That SeaGate drive crawls while loading something

[plast0000]

okay then I have this budget laptop with a Seagate drive in it (model of the drive is ST500LT012-1DG142) it can start crawling and suffering whenever it's time to load something and utilization reaches 100%. (I'm on Windows 10 and mostly it's ntoskrnl.exe, Windows defender and COM Surrogate)

I don't really run disk defragmentation frequently but it does not help much. I have Windows 10 installed on m desktop PC with a Blue WD 7200rpm and it's like 90% better.

I did scan for bad sectors but its performance is still pathetic :/ . I used Seagate's tool to run tests and check S.M.A.R.T status and everything returns OK.
I used passmark's disk check up tool and S.M.A.R.T returns an "ok" and all scores are greater than "worst".

https://imgur.com/a/IFpl4


my older Compaq laptop from 2007 is still alive with its 2007 WD caviar 5400rpm and it has better performance compared to that Seagate toy.


so any suggestions? what could be the problem?
is that hdd a piece of garbage or is it Windows 10?

 

[SgtScream]

Find out what process is using up all the disc I/O by opening resource monitor > Disk Tab then sort by Total B/sec.
I suspect it is antivirus scanning the drive at the same time you're trying to transfer.

 

[Solandri]

HDDs suck at small file access in general. A SSD or even a SSHD is much better.

But if Windows Defender is one of the culprits which is showing up frequently, there's a setting in Defender to have to scan every file the computer tries to open in real-time to check for infection. When enabled, I've seen it cause the type of slowdowns and 100% utilization you're describing. Unfortunately Microsoft keeps redesigning the UI for Defender so I have no idea where this setting is anymore.

 

[plast0000]

Find out what process is using up all the disc I/O by opening resource monitor > Disk Tab then sort by Total B/sec.
I suspect it is antivirus scanning the drive at the same time you're trying to transfer.

Windows defender DOES cause damage to performance, but it doesn't do that on any of my other PCs, only to this one with that SG hdd

 

[SgtScream]

Find out what process is using up all the disc I/O by opening resource monitor > Disk Tab then sort by Total B/sec.
I suspect it is antivirus scanning the drive at the same time you're trying to transfer.

Windows defender DOES cause damage to performance, but it doesn't do that on any of my other PCs, only to this one with that SG hdd

Did you find out what process is causing the high disk I/O?

 

[plast0000]

Find out what process is using up all the disc I/O by opening resource monitor > Disk Tab then sort by Total B/sec.
I suspect it is antivirus scanning the drive at the same time you're trying to transfer.

Windows defender DOES cause damage to performance, but it doesn't do that on any of my other PCs, only to this one with that SG hdd

Did you find out what process is causing the high disk I/O?

It really depends on what I'm loading, I just rebooted and started edge browser to my latest active session and I got this:
https://imgur.com/nm6x0Wu
it falls to 1-5% after a few seconds but the usage increases as I load more stuff. I tried decreasing the size of paging files too to make it need to load less stuff off the hdd (from ~3000MBs to 1400MBs )

 

[SgtScream]

How much system memory do you have and what OS?

 

[plast0000]

How much system memory do you have and what OS?

only 4GB 2133MHz DDR4 and OS is Windows 10 pro V1803 RTM (faced issues with final stable versions of V1703 and V1709 as well)

my current OS is a clean install and was not upgraded to from an earlier build

 

[SgtScream]

Yeah so you're definitely page filing and are in need of a memory upgrade. You're using up all of your physical system memory. Memory allocation is spilling over into your virtual page file which is processed by the hard drive.

 

[plast0000]

Yeah so you're definitely page filing. You should upgrade your system memory, because you're using up all of your physical system memory. Memory allocation is spilling over into your virtual page file which is processed by the hard drive.

I suspected that too and I did set it to 1400MBs as it recommended me 1390MBs as a static size. it seems okay......for now, I can't really trust it

 

[SgtScream]

Yeah so you're definitely page filing. You should upgrade your system memory, because you're using up all of your physical system memory. Memory allocation is spilling over into your virtual page file which is processed by the hard drive.

I suspected that too and I did set it to 1400MBs as it recommended me 1390MBs as a static size. it seems okay......for now, I can't really trust it

It doesn't matter what you set it to. You need a memory upgrade.

 

[plast0000]

Yeah so you're definitely page filing. You should upgrade your system memory, because you're using up all of your physical system memory. Memory allocation is spilling over into your virtual page file which is processed by the hard drive.

I suspected that too and I did set it to 1400MBs as it recommended me 1390MBs as a static size. it seems okay......for now, I can't really trust it

It doesn't matter what you set it to. You need a memory upgrade.

I'm considering to upgrade memory to 8GBs and replace that toy with an SSD.
so upgrading memory is the more reliable option? so should I get more ram first? (I'm on a very tight budget rn, I can't get both)

 

[SgtScream]

Yeah so you're definitely page filing. You should upgrade your system memory, because you're using up all of your physical system memory. Memory allocation is spilling over into your virtual page file which is processed by the hard drive.

I suspected that too and I did set it to 1400MBs as it recommended me 1390MBs as a static size. it seems okay......for now, I can't really trust it

It doesn't matter what you set it to. You need a memory upgrade.

I'm considering to upgrade memory to 8GBs and replace that toy with an SSD.
so upgrading memory is the more reliable option? so should I get more ram first? (I'm on a very tight budget rn, I can't get both)

Definitely ram first.

 

[plast0000]

Okay then, Thanks!