HDD random slow read speed, dying?

[pichapie]

hello tom's hardware

i got a worrisome dilemma here regarding my HDD

it's 2-3 years old and mainly used for storage/gaming 1tb with 300gb space left, my OS is not there

now, i've been noticing random slowing (usually from game loading) and figured I'd use HD TUNE to monitor.

so far, the lowest i've seen it go (read speed) is in the 30mb-70mb while its highest is in the 200mb+

whenever it slows down, i would just restart my computer and the speed will be back to normal

the slowing down comes at random and really no way for me to trigger it, tried everything from defrag to gaming all day, etc etc

is this a sign of a dying HDD?

please help ty

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, pichapie.

I'd advise you to backup any important data which you might have on that drive, just to be on the safe side. After that go ahead and download the HDD manufacturer's diagnostic tool (or a 3rd party diagnostic tool if the manufacturer doesn't offer one) and run the tests, to see what's the situation with the drive.

Please let me know how it goes.
Boogieman_WD

 

[pichapie]

Hey there, pichapie.

I'd advise you to backup any important data which you might have on that drive, just to be on the safe side. After that go ahead and download the HDD manufacturer's diagnostic tool (or a 3rd party diagnostic tool if the manufacturer doesn't offer one) and run the tests, to see what's the situation with the drive.

Please let me know how it goes.
Boogieman_WD

hello boogie and ty for replying

here's my usual hdd result when it's not acting up (slowing)

http://imgur.com/a/mUqAF

and here's when it's acting up

http://imgur.com/a/Z7s1Z

a simple restart would actually fix this but i'm really not sure what is going on

i have tested the HDD and found to have no bad sectors whatsoever

**here's after the restart just now

http://imgur.com/a/9ScMu

 

[Boogieman_WD]

How did you test it for bad sectors and errors. Basically the recommended way is by downloading the manufacturer's diagnostic tool and running all the tests, but not before you've backed up your data first (as mentioned in my previous post).
You could also give it a go with a different SATA port and different cables as well, to see if the issue still persists.

It's not a hardware problem, then it could be something caused by your OS or something else. Try updating your Windows if you have available updates, to see if that fixes things up. Make a full scan with your antivirus program as well, to see if it finds any threats.

Please keep me posted.

 

[pichapie]

How did you test it for bad sectors and errors. Basically the recommended way is by downloading the manufacturer's diagnostic tool and running all the tests, but not before you've backed up your data first (as mentioned in my previous post).
You could also give it a go with a different SATA port and different cables as well, to see if the issue still persists.

It's not a hardware problem, then it could be something caused by your OS or something else. Try updating your Windows if you have available updates, to see if that fixes things up. Make a full scan with your antivirus program as well, to see if it finds any threats.

Please keep me posted.

hdd tune pro has an error check option that acts like a check disk

yeah i'll be trying those cable changing/port changing

btw, another thing....when my hdd slows down, the disk usage is not even 100%, it's actually in the low 0%

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Sure thing, let me know how it goes.

In one recent case with similar issues (although the disk usage there was 100%) and I've again suggested basically the same things and after everything was tried out, a simple fresh OS installation seems to have fixed the problem. So you might want to try that as well if nothing changes once you try out the different cables and/or port.

 

[pichapie]

reformat/reinstall solved whatever was making both my hdd slow

guess it is software conflict

what though, no idea

we'll never know

 

[Faux_Grey]

Hi.

Prolly just fragmentation?

You can defrag and check smart stats with Auslogics disk defrag.

If the disk is dying, you'll see "SMART Statistics" Raw read/write error rate has a high number.

While you're running the program, you can defrag the drive as well, fragmentation can really slow down a drive.

 

[pichapie]

Hi.

Prolly just fragmentation?

You can defrag and check smart stats with Auslogics disk defrag.

If the disk is dying, you'll see "SMART Statistics" Raw read/write error rate has a high number.

While you're running the program, you can defrag the drive as well, fragmentation can really slow down a drive.

i did everything. defrag/smart/all kind of test and they all came back normal

reinstall really solved it......for now ....will see the coming days