Several old HDD suddenly having same problem

Admire · August 6, 2014

So, im in waIting mode for my upcoming build so im surviving on my very old system. I have 3 older hardrives(Two WDs and a Seagate) that have been having problems.. Honestly I would not be suprised in the least, since they have been subject to my abuse for a very long time, and everybody gets old eventually, but this happened on all of them at once.

They had gotten slower at transfering files, but that has been more and on and off issue, and haven't been an issue for months but they suddenly have big problems reading files. Especially when opening video files, where it can take several minutes for the thing to start playing. It opens VLC at once but then takes an eternity for it to read.....the green loading line inching towards the end like it was a slug.

I tried changing the folder options to general items instead of video or music but didn't help. I did a defrag, I cleaned up a little but still didn't help.

Will be buying something new in a few months, so if its anything hardware related, then nothing will happen before that but I was wondering if there could be anything windows related.....

There isn't clicking sounds, or more heat than an HDD normally would produce

Fulgrim · August 6, 2014

Are they near their max capacity? If so, try freeing up ~20% space, see if it makes a difference.

d3sl91 · August 6, 2014

Take a look at your system usage, and see if your CPU is maxing out, Ram, etc.

Could be some program running in the background whenever accessing video files?

Otherwise, it does just sound like typical hard drive aging.

Admire · August 7, 2014

Are they near their max capacity? If so, try freeing up ~20% space, see if it makes a difference.

Yes I did, but seems to have no big difference...The full ones are just as bad as the semi full ones.-

Take a look at your system usage, and see if your CPU is maxing out, Ram, etc.

Could be some program running in the background whenever accessing video files?

Otherwise, it does just sound like typical hard drive aging.

CPU and Ram are fine.

Yeah, I guess. Just a little puzzled as to three failing in the exact same way at the same time. Seems too much of a coincidence. One of them is more than 10 years old, so its been a good little soldier.

What program are you thinking off?

d3sl91 · August 7, 2014

Yes I did, but seems to have no big difference...The full ones are just as bad as the semi full ones.-

CPU and Ram are fine.

Yeah, I guess. Just a little puzzled as to three failing in the exact same way at the same time. Seems too much of a coincidence. One of them is more than 10 years old, so its been a good little soldier.

What program are you thinking off?

10 years is a good life... I'm usually replacing mine as soon as the warranty is up (3-5 years).

Not a particular program, but you never know. I've seen AV affect video playback, decoders/sound control panels. Etc.

Also, I have seen old hard drives cause the overall system performance to suffer. Try turning off virtual memory on all the drives, or using them one at a time and see if it's one of the drives causing the whole system to slow down.

Admire · August 7, 2014

10 years is a good life... I'm usually replacing mine as soon as the warranty is up (3-5 years).

Not a particular program, but you never know. I've seen AV affect video playback, decoders/sound control panels. Etc.

Also, I have seen old hard drives cause the overall system performance to suffer. Try turning off virtual memory on all the drives, or using them one at a time and see if it's one of the drives causing the whole system to slow down.

The others are not nearly as old. Just could not justify getting rid of it while it was working. I consider 10 years to be pretty impressive too.

Will try doing that, and if it doesn't work, I will delete everything on all the drives, reinstall windows 7 and see how that goes when I get home from work..... If that doesn't help -