Question External HDD Usage climbs to 100% when gaming ?

[HondaGamer467]

I have a 5TB Western Digital Easystore 2647 External HDD and anytime I try to play games (like Valorant, Apex Legends, etc) that are installed on that drive, they take forever to load up (5+ minutes with Valorant) and then once I get into a match, it takes forever to load into the game (5+ minutes again with Valorant, and with Apex it will take forever to load in audio and graphics, leading to severe lag). However, it only takes forever to load in the game only once. After that, I load into the other matches faster and faster each consecutive time. Only until I restart/ shutdown my PC and of course it happens again. This issue also isn't just for games, I also use Premiere Pro and stuff and it is still sort of an issue there too.

This one I've had for about 3-4 years, and I have fully defragmented it, and used Western Digital dashboard to fully diagnose it and it says that there are no issues and that it is "Normal." It still has the same problem. I also tried buying a new cord, still same problem.

I then bought a new 5TB HDD from Seagate (STGX5000400) just today, and it was looking good as I was transferring some files from the old one to this one, and the old one was experiencing high usage with high reading, and this new one was experiencing mild usage with high writing. However, I installed Valorant to test the difference, and it was basically the exact same but only minimally faster.

Is this an issue with my PC itself then, or what? I've been trying to solve this for weeks now and I'm about to drive a sledgehammer through it.

My PC:
OMEN 30L Desktop - GT13-0280z CTO
AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core Processor 3.59 GHz
32.0 GB RAM

 

[geofelt]

You should be aware that any SSD is about 40x faster than any HDD.
Is your windows C drive on a hdd? That is bad.

 

[thestryker]

You're not only using a HDD, but an external one, to run applications and you are wondering why there are speed/performance issues?

Using USB to interface with anything application wise in a real time capacity is a very bad idea no matter what the storage medium is. This is most likely where your issue stems from though using a HDD is going to cause everything to take forever to load period.

The long and short of it is you should only be using internal storage to run applications.

 

[HondaGamer467]

You should be aware that any SSD is about 40x faster than any HDD.
Is your windows C drive on a hdd? That is bad.

Just to confirm, my Windows is on my SSD, I only have some bigger applications put on my HDD.

 

[35below0]

The reason it's slow the first time is because Windows will cache it for future use. So subsequently when you start the game, it loads faster. The same is true when you first start a browser or other application.

It happens on SSDs too, but it's not as noticeable.

Good thing you didn't whack it with a hammer.

 

[HondaGamer467]

Okay I apparently didn't know there was a difference between external hard drives and internal ones, and that external ones are unsuitable for running applications. Should I get an internal HDD then or just replace my current SSD with one that has more space?

 

[35below0]

Okay I apparently didn't know there was a difference between external hard drives and internal ones, should I get an internal HDD then or just replace my current SSD with one that has more space?

Can you add another SSD? How many SSD drives can you install?

 

[HondaGamer467]

Can you add another SSD? How many SSD drives can you install?

I have an OMEN 30L Desktop - GT13-0280z CTO,

and from what I could find, I'm pretty sure it has:

• One PCIe Gen 3 x16 socket (for discrete graphic card)
• One M.2 socket 1, key A
• One M.2 socket 3, key M for SSD (PCIe Gen 3 x4)

idk what this means though, so idk if I have another slot or not

 

[thestryker]

At this point in time you really shouldn't be using a HDD for anything but storage. If the motherboard has SATA ports (it should, but it's hard to find information because the HP site is bad) you can buy a decent SATA SSD and use that.

edit: you could also replace your primary SSD with a larger one, but this would be a lot more involved as it has your Windows install

 

[35below0]

I have an OMEN 30L Desktop - GT13-0280z CTO,

and from what I could find, I'm pretty sure it has:

• One PCIe Gen 3 x16 socket (for discrete graphic card)
• One M.2 socket 1, key A
• One M.2 socket 3, key M for SSD (PCIe Gen 3 x4)

idk what this means though, so idk if I have another slot or not

The smartest thing to do is to take it to a PC shop and have them sell and install a suitable SSD.

If you want to do it yourself, you can. Look at where your HDD drives are connected. HDDs use SATA connectors and those can also be used for SSDs. You probably have 2 or 4 connectors.

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#t=0&f=3&D=0&sort=price&page=1

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/h3tQzy/crucial-mx500-1tb-25-solid-state-drive-ct1000mx500ssd1

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/Fq...n-z-2-tb-25-solid-state-drive-t253tz002t0c101

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/b9Kscf/teamgroup-t-force-vulcan-z-4-tb-25-solid-state-drive-t253ty004t0c101