Really slow hdd

[Shamwow47]

So currently trying to open or even right clicking any file is taking minutes. Opening google chrome takes a minute. I derangement the drive, cleaned any unused or un necessary files. Even going to the windows icon on bottom left corner and typing takes 10 seconds to show up and 20 seconds to close. Windows 7 has been freshly installed 2 months ago and i only use this pc for capturing video with my game pvr and gaming a little. No viruses. I am using a 1.5tb western digital green drive 7200rpm 64mb cache. The drives is about 4 years old. I tried to open a nvidia driver installation file (GTX 970) from nvidias website that i downloaded but it has been stuck on the blue loading circle. Even after 3 system restarts and re downloading the file still nothing. No bad noises coming from the drive. Sounds healthy and kept in a well cooled case. Is my drive about to fail or should i do something else. Buying a new one is not an option unless this one is about to poop the bed on me and id prefer to not install windows again but i will if that's the issue. My specs are as follows. GTX 970 strix, 4gb ddr2 800mhz, asus p5q deluxe, q6600 @2.5ghz.

UPDATE: after 10 minutes it launched the nivida installation but its still really slow.

 

[Samwell9854]

First of all, I would strongly discourage using a Western Digital Green drive as a primary/gaming HDD usage for the following reasons:
Because of its lower power consumption and cheaper capacity, it has slower speeds, slower wake and seek times, and lower reliability over its life. Thus, this would explain the really slow experience you're having right now with that drive.
If buying a new one isn't an option unless it's dead (you may check online for a software to verify it's "SMART" status), I would strongly recommend you buying an SSD (at least 250GB if used for gaming) to install the OS and all the programs which needs speed on it, and leave the rest of the data (music, video, pictures, etc.) on your Green drive. All the accesses to the Green drive might be slow, but your general experience (opening and browsing through your programs) shouldn't be any slowed as the SSD has much higher efficiency than normal hard drives used as a primary drive.
Just keep in mind that the memory's frequency is somehow low, and the CPU not really powerful, this could make your SSD just too fast as the rest of the computer won't even follow. Even though, you should still enjoy a faster general experience, and it can easily be used again for your next computer (which would surely be able to fully unlock the real SSD's speed)!

 

[Shamwow47]

First of all, I would strongly discourage using a Western Digital Green drive as a primary/gaming HDD usage for the following reasons:
Because of its lower power consumption and cheaper capacity, it has slower speeds, slower wake and seek times, and lower reliability over its life. Thus, this would explain the really slow experience you're having right now with that drive.
If buying a new one isn't an option unless it's dead (you may check online for a software to verify it's "SMART" status), I would strongly recommend you buying an SSD (at least 250GB if used for gaming) to install the OS and all the programs which needs speed on it, and leave the rest of the data (music, video, pictures, etc.) on your Green drive. All the accesses to the Green drive might be slow, but your general experience (opening and browsing through your programs) shouldn't be any slowed as the SSD has much higher efficiency than normal hard drives used as a primary drive.
Just keep in mind that the memory's frequency is somehow low, and the CPU not really powerful, this could make your SSD just too fast as the rest of the computer won't even follow. Even though, you should still enjoy a faster general experience, and it can easily be used again for your next computer (which would surely be able to fully unlock the real SSD's speed)!

I heard that the green drives are poor performers from a couple others too. It was taken out of an prebuilt acer so its the best i could find for my situation. I currently got a 60gb kingston v200 i think ill just throw in with this pc and buy a 250gb samsung 850 evo for my main rig to replace the v200. Do you have any idea how much the q6600 and the ram would limit the pc? I could oc my ram to 949mhz and my cpu to 3ghz as soon as i get a new cooler and maybe that would help with the ssd upgrade too?

 

[Samwell9854]

The SSD replacement you just explained is a really good idea as i think this kingston drive should suit the computer you intend to put it into, and the samsung drive is my actual favorite concerning the beautiful tools it carries, its very good performances, and the actual cheap price on the market.

You can notice the RAM's limitation when you have softwares already opened and you try to access content that are already in the memory, for example changing tabs in Chrome, changing window from a program to another, or by clicking and exploring the menus of some windows (File, Edit, About). If it's not instant and taking some time, this should be the RAM.

The CPU is the brain of the computer and every tasks, work (calculations), requests... are done or passes through it. The better it is, the quicker it can start processing the next request. A drastically slow CPU would make you experience random lock-up (freeze) and general slowness. If you open a video game, you might be fine if it's a shooter, even if it requires high graphics; but a strategy game (like some huge maps of Empire Earth II), even with low graphics, that lasts for at least 5 hours can make your game after so much time feel incredibly slow because the CPU has too much things to do at the same time and thus slows down the speed of the game (and the whole computer in fact) so it can keep up.

I wouldn't recommend overclock in general (except if the next step is trash) because you'd need to commit additional expenses for cooling devices by reducing the lifespan of the concerning overclocked hardware to achieve not-so-worthy higher speeds. But your main bottleneck is the hard drive. I think you should start by solving this problem.

 

[Shamwow47]

The SSD replacement you just explained is a really good idea as i think this kingston drive should suit the computer you intend to put it into, and the samsung drive is my actual favorite concerning the beautiful tools it carries, its very good performances, and the actual cheap price on the market.

You can notice the RAM's limitation when you have softwares already opened and you try to access content that are already in the memory, for example changing tabs in Chrome, changing window from a program to another, or by clicking and exploring the menus of some windows (File, Edit, About). If it's not instant and taking some time, this should be the RAM.

The CPU is the brain of the computer and every tasks, work (calculations), requests... are done or passes through it. The better it is, the quicker it can start processing the next request. A drastically slow CPU would make you experience random lock-up (freeze) and general slowness. If you open a video game, you might be fine if it's a shooter, even if it requires high graphics; but a strategy game (like some huge maps of Empire Earth II), even with low graphics, that lasts for at least 5 hours can make your game after so much time feel incredibly slow because the CPU has too much things to do at the same time and thus slows down the speed of the game (and the whole computer in fact) so it can keep up.

I wouldn't recommend overclock in general (except if the next step is trash) because you'd need to commit additional expenses for cooling devices by reducing the lifespan of the concerning overclocked hardware to achieve not-so-worthy higher speeds. But your main bottleneck is the hard drive. I think you should start by solving this problem.

Sounds good. Going to get the 850 evo hopefully this weekend. Thanks for your input.

 

[Samwell9854]

You're welcome!