- Aug 28, 2016
- 10
- 0
- 1,520
I built a new PC a few weeks ago and everything has been working perfectly, except for my secondary storage HDD. My main drive is a PNY 240GB SSD, and it gives me absolutely no problems. However, my storage drive which is a WD Blue 1TB HDD slows down at completely random times and makes it unusable. The HDD works flawlessly about 50% of the time, but it slows down to borderline unusable speeds about 30% of the time, and it goes to 0mb/s around 20% of the time, leaving it totally useless. The only way I can temporarily fix the problem is to restart my PC, but that only fixes it for around an hour. I mainly use this drive to install non essential programs, games, and ShadowPlay clips.
The first step I took to fixing this problem was to replace the SATA 3 cable and then plug it into a different port. This changed nothing, and the problem persisted. After that, I suspected that the HDD itself was defective, so i ran the WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics test when the drive was working properly, and it told me there was nothing wrong with it. I then ran the test again when it was acting up and being incredibly slow, and it was not even able to run the test because it was so slow. Since this did not solve anything, I came up with the brilliant idea of placing a different, fully operational HDD from my old PC into my new one. The new one I put in was a Toshiba 1TB 7200 RPM drive, a lot like the WD Blue that was also in my PC. I was shocked to see that my trusted storage drive that served me for 3 years experienced the same exact issue that my WD Blue had. And the strangest part of this all is that they would each slow down differently at random times, so one would be usually working while the other is not. So from this I was able to conclude that the HDD was not defective, and neither was the SATA 3 cable.
After all this, I was convinced that my Gigabyte H110M-A motherboard was the source of the problem. I had a feeling that was the issue since it was the cheapest, most basic LGA 1151 motherboard I could find on Amazon. I was still able to send that board back for a full refund, and I then bought a vastly superior and more reliable MSI Z170A SLI PLUS motherboard. After I installed the motherboard and plugged in both HDDs with the brand new SATA cables that came with the board, I realized that the problem was still not fixed. Even with a new motherboard with new drivers and a different chipset, I still had the exact same problem. After I did this I also made sure that the drives were getting some cool air and that they were not overheating by some chance, but they still stayed around 33 degrees at all times, and the problem persisted.
I think I can conclude that there is a software issue causing my HDDs to randomly slow down, but not my SSD. In the 12 years that I have been using and building PCs, I have never encountered such a strange and annoying issue with no solution.This is literally the only issue with my PC, so i don't think it is a hardware problem at all. Would there be any program that could cause this? Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated, as I'm trying to do everything possible to fix this.
PC Specs:
CPU: i7 6700k at 4.4 GHz with Corsair H100i V2
GPU: MSi Gaming X GTX 1070
RAM: 16GB Kingston HyperX DDR4
Motherboard: MSI Z170A SLI PLUS (previously had Gigabyte H110M-A)
PSU: EVGA 700B 80+ certified
SSD: PNY 240GB
HDD: WD Blue 1TB and Toshiba 1TB
OS: Genuine Windows 10 64 bit (upgraded from Windows 7)
The first step I took to fixing this problem was to replace the SATA 3 cable and then plug it into a different port. This changed nothing, and the problem persisted. After that, I suspected that the HDD itself was defective, so i ran the WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics test when the drive was working properly, and it told me there was nothing wrong with it. I then ran the test again when it was acting up and being incredibly slow, and it was not even able to run the test because it was so slow. Since this did not solve anything, I came up with the brilliant idea of placing a different, fully operational HDD from my old PC into my new one. The new one I put in was a Toshiba 1TB 7200 RPM drive, a lot like the WD Blue that was also in my PC. I was shocked to see that my trusted storage drive that served me for 3 years experienced the same exact issue that my WD Blue had. And the strangest part of this all is that they would each slow down differently at random times, so one would be usually working while the other is not. So from this I was able to conclude that the HDD was not defective, and neither was the SATA 3 cable.
After all this, I was convinced that my Gigabyte H110M-A motherboard was the source of the problem. I had a feeling that was the issue since it was the cheapest, most basic LGA 1151 motherboard I could find on Amazon. I was still able to send that board back for a full refund, and I then bought a vastly superior and more reliable MSI Z170A SLI PLUS motherboard. After I installed the motherboard and plugged in both HDDs with the brand new SATA cables that came with the board, I realized that the problem was still not fixed. Even with a new motherboard with new drivers and a different chipset, I still had the exact same problem. After I did this I also made sure that the drives were getting some cool air and that they were not overheating by some chance, but they still stayed around 33 degrees at all times, and the problem persisted.
I think I can conclude that there is a software issue causing my HDDs to randomly slow down, but not my SSD. In the 12 years that I have been using and building PCs, I have never encountered such a strange and annoying issue with no solution.This is literally the only issue with my PC, so i don't think it is a hardware problem at all. Would there be any program that could cause this? Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated, as I'm trying to do everything possible to fix this.
PC Specs:
CPU: i7 6700k at 4.4 GHz with Corsair H100i V2
GPU: MSi Gaming X GTX 1070
RAM: 16GB Kingston HyperX DDR4
Motherboard: MSI Z170A SLI PLUS (previously had Gigabyte H110M-A)
PSU: EVGA 700B 80+ certified
SSD: PNY 240GB
HDD: WD Blue 1TB and Toshiba 1TB
OS: Genuine Windows 10 64 bit (upgraded from Windows 7)
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