Question can a dying hdd affect game performance?

[sebastianmolinaguerrero]

I had a configuration with two HDD's one internal and the other drive was an external, I couple of hours ago the external drive died so I was left with only the games I had installed in the primary disk, but now I'm getting a lot of stuttering issues and low frame rates in games I didn't have any issues with previously, do you think it could be related to the disk or would it be something else? I had 12 Gb of Virtual memory on both drives but I'm not sure if that could be the problem.
my specs are:
-OS: Windows 10 Professional x64.
-MOBO: Asus H110M-E.
-RAM: 8Gb DDR4.
-CPU: Intel Core i3 7100 3.9Ghz.
-Cooler: DEEPCOOL Ice Blade mini
-GPU: AMD Sapphire Rx 570 8Gb VRAM DDR5.
-HDD: Base- Toshiba 1 Tb 7200 rpm
Broken HDD- Toshiba 1 Tb External HDD 7200 rpm.
-Display: Samsung 22" 1080p display.
DELL 17" 1024p display

 

[Grobe]

Depends if some windows or ingame settings are pointing to a none existing location.

But if you have a disk currently in use that are soon to fail, chance are good that it will cause stuttering, but not always.

 

[King_V]

A dying hard drive can affect performance everywhere.

On my work PC, not gaming, things would boot up slower. Then slower. The drive still worked, but it was having issues. Eventually, even small tasks would take a long time and the drive would peg at 100%.

Certain programs would simply fail to start up because loading time got so long. When I started to suspect what the issue was (that's when I discovered the 100% disk utilization), I backed everything up and asked for a replacement drive. Problem solved.

The drive never died completely, but it got so bad I was almost dead in the water, so to speak, work-wise.

 

[sebastianmolinaguerrero]

A dying hard drive can affect performance everywhere.

On my work PC, not gaming, things would boot up slower. Then slower. The drive still worked, but it was having issues. Eventually, even small tasks would take a long time and the drive would peg at 100%.

Certain programs would simply fail to start up because loading time got so long. When I started to suspect what the issue was (that's when I discovered the 100% disk utilization), I backed everything up and asked for a replacement drive. Problem solved.

The drive never died completely, but it got so bad I was almost dead in the water, so to speak, work-wise.

A dying hard drive can affect performance everywhere.

On my work PC, not gaming, things would boot up slower. Then slower. The drive still worked, but it was having issues. Eventually, even small tasks would take a long time and the drive would peg at 100%.

Certain programs would simply fail to start up because loading time got so long. When I started to suspect what the issue was (that's when I discovered the 100% disk utilization), I backed everything up and asked for a replacement drive. Problem solved.

The drive never died completely, but it got so bad I was almost dead in the water, so to speak, work-wise.

Okay, so you think the poor framerate I'm getting now could be a result of the HDD dying? I really hope so bc if not, could it be my GPU? or a stick of RAM? this started happening just after the drive died in MGSV for example, I usually got around 55-60 fps in the game all maxed and now I get 30-35 fps with microstutters.

 

[sebastianmolinaguerrero]

Depends if some windows or ingame settings are pointing to a none existing location.

But if you have a disk currently in use that are soon to fail, chance are good that it will cause stuttering, but not always.

Do you think the sudden absence of Virtual memory could be the cause?