about 90% usage with 100MB/s transfers as usual but when starting to play the 100% 0KB/s problem appears, although it's not constantly; it's like spikes which freezes everything and then comes back to normal, then after a couple of seconds later it does it again and so on. Sometimes it's the whole game and sometimes some sounds/music stops and come back afterwards or even textures load very slowly. I tried RE7 and RE8 also and those seemed to have no problems at all. Even Spider-Man Remastered and Miles Morales work fine, it's just a couple of games but i can't move everything to my SSD because i don't have that much space.

 

Finally i decided to defrag and do a full CHKDSK and waited a couple of hours, seem to work well for a while and then it started to happen again. I had failing drives before with 100% usage doing almost nothing, so i guess this is something else? I've read it has something to do with I/O issues or some AHCI wake link stuff from the power plan? I'm using the default balanced with hibernation and pci power management turned off since forever. 

 

I'm using Windows 11 and the drive is formatted as NTFS basic GPT 64K cluster size, and also can perform multiple tasks without issues (downloading stuff, recording stuff, copying/deleting stuff, and playing stuff apart from the examples mentioned)

 

Should i change sata ports/cables or dig into something else? HDDScan didn't really showed any defective spots and except with a couple of games, the drive is performing as day 1; but this is really annoying and im seeking for help to see if this is a fixable problem.

 

Thanks for reading!

Pretty obvious the problem is games trying to load assets from the HDD and it not being able to keep up. I mean that is a classic description of the issue.

That is why in normal transfers and testing the drive tests as fine, because it is.

The WD Blue line of drives are not meant to be used as a game drive, for that you need black or Gold for the bigger cache and spindle speeds.

WD Blue are for mid range tasks like in a simple workstation. Is your drive a 5400 rpm or 7200 rpm drive. If it's 5400 rpm, nothing you can do to speed it up without convoluted software games.

Face it, for your games you need another SSD.

 

Sometime the nice folks here at LTT forums overthink things. Your drive is fine, it's just not designed for the usage scenario you are using it for.

Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
7 hours ago, RNT said:

Yeah i'll pick up some new sata cables from work today and try them out, also switching sata ports just in case. My brother have a problem with his HDD last week where opening anything (even a text file) made the drive go 100% and disconnect entirely, making windows unable to even turn off; so i asked him if he could change sata ports and it started to work well again

if he's using Windows 11, probably the latest completely fucked up Jan. update.

 

 

Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
  • Author
1 hour ago, Pusbucket said:

 

Pretty obvious the problem is games trying to load assets from the HDD and it not being able to keep up. I mean that is a classic description of the issue.

That is why in normal transfers and testing the drive tests as fine, because it is.

The WD Blue line of drives are not meant to be used as a game drive, for that you need black or Gold for the bigger cache and spindle speeds.

WD Blue are for mid range tasks like in a simple workstation. Is your drive a 5400 rpm or 7200 rpm drive. If it's 5400 rpm, nothing you can do to speed it up without convoluted software games.

Face it, for your games you need another SSD.

 

Sometime the nice folks here at LTT forums overthink things. Your drive is fine, it's just not designed for the usage scenario you are using it for.

It's a 7200 rpm drive. I understand the premise that HDD are no longer for games or even the OS unfortunately; and i figured that the assets loading was the issue, that's why i moved Arc to my SSD. However i can't move every "big" game to it since I don't have that much space in it, and if the assets are the problem: why is the HDD not doing anything really? Like it's at 0KB/s but at 100% usage; in the comments above I've stated that the drive itself turns on and off when this is happening since i can hear it spin and stop indefinitely until the 100% usage drops. In this margin of time the game freezes or simply stop loading textures or audio (but not all textures or all sounds/music), then the drive "comes back to work" and everything loads correctly (shows a somewhat expected speed to usage ratio), then again and so on like every 5 seconds. What is really bothering me is that specifically with Hitman 3, I've been playing this game on my HDD since forever and no new updates or patches came a month ago when this issue started happening, it was all of the sudden; even when playing Arc Raiders from the HDD without issues, it started happening in the middle of a match

Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
4 minutes ago, RNT said:

It's a 7200 rpm drive. I understand the premise that HDD are no longer for games or even the OS unfortunately; and i figured that the assets loading was the issue, that's why i moved Arc to my SSD. However i can't move every "big" game to it since I don't have that much space in it, and if the assets are the problem: why is the HDD not doing anything really? Like it's at 0KB/s but at 100% usage; in the comments above I've stated that the drive itself turns on and off when this is happening since i can hear it spin and stop indefinitely until the 100% usage drops. In this margin of time the game freezes or simply stop loading textures or audio (but not all textures or all sounds/music), then the drive "comes back to work" and everything loads correctly (shows a somewhat expected speed to usage ratio), then again and so on like every 5 seconds. What is really bothering me is that specifically with Hitman 3, I've been playing this game on my HDD since forever and no new updates or patches came a month ago when this issue started happening, it was all of the sudden; even when playing Arc Raiders from the HDD without issues, it started happening in the middle of a match

Telling you, sounds like typical lag of the drive not being able to keep up with demand. 

Years ago experienced the EXACT same symptoms playing OG Skyrim from a HDD. Once I moved it to an SSD, they disappeared.

 

What is happening with the 0KB/s is all the buffers (HDD & system) are full and the lag is the data in the buffer being sent to ram then CPU/GPU and then it comes back to life, fills the buffer again and rinse repeat until the needed data is loaded. So the drive is being utilized at 100%, but for a second there is no place to put new data being read off the platters, hence the 0kb/s read. 😉 

Data moves from the platter to the buffer to the system buffer/ram then to cpu/gpu. If any spot in that chain can't keep up with the games demand for data, you have a lag, in this case 99.9% sure it's the HDD.

 

 

It really is easy to confirm and repeat as you already mentioned, load a game with a decent size map and pick a direction and run, forcing the game to continually load new assets.

Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
  • Author
1 hour ago, Pusbucket said:

Telling you, sounds like typical lag of the drive not being able to keep up with demand. 

Years ago experienced the EXACT same symptoms playing OG Skyrim from a HDD. Once I moved it to an SSD, they disappeared.

 

What is happening with the 0KB/s is all the buffers (HDD & system) are full and the lag is the data in the buffer being sent to ram then CPU/GPU and then it comes back to life, fills the buffer again and rinse repeat until the needed data is loaded. So the drive is being utilized at 100%, but for a second there is no place to put new data being read off the platters, hence the 0kb/s read. 😉 

Data moves from the platter to the buffer to the system buffer/ram then to cpu/gpu. If any spot in that chain can't keep up with the games demand for data, you have a lag, in this case 99.9% sure it's the HDD.

 

 

It really is easy to confirm and repeat as you already mentioned, load a game with a decent size map and pick a direction and run, forcing the game to continually load new assets.

I don't know what the chain of commands is but the only other change i did to my pc in the last month was adjusting the ram speed and timings. It was defaulting to 24x133 gear 2 and i changed it to 32x100 gear 1, so i was wondering if that had something do to with the hdd not being able to keep up anymore, so i resorted to change the sata port, cable and psu power cable as well first and it appears to be working correctly now. While i still see the drive at around 99%, it now shows low latency and reading/writing speeds according to the game assets loading (and no "beeping" sounds); this was the expected behavior with Arc and Hitman 3 a month ago before being broken all of the sudden. I hope this is the solution or at least a temporary one to give me some time to save money and buy an SSD in the near future.

Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
  • Author

A couple of comments above i was talking about how my brother had a much worse problem with his HDD where he wasn't even able to open a text file with the HDD getting stuck at 100% and even disconnecting entirely, making the whole PC freeze and being stuck at power on/off for a long time. Changing the sata port was the solution for him, and while that was not entirely similar to my problem because the drive worked fine until opening a heavy game, i wanted to try that first, and also replacing sata cable and psu cable cause why not.

So this is what i did to the drive:

Lots of tests and scans (CHKDSK, Kitfox, crystaldisk mark and info, and HDDscan)
Change some power plan options like PCI and AHCI Link Power Management to always active but leaving the "turning off hard disk after 20 mins" on.
Replaced sata cable and psu power cable, and also switching sata ports.

It works fine for now, i'll see in the next couple of gaming sessions if the problem comes back.
Thank you all for you help!

Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
15 hours ago, leclod said:

HDDs don't beep.

hdd's often "beep" when you remove power from them, causing the heads to park. There's also spin buzz, when drive initially starts to spin up, that can also sound like a "beep".

4 hours ago, RNT said:

A couple of comments above i was talking about how my brother had a much worse problem with his HDD where he wasn't even able to open a text file with the HDD getting stuck at 100% and even disconnecting entirely, making the whole PC freeze and being stuck at power on/off for a long time. Changing the sata port was the solution for him, and while that was not entirely similar to my problem because the drive worked fine until opening a heavy game, i wanted to try that first, and also replacing sata cable and psu cable cause why not.

So this is what i did to the drive:

Lots of tests and scans (CHKDSK, Kitfox, crystaldisk mark and info, and HDDscan)
Change some power plan options like PCI and AHCI Link Power Management to always active but leaving the "turning off hard disk after 20 mins" on.
Replaced sata cable and psu power cable, and also switching sata ports.

It works fine for now, i'll see in the next couple of gaming sessions if the problem comes back.
Thank you all for you help!

Yeah i'm also guessing this is either a problem with your sata cables, motherboard, or even windows, not your drive. If the problem still persists the next thing i would try would be a clean command in diskpart on the drive: https://www.seagate.com/support/kb/how-to-diskpart-eraseclean-a-drive-through-the-command-prompt-005929en/ then reinitialize the drive in disk management and reinstall your games.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share
Go to topic listing Storage Devices

×