Laptop performance is very poor , i think hdd is the culprit , need help

[Flyingburger]

Hi .
MY laptop(HP envy 15-k203tx; specs:- http://support.hp.com/in-en/document/c04529223 ) is 2 months old , but even when i got it performance was poor , i think problem is related to hdd or some hdd driver problem .

Whenever it goes slow , i open task manager and check out performance tab , speeds are pathetic , and sky high response times , nowehere near speeds that this drive should do , cus i performed error tests and it passes with average speeds of nearly 80mbps , i thought its some virus at start , so i did some fresh installs , same problem , i even updated to W10 . same problem now a days i dont do shutdown anymore because pathetic boot times , i just hibernate ,so when it starts , its as snappy as can be , no more waiting around after i see desktop , I asked HP for drive replacement , but they wont do it since passes all their tests , so i am thinking its some driver related problem . I'll also do some tests if necessary and post results here

Sample :- https://www.dropbox.com/s/m7adeiwctsbwe7i/20150823_203716.jpg?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qb19j5ewmgwljsj/laptop%20hdd.png?dl=0

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hi there, Flyingburger.

I'd suggest that you backup your data first, just to be on the safe side. After that go ahead and download the HDD manufacturer's diagnostic tool and test the drive with it, to see if it still passes the tests. You could use a 3rd party HDD diagnostics tool if you don't know the HDD manufacturer, here's an article with a lot of options: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/tp/tophddiag.htm
If it turns out that everything's fine again, you could try disabling BITS (background intelligent transfer service) and Superfetch as well, to see if the performance is better.
You could also try your HDD with a different computer and run a benchmark tool, to see if the response time and speeds are the same. If they are OK - it might be a faulty SATA cable or port.

Hope that helps. Please keep me posted.
Boogieman_WD

 

[Flyingburger]

Hi there, Flyingburger.

I'd suggest that you backup your data first, just to be on the safe side. After that go ahead and download the HDD manufacturer's diagnostic tool and test the drive with it, to see if it still passes the tests. You could use a 3rd party HDD diagnostics tool if you don't know the HDD manufacturer, here's an article with a lot of options: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/tp/tophddiag.htm
If it turns out that everything's fine again, you could try disabling BITS (background intelligent transfer service) and Superfetch as well, to see if the performance is better.
You could also try your HDD with a different computer and run a benchmark tool, to see if the response time and speeds are the same. If they are OK - it might be a faulty SATA cable or port.

Hope that helps. Please keep me posted.
Boogieman_WD

Boogieman , thanks for ur reply , but in order to verify if its a faulty contact i need to rip aprt my entire laptop unlike some other where u can access these just by removing a panel drive is a samsung BTW, and i cant backup since i ran out of storage to backup , this is where i am stuck right now , i cant decide if i should buy an internal drive or an external backup drive , because if i go on and buy a external drive just to back up the stuff on my laptop , what if internal drive turns out to be a faulty one , then i would have to buy another internal drive , i know that this sounds silly but i am on a budget .

Here are some of my observations if that helps , when i copy paste some stuff i get decent speeds , its when i launch programs or when it boots up or even when playing a raw fraps video or editing a fraps video performace takes a hit , thats when i open up task manager to see performancee stats of hdd , low read and write speeds, ridiculously high access times , upto 15000 ms , but CPU doesnt even break sweat between all this , resting near 30% , all while speeds below 10 MBps most of the time , thats why i only hibernate now , so i think it may be some driver related problem , so can i do some firmware update and get rid of this bug ? Thanks in advance

 

[Boogieman_WD]

It doesn't sound silly at all and I've been there as well, but there's still an option. You could get a 2.5" internal drive (just make sure it's the same height as the one your laptop has now) and an external enclosure for it, so that you can use it as an external drive and as an internal as well if worse comes to worst and you need it for that. Having in mind your laptop is a new one, if it turns out to be a faulty drive, you should be able to get it replaced by the laptop's manufacturer as it should be still under warranty. Unfortunately I won't be able to tell if it's a faulty drive until you run some tests and it's not advisable to run them before you've backed up everything important. This is because if there's a serious problem with the drive, the more you're using it, the bigger is the chance of a failure. Having in mind this is an HDD and not an SSD, I really doubt that there's any firmware that you can install to fix that, but you could always get in touch with the laptop manufacturer's customer support and ask for assistance.