Question Need Help: Hard drive is slowing everything down

Zane_Alto

Reputable
Mar 12, 2019
15
0
4,510
So I had a 1TB hard drive that I used to use as my main C drive but it was so freaking slow and would usually hit around 100% and I tried a lot of things and nothing worked to stop it from always hitting 100% at like 5mbps (bc of this Fortnite and other games literally would stutter and freeze all the time). So I got an internl pcie 240gb SSD. I put the operating system and my games on it and left a lot of clips and other files on the hard drive. For a while it was very nice no stutters in games everything was fast, but for some reason lately I have been getting so many stutters in game (mainly fortnite) and when I quickly look over at my task manager my Disk E/my old slow hard drive is spiking up to 100% and when I stop lagging after a couple seconds it goes back down to around 0. I have booted to my hard drive to delete my games off of it (to make sure i am not booting off games off of my old hdd) and I have made sure that I am running the games as well as the operating system off of my fast ssd. So I have no idea why my hdd (which is usually sitting around doing nothing) spikes up to 100% and make my game stutter (by the way my ssd obviously is always around 0-5% when im in game). Why is this? and is there any way to temporarily disconnect my Hdd when i am not using it without manually removing it from the computer?
Thanks <3

CPU: Ryzen 5 1600
GPU: Gtx 1660ti (6gb)
Ram: 8gb DDR4
SSD: Kingston - 240GB Internal PCI Express 3.0 x2 (NVMe) Solid State Drive
HDD: 1TB Hard Drive
Operating system and games are running off the ssd
Only spare files are on the hdd like clips etc
 

R_1

Expert
Ambassador
Do not know for sure but I think windows is the problem here. I have noticed that windows will make all drives ready before accessing the SSD.
I open documents on my SSD, and my external spins up before anything is accessed on the SSD.
I think this is happening to you. windows is paging the SSD and its making all drives ready first making you wait.

you only need to remove the power or data cable to the drive not remove it completely.

a word on grounding
Canned Grounding Rant-
shut down system and remove side panel. with the power cable plugged into the PSU touch a bare unpainted metal area of the case. (my favorite spot is an unpainted screw securing the PSU) once you have grounded yourself you can unplug the computers power cable from the PSU and can touch the system.
if you move your feet, or shuffle in your chair, plug in the cord, reground yourself and unplug again.
end canned rant-

once grounded you can unplug either one of the cables leading to the drive, then power the system.
to access the drive you can reverse. ground yourself, connect the cable, boot into windows.