Having a weird, possibly HDD problem + sound glitch

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MrOwnage

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Jul 9, 2015
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Hello everyone!

I have a pretty weird problem that has been bothering me and I don't know what is the exact cause. I have an SSD and a HDD inside my comp, a 120 GB Kingston SSD and an 500 GB Toshiba DT01ACA050 ATA HDD, and the problem is :

-Playing any game on the SSD, I have no problems at all, be them intensive games (in terms of usage) or lighter ones.

-Playing games on the HDD however poses some problems. As long as the game is not, for example, Black Ops 3, it works fine but after playing BO3 for even just 10 minutes, the computer will start being much louder. During this time if I try to play anything else on the HDD, EVERY (even light games) have abyssmal loading times, but FPS still remains good. The HDD was bought this summer.

- Sometimes the HDD problem happens randomly.... but often quickly goes away. When it happens from intense games it will usually "stay" till next day or after a bit of idling.

Proc : AMD FX 6300 6 core
Video Card : AMD Radeon R7 200
no special sound cards
RAM : 8GB (don't know where to check the name)
The HDD is about 40%-half full at the moment.
I don't know the exact wattage of the power supply and I didn't really do work "inside the computer" before so I don't wanna tinker with it either.
Thermaltake Contac 16 cooler

Didn't check temperature when it gets louder but iirc my temperature is around 35-37 or so even during gaming. I have no idea what is going on.

There is also a slightly annoying sound glitch where I hear a cracking sound every now and then. It's only mildly annoying but I don't know if it's a signal for something worse... It only happens during intense games.
 
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Well, I use a downloadable tool named Wise Care 365 to do cleanup and disk-defrag (also optimize) on the hard drive.
The old HDD had a number of bad sectors in it that's why it was replaced. Will try doing a check on this one too.

Windows Disk Checkup found no problems, is it reliable?
 
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I usually use Western Digital's diagnostic tool, and there's no better HDD in a decent price range than the WD Black series too. It pays to buy a reliable drive.

Don't worry about the tool you use, just buy good drives. I would stick to 1 or 2TB models though. The higher capacity drives get less and less reliable the higher capacity they have, and they are slower too.

It also makes a big difference how you defrag. You should do it regularly, vs after several months. If you wait until a drive is extremely fragmented, then do one big defrag, it's much harder on the drive.

Another option is using a smart defrag tool, like Perfect Disk, which is also Microsoft certified. It has a Stealth Patrol mode, where it keeps your files defraged in the background, and lays idle when you use a lot of sys resources for things like games. It also can keep files from fragmenting when they install. Works great, I use it myself.

 
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Well, I did a defrag and optimize through Windows (right click on drive > optimize) and still nothing, this issue still persists. It's extremely annoying because I cannot play games that are either on the HDD or take long to load even without whatever is happening.

Would check heat level if overheating is a possible culprit. Any good free tools to do so?

EDIT : Sometimes the computer fan sounds a bit different, higher-pitched a bit and sometimes a bit louder. Is it also bad if I have about 2GB of the 8GB RAM used when idle/only Firefox is open? (checked with Wise Memory Optimizer)

If it helps I also have an issue where alt tabbing or quitting out of games will cause a black screen after which I must hard reboot the computer. Most of the time a loud buzzing sound accompanies this. Very seldomly I also get a BSOD usually with the error code DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (if I recall correctly)

Malwarebytes found nothing.

EDIT2 : If I open a game, wait till the end of the title screen, quit and start it again it gets much faster but the problem is that games should load fast from the get-go and the other laptop I am using (which is weaker in terms of CPU, RAM etc...) has no such problem.

EDIT3 : Since the HDD is new and I had this same problem on the older HDD (this was the reason we bought a new one) could it be that it isn't actually the HDD at fault, but the mobo/RAM instead? If it was the mobo or a bad slot/socket it would also explain the sudden sound glitch.
 
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Yeah, I don't think so. However, I did a check yesterday with Windows' chkdsk function and it said my drive doesn't need to be scanned. I did a scan anyway and nothing was found. So yeah, I am out of ideas.

UPDATE : Whenever the sound glitch occurs, I also get a very slight fps drop (3-4 fps) that quickly goes back to 60 FPS (in this case BlazBlue Chronophantasma Extend, but this occurs on other games too) so it must mean that either the CPU/GPU or maybe the RAM isn't/aren't working correctly? An interesting note is that the sound glitch also happens on games that aren't on the HDD but instead on the SSD, the long loading times however, do not. The black screen on alt tab and exit thing however can also happen on games on the SSD but mainly when I don't wait at all right after saving.

UPDATE 2 : Afterburner shows a 41-43 celsius heat when idle, although this is after a 1.5 hour session of gaming. Memory clock fluctates between 150 and 1250 MHZ, GPU clock is at around 305 MHZ at idle. Sometimes when the long loading time issue happens, the HDD makes a kind of a weird sound, it's like it is silent at first, then it becomes a bit loud then goes back to normal again, kinda like tension buildup in music. Hope this helps

Maybe Vsync being on/off (on in all games I play) cause this? Or the speakers being old?
 
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I have two sound drivers in Device Manager, and I tried updating both of them. One of them is AMD and the other one is Realtek High Definition Audio. Windows said the first one was updated successfully while the latter "already had the latest version installed". Will try if this helps.

Will also try running a few games to check if the issue(s) persist.

UPDATE : Nope, still no go. Advanced Warfare still had the sound glitch and fps drop but for some reason not the loading time issue. Interestingly, (at least for today) the load time bug didn't happen with ANY games so that means the optimization of the drive or something has worked. The sound glitch and fps drop maybe wire/sound card/proximity (too close to other wires perhaps?) related?
 
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Still have no idea what is wrong, today I played Robocraft on the SSD with no problems, tried switching to BlazBlue on the HDD, bam, loading time prob again... dunno what is going on...
 
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The AMD audio driver is only if your using HDMI off the video card with HDMI audio. If not you don't even need to install the AMD HDMI Audio driver when installing the GPU driver.

What's strange is the problem you're describing seems to indicate a drive failure. I would try using another tool to check for HDD problems, like WD Data Lifeguard. I would also check the health of your SSD.

Here are just a few examples of SSD diagnostic tools.

http://mashtips.com/ssd-health-test-and-performance-monitor-tools/
 
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Well, I installed the latest Crimson driver from AMD site and it seems to work great so far. Had a little amount of hitching right after installing but since then the load time issue and the crashes have not occured..... yet, but I don't want to jump the gun so easily, will report back on how it goes.
 
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Alright, sorry for writing back so late. The driver update fixed almost all the isuses (the sound glitch is now very minor and happens very seldomly) but I have another problem : The alt-tabbing out of a game causes BSoD problem. Not only alt tabbing, but also trying to run a game borderless, tried it with the recently released Megatagmension Blanc and got a THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE error, this error has been plaguing me for a long time. What could be the cause for this one?
 
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Nope, still no go. TF2 was lagging a lot and it even froze, then after a hard reset Windows 10 was stuck at the Windows logo, yet after another reset it got working again .... luckily for me.

So it seems like I can run low requirement games fine but there is no way to run more demanding games.... What is going on?
Also got a BSOD again recently, this time with Chronophantasma.
 
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