Question Usage of disk very slow and taking 100% forever

[Thomas5589]

Hi everyone. After hours on internet I finally figured out the issue and would like to kindly ask for help there.

So here is the case, I have 2 drives in use :
- OS on Samsung SSD 870 QVO 1TB
- Data 1 on TOSHIBA HDWD240 - 4TB and 2.10 free.
- Data 2 on WD40EZAZ-22SF3B0 - 4 TB and 1.60 TB free.

I try to move big amount of files (10 GB) from Data 2 to data 1 and there is a weird 100% usage of Data 1 drive (the Toshiba). When this happens, the data styart to copy very fast 70MBs and then stays stuck for minutes to 0MB/s, reprocess 20 MBs then 0 etc....
When this issue comes up, all system is completely frozen, i can't even do simple things like empty recycle bin.

When moving is done after like 30 minutes somnething the system is very unresponsive and slow, simple things such as opening a file takes ages.

I checked CPU no overload good temps, no virus nothing but figured out that my Toshiba drive remains stuck at 100% usage and only option for coming back to normal is to restart windows.

Below is the screenshot of this :

Image

 

[stonecarver]

One thing I have learned if I need to move over huge files from one hard drive to another is do it in chunks. If you grab all the files at once yes Windows slows to a crawl or freezes.

 

[SkyNetRising]

So here is the case, I have 2 drives in use :
- Data 1 on TOSHIBA HDWD240 - 4TB and 2.10 free.
- Data 2 on WD40EZAZ-22SF3B0 - 4 TB and 1.60 TB free.

I try to move big amount of files (10 GB) from Data 2 to data 1 and there is a weird 100% usage of Data 1 drive (the Toshiba). When this happens, the data styart to copy very fast 70MBs and then stays stuck for minutes to 0MB/s, reprocess 20 MBs then 0 etc....
When this issue comes up, all system is completely frozen, i can't even do simple things like empty recycle bin.

Both your mechanical HDDs are SMR drives.
Expect inconsistent write performance with those.
They are not suitable for intensive write workloads.

Every write to an SMR drive also overwrites neighboring tracks. Overwritten tracks have to be corrected afterwards.
This incurs significant write performance penalty.

 

[ubuysa]

In addition to the above I would defrag the destination drive first. Although there is 2.1TB of free space that may be very fragmented meaning that several seeks are needed to write a large file into several free space fragments. Fragmentation is always a major performance killer on HDDs.

The Windows defrag tool is adequate but there are better (freeware) defraggers available.

 

[Thomas5589]

Hi everyone and thanks for all the info.
I can confirm the issue was due to SMR Hard drive. I changed to a Seagate certified CMR and it has absolutely NO comparison compared to before. I therefore strongly consider now asking each and everytime if the drive is CMR vs SMR and will absolutely avoid any SMR.
Thank you again.