[SOLVED] Disk usage at 100% then HD beep.

[HewieHG]

For a while now, usually when i'm playing a game with high HD usage, the game might stutter for a bit (HD usage jumps to 100% and stays there), then my hard drive starts to make this weird "beep" sound, until returning to normal. After some troubleshooting, I'm certain that this is an issue with this hard drive alone. So my question is, what exactly could be causing this issue, and would it be something difficult to fix?

Here's the sound:

https://imgur.com/a/ciS8fNq

View: https://imgur.com/a/ciS8fNq

Notice the high pitched sound, followed by the respin of the disk.

I should add that this sound is very similar to when the HD hard-shutdown (holding the power button to shutdown; power outage), but i don't know what that means though...

 

[Darkbreeze]

FIRST, backup anything important on that drive to somewhere else. Another drive, an optical disk, cloud storage, somewhere. Before you do ANY other thing. That noise sounds a LITTLE bit like a head crash.

Then.

Download HD sentinel free version. Install it. Run it. Click on the drive in question and see what the assessment says. Then, if it says all is ok, run the short drive self test from the menu options. Be sure that drive is selected when you run the test.

Post the results of the initial assessment and the short drive self test here.

How to PROPERLY post images on the Tom's hardware forum



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It would also be helpful to know the exact model of the drive in question and approximately how old it is.


.

 

[HewieHG]

Here's the result:

https://imgur.com/Z6xXCYm

View: https://imgur.com/Z6xXCYm


I've been having this issue for years now, and in that time, i noticed that if i changed the SATA port the HD is using to another (eg: port1 -> port2), this problem would go away, at least for a couple of months. And since i only use this HD for games, i decided to just keep using it like that. Makes me wonder if this could actually end up damaging the disks themselfs.

 

[Darkbreeze]

That's a very old drive. Please download Seatools for Windows: https://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/seatools-win-master/

Run the long/extended test. Be aware, this will likely take anywhere from an hour to three hours to complete, so run it when you can walk away for a while and just let it do it's thing.

Also, please list the full hardware specifications for your system. CPU, motherboard, exact power supply model and approximate age/how long in service, memory kit model, etc.

If you are uncertain there are plenty of guides on how to obtain that information both here on Tom's in the stickies and on the various search sites like Google and DuckDuckGo.

 

[HewieHG]

Just ran the long test, and it passed. About the hardware specifications, i already tested this HD on multiple PCs configurations (changed mobo, cpu, ram, power supply, gpu...) and still the problem persisted. It can't be anything but the hard drive.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Well then, I guess you already know the answer and I'm not sure what help you thought any of us could be? Seems like a waste of time if you already know, whatever it is you know.

 

[HewieHG]

[...] So my question is, what exactly could be causing this issue, and would it be something difficult to fix? [...]

That was my original question. Although i know that changing the SATA port makes it work normally for a while, it doesn't actually fix it. And i don't really know what was causing this to begin with.

 

[Darkbreeze]

It can't be anything but the hard drive.

 

[HewieHG]

What was causing this to the hard drive i meant.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Ok. So, not being smart here, seriously, but, might as well ask:

What causes engines to fail

Why do our joints wear out

etc.

Who knows. I've seen many drives come faulty right out of the box so it's not tremendously unusual for a drive to have a failure of some kind along the way. There is NEVER any question of whether a drive will fail. The ONLY question, always, is when.

Drives fail. ALL of them. Always. Forever. That will never change. All you can do is have your data backed up in more than one location, use the warranty when it's still available and when it isn't, then having had a plan in place for replacement would always seem to be a good idea.

 

[~cw]

That doesn't sound pretty. It may be that the drive is physically OK but the controller circuitry has an issue; it may be the drive is being reinitialised for some reason after a malfunction which is causing the high-pitched 'blip' (power problems with the drive itself?) or it may be suffering due to how it's installed. What do apps like CrystalDiskMark report for SMART health status? Is it the power to it daisychained off several other drives or does it have its own feed straight from the PSU? Is the SATA data cable OK and not kinked or sharply bent? What PSU do you have and is it rated for being able to supply adequate power while the machine is under full load when you're gaming?

I suspect the reason your CPU spikes is because whatever process/es are accessing data get stuck mid-operation while the drive errors then reinitialises. I think the best thing to do is clone your data to another good drive using Macrium Reflect or a two-disk caddy with a clone feature, then RMA the drive as you suspect it to be failing.

 

[USAFRet]

Storage devices die.
All of them, eventually.

Sometimes, there is ZERO warning.
Sometimes, you get a couple of days.

But ALL storage devices are on a slow march to the grave, starting from the first moment you power it up.
Being humans, with human level manufacturing...we have not yet designed built and sold a device that will never ever die.

Yours...is dead.
Hopefully the data on it existed elsewhere.

 

[HewieHG]

That doesn't sound pretty. It may be that the drive is physically OK but the controller circuitry has an issue; it may be the drive is being reinitialised for some reason after a malfunction which is causing the high-pitched 'blip' (power problems with the drive itself?) or it may be suffering due to how it's installed. What do apps like CrystalDiskMark report for SMART health status? Is it the power to it daisychained off several other drives or does it have its own feed straight from the PSU? Is the SATA data cable OK and not kinked or sharply bent? What PSU do you have and is it rated for being able to supply adequate power while the machine is under full load when you're gaming?

I suspect the reason your CPU spikes is because whatever process/es are accessing data get stuck mid-operation while the drive errors then reinitialises. I think the best thing to do is clone your data to another good drive using Macrium Reflect or a two-disk caddy with a clone feature, then RMA the drive as you suspect it to be failing.

The SMART health status are good. The power is being chained from another drive, and my power supply is a Corsair VS450, which should be enough to power my build. I'll try to mess around with the order of the power cables to see what happens. It's so hard to troubleshoot this, because it just starts working again,
seemingly at random...
Also, could this be something with the drive's firmware?

 

[~cw]

The SMART health status are good. The power is being chained from another drive, and my power supply is a Corsair VS450, which should be enough to power my build. I'll try to mess around with the order of the power cables to see what happens. It's so hard to troubleshoot this, because it just starts working again,
seemingly at random...
Also, could this be something with the drive's firmware?

If the PSU is more than 5 years old I'd be tempted to just replace it anyway. For at least a 650 watt supply. If your 450 watt PSU is specced for a system which can draw over 80% of that, it's already out of the optimal operating range.

I would be very, very surprised if it was anything to do with the drive's firmware. Generally those don't ever get updated for consumer disks. See if you can power this drive off its own 12V feed and go from there. See if you can also calculate your machine's power consumption, perhaps with a wall plug inline meter to eliminate guesswork - I was surprised how much my old machine could draw at fairly modest workloads.

 

[Rogue Leader]

The SMART health status are good. The power is being chained from another drive, and my power supply is a Corsair VS450, which should be enough to power my build. I'll try to mess around with the order of the power cables to see what happens. It's so hard to troubleshoot this, because it just starts working again,
seemingly at random...
Also, could this be something with the drive's firmware?

When its an issue with the drive controller (which it probably is), SMART is not going to tell you anything. It sounds like the controller is overheating because one or more of the chips on it are failing. This hard drive is WELL over 5 years old which means (based on my own personal rule of thumb relating to consumer drives) you got your moneys worth out of it. Back it up or clone it to another drive and toss it in the trash. It is not fixable nor is it worth fixing, and its going to die for good sooner than later.

And no its not the firmware, thats not something that just gets easily corrupted or fails in some way, its just not even possibly the issue.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Yep, and yep.