Question HDD at 100%, 0 KB/s read-write speed, becomes unresponsive for 15-30 seconds

[Norby0]

Hey'all
So... I have a new (2 months old) Seagate Exos X20 HDD. Lately I having more and more trouble with it.

When gaming, and it needs to load heavily (e.g. in Darktide), the drive sometimes goes up to 100% activity, but the read and write speeds are 0 KB/s. The whole HDD becomes unresponsive, and although the game does not always freeze (sometimes it does), but the game keeps disconnecting me as I'm unable to load.
This unresponsiveness can happen even when in File explorer when I try to open a bunch of files/folders. Not everytime, but occasionally. And then even the File Explorer window freezes for 15-20 seconds. 100% usage, 0KB/s read-write speeds.

I did a CHKDSK for 28 effing hours, it found no bad sectors. https://pastebin.com/zKZtz1gy

I did defragmentation, did not help.

I downloaded Seagates official SeaTools app, the fast scan did not found any errors, but the extended scan crashed, and it couldn't finish. The app reports back false stats anyway, as it says 20TB free space available, although it should be 16.9 TB.

I ran CrystalDisk, here are the results (based on the HDD's SMART, I guess?): https://puu.sh/Jvl3I/76be2cf7e7.jpg

Currently running HDDScan...

Some videos:
Task Manager:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zluiAQrUKnc


During gaming:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syT4WYlI-vI


Is this hardware related? Is it Win10 related? A firmware issue (I found no newer firmwares)? Or what?
When I first installed this HDD, 2 months ago, everything was fine. In fact, even 2 weeks ago it was pretty much fine. But now, it's a mess...
When I'm using it for basic copy-paste stuff, it's still fine. But it cannot handle heavy loads for some reason. Even my 10 year old Toshiba can, without freezing... Maybe it's an indexing error? Prior to this, I bought 2 separate WD HDDs, and both of them was faulty right out of the box. I cannot belive that I yet again got a faulty HDD even from a different brand... Help!!

PC:
MSI Z170a Gaming M3
i7 6700K 4.4Ghz
RTX 2060 Super
32GB RAM
4 HDDs & 2 SSDs
PSU is either 650 or 750W

Thank you!

 

[USAFRet]

Contact Seagate, and see about a replacement.

 

[fzabkar]

Your SMART report doesn't show any problems. HDDScan should identify any "slow" sectors.

As for your DOA WD drives, what were the symptoms? Did they spin up? I ask this because some drives support Power Disable via SATA power pin #3. If your PSU puts 3.3V on this pin, the drive won't spin.

 

[Norby0]

Your SMART report doesn't show any problems. HDDScan should identify any "slow" sectors.

As for your DOA WD drives, what were the symptoms? Did they spin up? I ask this because some drives support Power Disable via SATA power pin #3. If your PSU puts 3.3V on this pin, the drive won't spin.

Hey fzabkar,

Thank you for the actual help, instead of a lazy "just contact Segate" reply.

So, I think I solved it, although it's really frustrating that I haven't checked this earlier: I replaced both the sata and power cables (from another drive that I wasn't actively using), and behold, it seems to be working now. I'm currently doing some stress test, but now the drive won't reach 100% and stays completely responsive the whole time. I could have checked the cables earlier, but I swear that this very same setup was working just perfectly fine 2 months ago....

Question now is what could be the culprit: the cable, or its connector, or maybe the connection on the mobo, ooor maybe the power cable... I might try all the cables one-by-one when I got some free time. Although I'm dead scared touching it again, as it finally seems to be working, lol

The symptoms on the DOA WDs were that they did spin up, but completely froze the whole system after like 10 minutes. Couldn't really copy from, or to them, and when I tried, it didn't even take 10 mins for Windows to completely froze. But then I at least got some feedback from the sofware that there were errors. Now the fact that no software showed any errors suggest me that the HDD is actually fine, and the culprit is indeed one of the cables... But I'm stupid not to check it earlier.

Thank you nonetheless!

 

[USAFRet]

My comment of "Contact Seagate" was in direct response to reading through your whole original post.
And specifically, this: "the fast scan did not found any errors, but the extended scan crashed, and it couldn't finish. "

To me, that suggested a dying drive.
Which does happen, even on nearly new devices.

 

[fzabkar]

A drive will often record SMART Command Timeout errors whenever it becomes unresponsive. I would also have expected to see UDMA CRC Errors if the SATA data cable were problematic. I would think that a problematic SATA power cable would cause the drive to spin down.