Short stroking hard drive

[Ivan96]

Just one simple question can short stroking a hard drive improve gaming performnce because im sure that my hard drive causes some milisecond freezes in games and some games even freeze for 5-6 seconds?

 

[GhislainG]

Millisecond maybe, but not 5-6 seconds unless the drive has an issue.

 

[Ivan96]

Millisecond maybe, but not 5-6 seconds unless the drive has an issue.

Ok here is what really happening.....in some games like far cry 3 when character running or driving on every few seconds it freezes for milisecond and fps drop too, on nfs most wanted 2012 same thing happening but when i enter the city its freezing more often and it last longer and i can see that some items like trees are loading a few meters in front the car like they can not load fast enough and on time,....and there are games like stalker,or skyrim in those games on every few minutes games pause itself (no sound,picture freeze) and it last for about 5-6 seconds and it depends on how many details are there ( more people or items=more freezeing)
My hard drive is SAMSUNG HD502ij reading speed is from 50mb/s to max 107 mb/s (and if i short stroke it i will get minimum 90mb/s but im not sure that can help and i need to reinstall my system to be able to do that)

 

[GhislainG]

I doubt it will make a significant difference (unlike a SSD). What's the rest of your system and what the resolution?

 

[Ivan96]

I doubt it will make a significant difference (unlike a SSD). What's the rest of your system and what the resolution?

That Pc is really old but right now i cant afford a new one thats why im not playing some really demanding games, specs are:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E 8500
GPU:HD 4830 OC 700/1170 mhz
RAM: 3gb DDR2 Dual channel 800Mhz
MOBO: ASUS P5Q
OS:Windows 8.1 Pro 64 bit
Resolution:1280x1024
I now its now special but it should be able to run those game without that freezing because im having over 100fps in stalker but that freezing is annoying and in skyrim im having over 40 fps on medium
BTW my hard drive right now have only single C partition
I even tried to put may friends stronger PSU and his hd 6870 inside my pc but that freezing problem was still there and i have onother friend who has the same pc as mine only he has different hdd ( but with similar speed) and he has a hd 7770 and there is no freezing at his pc

 

[GhislainG]

I have an old PC with an E8400 that isn't used for gaming, but I have a SSD which makes it load everything faster. All my systems have a single partition as I don't believe in splitting hard disks in several partitions; using several drives is better. You can short-stroke your hard disk, but it shouldn't make much difference (though a clean install may help, regardless of short-stroking the HDD or not). Using a different hard disk or a SSD may also resolve your issue (a SSD is an awful lot faster than any hard disk).

 

[Ivan96]

I have an old PC with an E8400 that isn't used for gaming, but I have a SSD which makes it load everything faster. All my systems have a single partition as I don't believe in splitting hard disks in several partitions; using several drives is better. You can short-stroke your hard disk, but it shouldn't make much difference (though a clean install may help, regardless of short-stroking the HDD or not). Using a different hard disk or a SSD may also resolve your issue (a SSD is an awful lot faster than any hard disk).

I know that SSD is way faster but i can not afford it right now and for a clean install i done it about 3 weeks ago, i dont care much about loading time its fast enough i would like to remove that milisecond freezing at least and reduce this 5-6 seconds freeze to happen as little is possible

 

[GhislainG]

If you still have the issue after a clean install and you determined it definitely is the hard disk (the HDD LED is on constantly), then there may be an issue with it and you'll have to replace it. Did you run the manufacturer's utility to make absolutely sure there are no issues with it? Since the HDD is slow, did you turn off search indexing? Is an antivirus installed? If so, does it help if you disable it? There isn't a whole lot that you can do to correct the issue if it's hardware related.

 

[Ivan96]

If you still have the issue after a clean install and you determined it definitely is the hard disk (the HDD LED is on constantly), then there may be an issue with it and you'll have to replace it. Did you run the manufacturer's utility to make absolutely sure there are no issues with it? Since the HDD is slow, did you turn off search indexing? Is an antivirus installed? If so, does it help if you disable it? There isn't a whole lot that you can do to correct the issue if it's hardware related.

Its not on constantly but everytime that freeze occur its on,i havent run the manufacturers utility because i can not find one for my samsung hd502ij i only checked it with chkdsk and hard disk sentinel and everything was fine, i dont know what you mean by search indexing, antivirus is installed im using bitdefender free edition but i tried to remove it and it didnt help....

 

[GhislainG]

Is this hard disk from Dell?

 

[Ivan96]

Is this hard disk from Dell?

I dont know i didnt bought a brand new one i built my pc from used parts and hard drive was used too so all i know about it its called samsung hd502ij

 

[GhislainG]

I was asking because that model seems to be for a Dell system. Support for Samsung drives is rather limited; you could try the latest version of Seatools available at seagate.com.

 

[Ivan96]

I was asking because that model seems to be for a Dell system. Support for Samsung drives is rather limited; you could try the latest version of Seatools available at seagate.com.

I downloaded seatools and which test i should perform it offers basic,advanced,fix all....?

 

[GhislainG]

Advanced; don't run any destructive test.

 

[Ivan96]

Advanced; don't run any destructive test.

I can not run advanced test it wont let me,when i click advanced test and than f8 to enable them it says they are enabled,then i click on collapsing menu to choose which to run collapsing menu show up for a second and than disappear after that when i click on advanced tests nothing happens

 

[GhislainG]

Like I wrote earlier Samsung drives have limited support. Don't you have another drive that you could use? Even if it was smaller, it would be fine to determine the issue really is HDD related.

 

[Ivan96]

Like I wrote earlier Samsung drives have limited support. Don't you have another drive that you could use? Even if it was smaller, it would be fine to determine the issue really is HDD related.

Nope,only some really old 6gb hard drive which i think i can not even connect to my motherboard

 

[GhislainG]

You can't resolve the issue if don't have parts to test. You seem to be convinced the hard disk is the issue (I won't dispute that); therefore you need to use another hard disk or a SSD to prove it really is the issue.

 

[Ivan96]

You can't resolve the issue if don't have parts to test. You seem to be convinced the hard disk is the issue (I won't dispute that); therefore you need to use another hard disk or a SSD to prove it really is the issue.

Ok i will try to test with another hard drive if i find one, but i think i need to buy another hard drive and maybe a graphics card too,but until i get the money for them im stuck with this problem (which btw last for 10 months now). Thanks for your help

 

[GhislainG]

Your GPU is very weak, but ii shouldn't cause a freeze even at 100% utilization; it should cause frame drops.

 

[Ivan96]

Your GPU is very weak, but ii shouldn't cause a freeze even at 100% utilization; it should cause frame drops.

It causes fps drops in far cry 3 for example but i watched on youtube some guy playing with same card as mine on low and on 1920x1080 and he has 30-50 fps, on the other hand im playing far cry 3 on 1280x720 and im getting 45fps with random drops to 15 and maybe even 10 (on fresh installed windows,no antivirus or any background program running)

 

[GhislainG]

Unlike you I'm not 100% convinced the hard disk is the issue, but if you monitored GPU utilization and CPU and they are not the cause of the issue, then it has to be the hard disk. Don't rely too much on Youtube because you can't easily determine if the results are real or fake. You have a weak system with only 3GB of memory which obviously isn't helping; if the OS is swapping (you haven't told us about memory utilization), then additional memory or a SSD would help. My E8400 has no serious performance issues (it obviously is very slow when compared to newer systems), it has 8GB of memory, a 120GB SSD and a HD 5770 GPU. It's OK as an office PC that's used a couple times a month, but it would barely be acceptable as a gaming PC.

 

[Ivan96]

Unlike you I'm not 100% convinced the hard disk is the issue, but if you monitored GPU utilization and CPU and they are not the cause of the issue, then it has to be the hard disk. Don't rely too much on Youtube because you can't easily determine if the results are real or fake. You have a weak system with only 3GB of memory which obviously isn't helping; if the OS is swapping (you haven't told us about memory utilization), then additional memory or a SSD would help. My E8400 has no serious performance issues (it obviously is very slow when compared to newer systems), it has 8GB of memory, a 120GB SSD and a HD 5770 GPU. It's OK as an office PC that's used a couple times a month, but it would barely be acceptable as a gaming PC.

I dont remember i told you but in my country pc components are very expensive so i can only afford old used parts so im planning to upgrade my system in month or two and here is what im planning to get:
CPU:Xeon E5430 and overclock it to 3,2ghz
Ram:Just to add 5 more gb and have 8gb in total running at 800mhz in dual channel ddr 2
Gpu:Gtx 650ti or 560ti or hd 7850
Mobo: keep this one i have already ASUS P5Q
Some decent power supply and new hdd or maybe sdd
All this should cost around 250$ and all of them will be second hand (used one) only hdd or sdd will maybe be new
So,do you think this will run any better on 1280x1024 resolution?

 

[GhislainG]

How fast is your E8500 overclocked? You have no warranty that a modded Xeon E5430 will run at the expected frequency. Did you check memory utilization while gaming? Is it close to 100%? How is the 3GB of memory configured? 3 x 1GB modules?

 

[Ivan96]

How fast is your E8500 overclocked? You have no warranty that a modded Xeon E5430 will run at the expected frequency. Did you check memory utilization while gaming? Is it close to 100%? How is the 3GB of memory configured? 3 x 1GB modules?

My E8500 isnt oveclocked its running at stock 3,16 ghz but i tried to overclocked it to 4ghz and its running stable but my temps are high because i have stock cooler so i downclocked it to 3,16 ghz again. If its running at 4ghz i still have same problems so that doesnt help,if utilization is usage than my cpu in far cry 3 running at 80%,in need for speed most wanted 2012 at 60% and it depends on games its different in each game, but interesting thing is that in bf bad company 2 its running at 100% all the time and that game is running on max setting and in some others games its running at 50-60% and those dont run nice, in bad company 2 i have milisecond freezing too and gpu usage in that game is 50-80%. My ram is 2gb Rc memory and 1 gb Aeneon both running at 800mhz and in dual channel mode. As for the xeon i know few people running it at 3,2 ghz so i hope i will manage to overclock it to at least at 3ghz