Slow desktop HDD (slower than my old laptop!)

[Sub-Human]

My desktop HDD (3 years old) is running rather slow lately...

Specifically, the issue is with a game. It does have a lot of small files (over a hundred thousand for a game that's less than a GB), and it takes about 15 minutes to get into the main menu. Compare this with my 2010 laptop (which was by no means cutting edge even then) that does it under 3.

Also, sometimes when copying files (a large amount) the system becomes very slow, or unresponsive.

It seems to not cope well with a large amount of files. What could be the issue? I've done a test but it said everything is 'OK' (no corruption or damage).

 

[nes2world]

Well, mechanical drives are bad at random read/writes, but are good at sequential read/writes. Copying lots of smaller files is essentially random read/writes and will be slower because of the extra seek time required. Did you try defragmenting your hard drive?

If you haven't defragmented it in 3 years that might be an issue 😛

 

[Sub-Human]

Yeah, I've defragmented it, probably twice within a month once the issue came up. It didn't seem to have any effect...

 

[fzabkar]

I would run a read benchmark (eg HD Tune, ATTO) against the drive.

You could also use HDDScan or MHDD (DOS) to perform a full surface scan. This will identify "slow" sectors, ie those sectors which are difficult to read.

 

[Sub-Human]

I would run a read benchmark (eg HD Tune, ATTO) against the drive.

You could also use HDDScan or MHDD (DOS) to perform a full surface scan. This will identify "slow" sectors, ie those sectors which are difficult to read.

I'll try that and see how it goes.