Hard disk usage spikes randomly when in games

[Andrei Haiu]

Greetings friends.

Computer specs:
-Intel i5 4770
-2x4Gb RAM
-Gigabyte B85-HD3 Motherboard Rev. 1.1 with Bios version F6
-500W SuperFlower Golden Green PSU
-AMD R9 290
-Windows 8.1
-120Gb Intel SSD (almost 1 year old)
-1TB Samsung HDD (3-4 yrs old)
-300Gb Seagate HDD (5-6 yrs old)

I have my Windows installed on the SSD, games and everything on the Samsung HDD and random stuff on the Seagate one.

Since 2 days ago I've been having quite an issue. I installed Windows 10 on my computer and tried to play some games. While playing, games started to randomly have lag spikes and I thought it's because of the graphic card because I read on some forums that directx 12 still has crash issues, so I went back to Windows 8.1. Installed my drivers and everything then went in a game and noticed that there are still lag spikes. So I started to check Task Manager for CPU activity while in game and noticed the Disk Usage spiked to about 30-90%. Thought it's because some malware so I used MalwareBytes and Kaspersky, nothing found. I disabled Superfetch in services as I read on forums but still didin't fixed it. Every 1-5 minutes it happens for about 1-2 seconds that are crucial in any game, because it freezes. Did a chkdsk and defragmented the drive, everything seems to be fine. Tried to see what uses it like that but didn't found anything.
In the end Windows gave me an error "Windows detected a hard disk problem" and thought the Samsung HDD is gonna fail but the thing is that it said the Seagate HDD is failing.
I was pretty sure the Seagate one will fail 'cause it's old but I don't know whats happening with the Samsung one. Beside of having a malware or something I don't know what could be the problem.
Check the screenshots below for more information.
Thanks for giving a moment.

http://postimg.org/image/mjx34xyi5/
http://postimg.org/image/p7a1l6xpn/
http://postimg.org/image/89cg8vi5t/

 

[Ardotheone]

I've seen such a thing happen before with my PC but it's been so long ago I don't remember all the steps i took to decide what the issue was. But What I can tell you is If it is a HDD Issue what is happening is there is sectors starting to go bad on it and it's having issues reading, so it goes back and reads them over and over tell it understands what it was trying to read.

I would do a disk scan, the one that requires you to reboot outside of windows to scan and fix any disk issues. This IMO is just a temp fix though, at least it was for me, it just put off the HDD going completely bad, for a short time. Also you may want to check where your page file is located and move it off of E: if that is where it is.

What E:? is that your Game drive?

If i was you I would get a replacement for E: Now before it gets worse, For me it got much worse than small Spikes, it got so bad in the end that it would sit there Frozen for 20-30 Sec sometimes trying to read. So Migrating IMO now rather than later would be a good idea.

I'm not a Pro just a DIY kind of guy that's been DIY for many years so it could be something completely different but I don't think so from what i have seen it looks like the HDD is starting to go bad, remember hardware does not always follow our ideas of when stuff gets old it goes bad. Just because it's a Newer HDD than the other don't mean that it's not old enuff to be going bad.

I Hope my insight helps,
David M.

 

[Andrei Haiu]

I've seen such a thing happen before with my PC but it's been so long ago I don't remember all the steps i took to decide what the issue was. But What I can tell you is If it is a HDD Issue what is happening is there is sectors starting to go bad on it and it's having issues reading, so it goes back and reads them over and over tell it understands what it was trying to read.

I would do a disk scan, the one that requires you to reboot outside of windows to scan and fix any disk issues. This IMO is just a temp fix though, at least it was for me, it just put off the HDD going completely bad, for a short time. Also you may want to check where your page file is located and move it off of E: if that is where it is.

What E:? is that your Game drive?

If i was you I would get a replacement for E: Now before it gets worse, For me it got much worse than small Spikes, it got so bad in the end that it would sit there Frozen for 20-30 Sec sometimes trying to read. So Migrating IMO now rather than later would be a good idea.

I'm not a Pro just a DIY kind of guy that's been DIY for many years so it could be something completely different but I don't think so from what i have seen it looks like the HDD is starting to go bad, remember hardware does not always follow our ideas of when stuff gets old it goes bad. Just because it's a Newer HDD than the other don't mean that it's not old enuff to be going bad.

I Hope my insight helps,
David M.

Thank you very much David for helping.
To answer your question: Yeah, it is currently the drive I store everything on, from games to applications developed for android and so on.
Well, it had to happen at a point or another. I'll be doing a replacement of that HDD, as soon as possible, with a SSHD. Hopefully this will solve it, otherwise I'll be coming back to post on this forum.
Help is much appreciated!
Regards,
Andrei.

 

[scout_03]

ot test the seagate hdd use http://www.seagate.com/ca/en/support/downloads/item/seatools-win-master/ ,for samsung this http://support-us.samsung.com/cyber/popup/iframe/pop_troubleshooting_fr.jsp?idx=42990&modelname=SV0411N