Question Bad HDD performance | HDD showing as an SSD in defraggler

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AALEXX203

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Mar 22, 2015
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Hello all, my wife is currently using an old gaming PC of mine and it's safe to say it's on it's last legs. With the components being nearly 10 years old (AM3+ setup), you can understand it struggles to run games at good graphics. The issue I do have though currently is a relatively new HDD seems to be performing bad, it takes a long time to install games after a download, it takes a long time to do every day tasks etc. I have ran Userbenchmark to get a broad stroke of any issues it is having and it is saying my HDD is performing poor despite it being only a 1 year old seagate barracuda. I thought i might defrag the HDD to see if that might cause some form of improvement and when doing so, I noticed it is recognising it as an SSD. I have scanned the drive for errors and nothing has shown.

Any ideas how to fix the overall slowness and issues with the HDD?

Thanks for your response in advance.

Alex.
 
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rgd1101 said:
brand and model of this new hdd?
full system spec?
Click to expand...

As mentioned it's a seagate barracuda. It's 2TB. System specs are as follows:

AMD FX 6300
HyperX DDR3 32GB RAM
GTX 770
Gigabyte 970A-UD3P
500W EVGA bronze psu
500gb Toshiba MQ01ABD050
Seagate Barracuda 2TB (boot drive, the one in question)

Thanks for your response
 
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AALEXX203 said:
Hello all, my wife is currently using an old gaming PC of mine and it's safe to say it's on it's last legs. With the components being nearly 10 years old (AM3+ setup), you can understand it struggles to run games at good graphics. The issue I do have though currently is a relatively new HDD seems to be performing bad, it takes a long time to install games after a download, it takes a long time to do every day tasks etc. I have ran Userbenchmark to get a broad stroke of any issues it is having and it is saying my HDD is performing poor despite it being only a 1 year old seagate barracuda. I thought i might defrag the HDD to see if that might cause some form of improvement and when doing so, I noticed it is recognising it as an SSD. I have scanned the drive for errors and nothing has shown.

Any ideas how to fix the overall slowness and issues with the HDD?

Thanks for your response in advance.

Alex.
Click to expand...
Run UBM and post a LINK to the results page.
 
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AALEXX203 said:
As mentioned it's a seagate barracuda. It's 2TB. System specs are as follows:
Seagate Barracuda 2TB (boot drive, the one in question)
Thanks for your response
Click to expand...
You didn't say exact model/part number for the 2TB HDD. Guessing it is a SMR drive if it's acting slower than you're used to with CMR ones.

That Toshiba drive is a 2.5" 5400RPM drive? Just trying to figure out how noticeably bad the Seagte 2TB performance should be to bother you!

The Defraggler (is part of the CCleaner software for HDD defregmenting?) showing HDD as SSD is probably a bug that needs a fix or they need to update the software's database.
 
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AALEXX203 said:
Seagate Barracuda 2TB (boot drive, the one in question)
Click to expand...
SMR drive. Not suitable for being used as OS drive. Usable for backups/archives/user media storage.
Upgrade to SSD.

AALEXX203 said:
The issue I do have though currently is a relatively new HDD seems to be performing bad, it takes a long time to install games after a download, it takes a long time to do every day tasks etc.
Click to expand...
For SMR drive - this is normal behavior.
Do not defrag it. You'll get terrible drive performance for prolonged period (until all the neighboring tracks of modified tracks are corrected, could take days).
 
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Satan-IR said:
You didn't say exact model/part number for the 2TB HDD. Guessing it is a SMR drive if it's acting slower than you're used to with CMR ones.

That Toshiba drive is a 2.5" 5400RPM drive? Just trying to figure out how noticeably bad the Seagte 2TB performance should be to bother you!

The Defraggler (is part of the CCleaner software for HDD defregmenting?) showing HDD as SSD is probably a bug that needs a fix or they need to update the software's database.
Click to expand...

My bad, i can give the model number now: ‎ST2000DMZ08 . I bought two, one for her pc and one for mine. Mine is not a boot drive so that may be why she is getting the slower performance. To add though, she has had "decent" until around a few months ago relative to the age of the computer. Is there a way for me to verify if this is an SMR drive?

Yes it's just an older one i had lying around to use as extra storage rather than just sitting there to rot.
 
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mdd1963 said:
You have a slow CPU and a slow GPU (the GTX770 is about ~GTX1030 equivalent these days); cerai slow storage will not help matters, but....

Odds are, even with an SSD, you are not going to be happy in any less than 5-7 year old games much beyond Quake 3 , F.E.A.R, etc...
Click to expand...

You're exactly right. As mentioned, its an old gaming PC of mine that I built back up a while ago to put her on and get her into gaming. I am looking to upgrade soon but the issue I am having currently is general tasks even to the extent of opening file manager.
 
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SkyNetRising said:
All Seagate Barracudas are SMR (except 1TB model).
www.seagate.com

Festplatten mit CMR und SMR | Seagate Deutschland

Liste unserer internen Festplatten mit dem jeweiligen Aufzeichnungsverfahren
www.seagate.com
Click to expand...
That would explain it then. I have had a 1tb model in the past which i used as my boot drive with no issues. How much of a difference do you think an addition of a different HDD would have with such an old PC?
 
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AALEXX203 said:
How much of a difference do you think an addition of a different HDD would have with such an old PC?
Click to expand...
Windows 10 requires SSD for OS drive.
Mechanical drive performance as OS drive is really bad. Long boot times, high drive utilization, long windows update times, long defender scans, long search indexing run times.
With SMR drive performance goes from bad to terrible.

TLDR - get SSD.
Crucial MX500 250GB - one of decent, less expensive options.
 
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AALEXX203 said:
My bad, i can give the model number now: ‎ST2000DMZ08 . I bought two, one for her pc and one for mine. Mine is not a boot drive so that may be why she is getting the slower performance. To add though, she has had "decent" until around a few months ago relative to the age of the computer. Is there a way for me to verify if this is an SMR drive?
Click to expand...
Yeah not 100% on the DMZ (maybe a sub gategorization of a model sold in a region or something like that) but STX000DM Barracude drives are SMR expect for the 500GB and 1TB. I don't know if they still make 500GBs or not. For information on Seagate drives you can look here. Apparently Barracude Pro drives are all CMR.
SMR drives are better for archiving and keeping data, write once read many times as opposed to a system drive that require constant reading from and writing to. When drive has low writing speeds anything becomes a drag from boot time to installation of software and copying anything to them etc.
AALEXX203 said:
Yes it's just an older one i had lying around to use as extra storage rather than just sitting there to rot.
Click to expand...
If you mean the Toshiba yes I know what you mean and I'd do that if there was a free port on the motherboard.

As said above, for a system drive specially from Windows 10 and later 11 and so on you'd really need an SSD. Although it's an older system but a good system drive would improve your general computing experience significantly.
 
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Satan-IR said:
Yeah not 100% on the DMZ (maybe a sub gategorization of a model sold in a region or something like that) but STX000DM Barracude drives are SMR expect for the 500GB and 1TB. I don't know if they still make 500GBs or not. For information on Seagate drives you can look here. Apparently Barracude Pro drives are all CMR.
SMR drives are better for archiving and keeping data, write once read many times as opposed to a system drive that require constant reading from and writing to. When drive has low writing speeds anything becomes a drag from boot time to installation of software and copying anything to them etc.

If you mean the Toshiba yes I know what you mean and I'd do that if there was a free port on the motherboard.

As said above, for a system drive specially from Windows 10 and later 11 and so on you'd really need an SSD. Although it's an older system but a good system drive would improve your general computing experience significantly.
Click to expand...

Thanks a lot. My current PC has a samsung evo SSD so i certainly see the benefits. Thanks a lot for your help, I look into getting one for hers as soon as possible.
 
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Hello, hope you're all well.

After getting the SSD listed above, 500gb variant, I am getting an error code when attempting to select the SSD for install: 0x80300024. I have removed all HDDs to ensure that was the only option and that has not worked. I am installing from USB and this was created within the last hour. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

Motherboard model: 970A-UD3P
Bios version: F1
 
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Karadjgne said:
With the Barracuda series, CMR = 1Tb, SMR = 2/3/4/6/8Tb.

Try using a different USB port.
Click to expand...

I have tried this too and unfortunately, it isn't making a difference.

I have since added the other HDDs to attempt to boot back the old windows I had installed. It keeps randomly shutting down and restarting for some reason...
 
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Does the BIOS see the SSD? One of the reasons this happens is other drives are connected but you said everything else is uplugged. In BIOS boot order set the installation media, the USB drive, as the 1st priority for now.

Another reason for tha error is there's prior data or partitioning on the drive which can't be in your case as it's a brand new drive? You didn't partition the SSD before you attempted the installation, did you?

Does the board have EFI/UEFI boot support? Is it enabled or it boots in CSM/legacy mode?
 
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Satan-IR said:
Does the BIOS see the SSD? One of the reasons this happens is other drives are connected but you said everything else is uplugged. In BIOS boot order set the installation media, the USB drive, as the 1st priority for now.

Another reason for tha error is there's prior data or partitioning on the drive which can't be in your case as it's a brand new drive? You didn't partition the SSD before you attempted the installation, did you?

Does the board have EFI/UEFI boot support? Is it enabled or it boots in CSM/legacy mode?
Click to expand...

The BIOS sees the SSD as does windows installer. I removed all other drives after the first time I saw the error as I read that could be a potential issue. Sadly, that didn't fix it.

It is straight out of the box so no data is on it.

I booted from usb using UEFI on the boot menu.

Now for some reason the computer is passing POST but randomly powering down and restarting when i attempted to boot back to my usual drive and even when just sitting in the bios.
 
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I would set the board in BIOS to boot EFI/UEFI save and exit.

Still keep all other drives disconnected.

Then set the installation USB as boot #1 and save and exit then boot from USB and in the Windows Setup window if you have drive 0 or whatever and if by ay chance you see any partition like partition 1 or anything delete that partition. Then click New and create new this will set partition as GPT and create the recovery and system reseved partitions (as Windows does) and then you can highlight the largets partition in there and click next and it should install to that.

The boot problem from older drives can be because when they were setup and Windows installed on them they were set to boot as legacy BIOS? With that now disabled they might have a problem booting. Enabling CSM/legacy would probably let them boot again.

Also after you connected old system drive you changed boot priority to boot from it before booting, right?
 
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AALEXX203 said:
The BIOS sees the SSD as does windows installer. I removed all other drives after the first time I saw the error as I read that could be a potential issue. Sadly, that didn't fix it.

It is straight out of the box so no data is on it.

I booted from usb using UEFI on the boot menu.

Now for some reason the computer is passing POST but randomly powering down and restarting when i attempted to boot back to my usual drive and even when just sitting in the bios.
Click to expand...
Disconnect all disk.
Power up and enter the bios.
Does it power down and restart?

If not connect the hdd and retest just sitting in the bios.
 
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Satan-IR said:
I would set the board in BIOS to boot EFI/UEFI save and exit.

Still keep all other drives disconnected.

Then set the installation USB as boot #1 and save and exit then boot from USB and in the Windows Setup window if you have drive 0 or whatever and if by ay chance you see any partition like partition 1 or anything delete that partition. Then click New and create new this will set partition as GPT and create the recovery and system reseved partitions (as Windows does) and then you can highlight the largets partition in there and click next and it should install to that.

The boot problem from older drives can be because when they were setup and Windows installed on them they were set to boot as legacy BIOS? With that now disabled they might have a problem booting. Enabling CSM/legacy would probably let them boot again.

Also after you connected old system drive you changed boot priority to boot from it before booting, right?
Click to expand...

When I am trying to select options in the bios, the screen just goes black and the system reboots.



I am booting with the usb first in UEFI and the SSD second and even when doing so the mobo is not booting on to the USB. The only way i can get it to boot is by manually selecting it in the boot menu sometimes it works, sometimes the screen just goes black, it restarts about 5 times then just powers down. If successful, It starts loading up the install as I could see the loading icon, just for it to power down again.

Perviously when i got to the install page, there was no other disks other than drive 0 which is 500gb (my SSD). When trying to create a new partition it was not letting me.
 
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I have just managed to get back onto the installer and when attempting to create partitions, it has given me an error code of 0xa3bfd530

After giving this a google, nothing at all shows up.
 
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