Windows 10/hard drive-related slowdown

[xjeronx]

I've been having an interesting problem with my computer over the past several months and I would like some help trying to troubleshoot the issue. I think I have an idea of where the problem is, but I'll start by explaining the symptoms I've been experiencing.

I began noticing that after leaving my computer idle for an extended period of time (12+ hours), or if my computer had not been restarted in about a day, I would experience massive performance loss. The first area I noticed it was trying to compile programs in Visual Studio. A small program that would normally compile in a few seconds would take up to 1 minute. I also noticed that my iTunes would be extremely laggy and navigating between playlists and playing songs was extremely slow. Also, upon opening and closing iTunes, the "checking itunes library" function could take close to an hour. During all of this, my CPU and RAM is no where near full-utilized and programs and the OS generally run smoothly. The last area that I noticed the issue was when trying to play .wav samples in FL Studio. Normally the samples load and play instantly, but it started taking 15+ seconds or more just to play a single file.

I have 2 drives with my OS installed on an SSD and the majority of my data on a secondary hard drive. What I found was that all delays mentioned involved accessing data on my 2nd hard drive. My music, .wav files, and programs used in Visual Studio all are on my hard drive. I seem to be having some performance losses when accessing the drive, but as soon as I restart my computer, everything is fine again for about a day or so. This seems to make sense as I notice no other slowdowns when running applications that are installed on my SSD, and only when accessing the 2nd hard drive. I have run diagnostics on the drive and have found no issues. I'm not sure where to begin troubleshooting the issue and was hoping someone may have some advice. I will provide my drive info below, but please let me know what other info would be helpful!

SSD: Samsung 950 Pro 512GB (MZ-V5P512BW)
Hard Drive: WD Black 2TB (WD2003FZEX)

Thanks!

 

[Colif]

can you give us rest of specs of PC? Have you checked you have latest Motherboard chipset and Sata drivers?

Have you run samsung magician on the Pro and done any benchmarks?
Have you tried running Data life guard for windows on the hdd, its made by western Digital to test their drives. Run short and extended tests

if both drives test out, you could download Process explorer and run it as admin (it comes from Microsoft so its safe)

the default view is tree structure meaning like your task manager screen, it will show what processes are under each service, but unlike task manager, it shows the ram usage of each part so you can see what is slowing the system down

Private bytes = actual ram usage
Working set = Ram + page file usage

This page shows what all the colours and headings mean, link at bottom of it shows how to use it to find problems. You can right click headers and run an av scan from within the program.

 

[xjeronx]

can you give us rest of specs of PC? Have you checked you have latest Motherboard chipset and Sata drivers?

Have you run samsung magician on the Pro and done any benchmarks?
Have you tried running Data life guard for windows on the hdd, its made by western Digital to test their drives. Run short and extended tests

if both drives test out, you could download Process explorer and run it as admin (it comes from Microsoft so its safe)

the default view is tree structure meaning like your task manager screen, it will show what processes are under each service, but unlike task manager, it shows the ram usage of each part so you can see what is slowing the system down

Private bytes = actual ram usage
Working set = Ram + page file usage

This page shows what all the colours and headings mean, link at bottom of it shows how to use it to find problems. You can right click headers and run an av scan from within the program.

Hi Colif,

Thanks for the response and to answer your questions, I'll start off with my specs:

Intel i7-6850k
Asus X99 Deluxe II
MSI GTX 1080
32GB G.SKILL DDR4
Samsung 950 Pro 512TB
WD Black 2TB
Windows 10

I will try your suggestions and update with the results. My motherboard and hdd drivers are up to date. I have run Data lifeguard on the hdd and there were no issues found in the extended test. I will try Magician on the ssd and a short test on lifeguard as well process explorer.

So far I haven't found any hardware-related issues.

EDIT - I ran Samsung Magician and there were no errors. For the benchmark, I had the following results:
Sequential (MB/s): Read - 2,260; Write - 1,212
Random (IOPS): Read - 302,431; Write - 69,261

 

[Watkins12]

Unless you are using them right away, I would remove Visual Studio and others from the start up applications list (available in Task Manager. You could also go to the Services tab and set that and others that you are not using right away to Manual instead of Automatic.
Another thing I found useful is disabling sleep and hibernate modes, both on the computer and the monitor(s). Use a screen saver with a password.

 

[xjeronx]

Unless you are using them right away, I would remove Visual Studio and others from the start up applications list (available in Task Manager. You could also go to the Services tab and set that and others that you are not using right away to Manual instead of Automatic.
Another thing I found useful is disabling sleep and hibernate modes, both on the computer and the monitor(s). Use a screen saver with a password.

It actually ended up being a hard drive failure. It was a very slow progression and the way everything went back to normal after a restart was throwing me off. It eventually got much worse, to the point of Windows failing to detect the drive, and I ended up filing a warranty claim. I've had the new drive in for a couple weeks and no issues since. Thanks for the reply!