Question System periodically freezing, possibly caused by HDD

[DavidAustria]

Hey guys,
there are many threads speaking about freezing and stuttering on their systems but none are describing the same behavior I'm experience so here we go:

The Systems I tested on: Msi Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon, i7 8700k, 32GB TridentZ DDR4-3200 CL16-18-18-32 and Msi Z790 Gaming Pro Carbon, i7 13700K, Trident Z DDR5-6000 CL 30-40-40-96 Both Systems were then connected to these components: Msi 2070super, BeQuiet straight power 750W, Sabrent Rocket Q2, Seagate Barracuda Compute 4TB HDD

Run on Windows 10 and 11, most recent version, drivers all new, fresh installs.

Now the Problem: When the HDD is connected to the system, the screen is freezing in varying but roughly 10s intervals for a short, non-quantifiable time. I use the HDD as an archive for personal data and as an archive steam download folder (dragging a game from the HDD is much faster than downloading it with my slow internet).

This far, I think I have identified the problem: The activity of the HDD is spiking every few seconds and the peaks correspond to the freezes. I could also isolate the process which causes the spikes: Steam is transferring a few KB of data in some log files on the HDD, even if I am not playing a game on the HDD but on the SDD or no game at all. This is the only R/W process occurring regularly on the HDD, because no program other than steam is running on or saving onto the HDD.

The Easy solution to the problem is disconnecting the drive, only connecting it when I archive sth. Or deleting the steam library from the disk which I don’t want to do. Neither are a real solution to the problem, just a bypass.

I have found another entry stating this could be a problem with the windows Kernel, that the system is waiting on return data from the HDD, which takes longer than normal due to the lack in activity the seconds before. Thus the whole system freezes for a bit. He couldn’t specify further though.

I don’t know if that is possible or what else could cause this. If you got any guesses on that problem, I will welcome all of them.

Greetings
David

 

[hedwar2011]

I would definitely say the HDD is the source of your freezing, you essentially said it yourself. As for fixing it, have you tried running any diag tools, etc. on the drive itself? Ran a defrag on it lately?

 

[helpstar]

check the HDD for errors

 

[Ralston18]

Windows/Microsoft provides three tools to help view and understand system performance:

Task Manager, Resource, Monitor, and Process Explorer.

Process Explorer is Microsoft and free:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer

Use all three tools but only one tool at a time to observe system performance: what system resources are being used, to what extent (%), and what is using any given resource.

Look for what changes, if anything, when the freezes occur.

You can also use Reliability History/Monitor and Event Viewer to look for any error codes, warnings, or even informational events that occur just before or at the time of the freezes.

Observe first when no archiving etc. is being done.

The observe when archiving is being done.

Look for what changes. Take your time, be methodical.