Reccomendations for fast HDD

[Stuffz121]

Hello I’m currently looking for a fast 1Tb HDD that I will use mainly for game storage. I already have two ssd’s at full capacity and don’t really want a third one since I’m looking for a more reasonably priced storage device that can have many games installed. The main thing I’m looking for asides for storage space is how fast it can load games. I currently have one WD Blue HDD (https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0088PUEPK/ref=mp_s_a_1_1/132-5594330-0867654?ie=UTF8&qid=1517812976&sr=1-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&dpPl=1&dpID=41JjEu7FCkL&ref=plSrch), and I was honestly disappointed with it overall due to it only being half full and was starting to experience fairly long load times for games such as taking 5 minutes or so just to load a match in Rainbow Six siege.

I guess what I should be asking first is, are these kind of loading times something I would be experiencing with any HDD? I understand the big difference of the speed between ssd and HDD so I’m not looking for ssd speeds but definitely something more reasonable where I’m not waiting minutes to load the game. A friend of mine for example has the same game as me on his seagate HDD which I think is this one possibly,(https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01M1NHCZT/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1517813559&sr=1-4&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&dpPl=1&dpID=51VO7uARd5L&ref=plSrch) and his game loads within seconds. We also happened to have the same GPU and CPU if that means anything. Anyways, am I delusional here thinking that there are much faster HDD’s out there or is what I have more or less the best I can expect? Otherwise anybody have suggestions? Thank you

 

[zoltan.boese]

I guess what I should be asking first is, are these kind of loading times something I would be experiencing with any HDD?

As a rule of thumb loading a game from an HDD takes up to double the time compared to an ssd. Reading small chunks of data or fragmented data is significantly slower from a hard disk drive. In your case still does not explain the long loading times. Check the file system, make sure your HDD is NTFS formatted and try defragmenting the partition your games are stored on.

And yes, the two drives you linked should perform similarly.

 

[zoltan.boese]

I found a comparison here: http://www.computertown.com.au/info/2017/02/27/ssd-vs-hdd-game-load-times/

 

[boju]

Hdd load times are still reasonable. Some large open world games can take 30s to a minute.

Depends also how fragmented the hdd is can also impact performance.

5mins is very bad and id replace that drive asap. 5mins def not normal even for a mechanical drive.

Ssds will always be preferred, not just load times but streaming assets in games that load things on the fly as well.

 

[richardvday]

You want speed AND capacity. that SSHD is faster in MOST cases than a regular HDD true enough. As long as what you need is in the cache at least.
If instead you bought two of say this drive http://www.microcenter.com/product/477236/BarraCuda_2TB_7,200_RPM_SATA_III_35_Internal_Hard_Drive
and put them in a raid - 0 array you would get 4tb of space for about 100.00 bucks AND it would be faster than that SSHD alone all the time not just for whats currently in the cache.
The downside is power usage goes up you have two drives now and of course if one drive goes you lose all your data even if the other drive is fine.

Lots of space and speed though.

 

[cryoburner]

One other thing to note is that using the highest resolution textures in Rainbow Six Siege can increase load times a lot. If your texture quality is set to 'ultra' or 'very high', you might try dropping it to 'high', since that would likely help a lot with load times on a mechanical drive.

And if you already have two SSDs, you should by all means move Rainbow Six Siege onto one of them, since load times in that game are affected more by drive performance than most other games. Steam has built-in controls for moving games from one drive to another without re-downloading them, so it might be worth shuffling some other games to your hard drive to make room for it.

 

[seagate_surfer]

The Seagate drive you linked that your friend may have is our FireCuda, which is actually what's known as an SSHD (Solid-State Hybrid Drive). This means that in addition to having the capacity value of HDD space, it also has an SSD cache so that you get faster load-time performance, which is particularly useful in open-world type games as you move into new areas of maps. The other main benefit of a FireCuda over a standard spinning HDD is that most standard desktop HDDs have a 2 year warranty, and the FireCuda has a 5 year warranty.


Here are a couple of charts which may interest you:

The first one compares startup times across several popular games on a traditional spinning 7200 RPM HDD, our SSHD, and an M.2 SSD (128GB). The white is for SSD, the orange is for the FireCuda, and the gray is for the 7200 spinning HDD.

Startup Times

The next one compares the first 3 days of gaming storage utilization across several popular titles, and SYSmark ratings from various drive types and combinations. First of the grays is 7200 RPM 1TB spinning HDD, second (lightest gray) is FireCuda, third (darkest gray) is an SSD + 7200 RPM HDD combo, purple is SSD + FireCuda combo, and lastly blue is SSD.

First 3 Days Gaming Storage Utilization

Regardless of which route you decide to go with in the end, thank you for considering Seagate!

 

[Stuffz121]

I guess what I should be asking first is, are these kind of loading times something I would be experiencing with any HDD?

As a rule of thumb loading a game from an HDD takes up to double the time compared to an ssd. Reading small chunks of data or fragmented data is significantly slower from a hard disk drive. In your case still does not explain the long loading times. Check the file system, make sure your HDD is NTFS formatted and try defragmenting the partition your games are stored on.

And yes, the two drives you linked should perform similarly.

The HDD is in NTFS format and I have tried many solutions including defraging, as well as changing a storeahci value in regedit, used Data lifeguard scan among other things. Unfortunately nothing has worked and I also did a chckdsk r f scan in cmd. At this point I just think its best to replace it and hope for the best. Thanks for your input.

 

[Stuffz121]

You want speed AND capacity. that SSHD is faster in MOST cases than a regular HDD true enough. As long as what you need is in the cache at least.
If instead you bought two of say this drive http://www.microcenter.com/product/477236/BarraCuda_2TB_7,200_RPM_SATA_III_35_Internal_Hard_Drive
and put them in a raid - 0 array you would get 4tb of space for about 100.00 bucks AND it would be faster than that SSHD alone all the time not just for whats currently in the cache.
The downside is power usage goes up you have two drives now and of course if one drive goes you lose all your data even if the other drive is fine.

Lots of space and speed though.

Thanks for the advice. I believe I will be getting SSHD variant for now for the quicker setup and just to see how this drive fairs compared to the WD one that's ridiculously slow at the moment. I think after upgrading my peripherals recently(Acer 1440p predator) I'm also a little uneasy of not having enough power. Hopefully I just got bad luck ordering this one bad WD drive and this seagate solves my loading issue.

 

[Stuffz121]

Hdd load times are still reasonable. Some large open world games can take 30s to a minute.

Depends also how fragmented the hdd is can also impact performance.

5mins is very bad and id replace that drive asap. 5mins def not normal even for a mechanical drive.

Ssds will always be preferred, not just load times but streaming assets in games that load things on the fly as well.

Ya I am kinda hoping that I just got unlucky with this WD drive. So most other HDD's should load these type of games much quicker right? Obviously the speed would not be near ssd level but definitely at most around a minute like you said? This WD drive is my first HDD that I used for my first PC build, so with that being said I was not too certain on what to expect from hard drives in regards to speeds.

 

[boju]

Whats your system specs, motherboard cpu ram ssd's and Windows and where is windows located? For your ssd's what kind are they, sata /m2 sata /m2 PCIe NVMe?

Have you tried another motherboard sata port for the WD?

 

[boju]

And what sata port #'s are in use. If your motherboard has 3rd party sata ports and is being used for your WD, could very well be a sata driver problem.

 

[Stuffz121]

Whats your system specs, motherboard cpu ram ssd's and Windows and where is windows located? For your ssd's what kind are they, sata /m2 sata /m2 PCIe NVMe?

Have you tried another motherboard sata port for the WD?

Sorry I accidentally pressed best solution on mobile. My specs are
-Mobo: MSI B150 Gaming M3
-CPU: I7 6700k skylake
-GPU: MSI GTX 1080 gaming 8gb
-PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 750 G2, 80+ GOLD 750W
-Ram: DDR4 16gb
-1 PNY 120Gb ssd with os in SATA port 1, 1 Samsung 850PRO SSD 256gb in port 3, and 1 WD HDD in port 5.

I believe the ssds are just sata, and for the WD drive, I have already switched the sata port three times and changed the data cable. Originaly the WD drive was in port 2 then I switched to 3 or 4 and now it is at 5. How would I know of it is a sata driver issue?

 

[boju]

If it was drivers, only way to know is by checking if sata chipset driver is current and using Msi's version and not Microsoft's. If you installed drivers from your motherboard's cd or Msi's website driver page for your board most likely it's not drivers.

Check driver version in device manager for sata host controller or just reinstall.

Im on phone atm so cant open your manual but it looks like from specifications your sata ports are all Intel and not any 3rd party like Marvell.

 

[Stuffz121]

If it was drivers, only way to know is by checking if sata chipset driver is current and using Msi's version and not Microsoft's. If you installed drivers from your motherboard's cd or Msi's website driver page for your board most likely it's not drivers.

Check driver version in device manager for sata host controller or just reinstall.

Im on phone atm so cant open your manual but it looks like from specifications your sata ports are all Intel and not any 3rd party like Marvell.

Ya I've checked MSI's website for my mobo for any new Intel chipset drivers, if thats what you meant, and its the same version I have. Just to be sure I installed driver booster to check and I'm shown that the driver for the SATA controller is "very old" and the current version is from 2006 and the new one to update to is from 8/7/2017. I dont know if this makes sense and am a little unsure in trusting these types of software. I also went to device manager and it indeed is from 2006, any idea where I can find the newer version for this sata controler driver?I dont see it on MSI website. Thanks again for your help.

 

[richardvday]

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/product/90592/Intel-B150-Chipset
This is the latest version for your chipset according to Intel.