Windows 10 slow secondary HDD access

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xjeronx

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Oct 30, 2016
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I've been chasing this I/O issue for months now and can't seem to come up with a solution. I've noticed that after my computer has been running for ~1 day or more, access to my secondary HDD is extremely slow. Performing a reset completely fixes the issue temporarily. I first notice that navigating through the File Explorer is extremely slow. Accessing any menus on directories or files on that drive respond very slowly, and when I access the properties for a directory, I can literally watch the bytes update while calculating the size. My OS is installed on an SSD and the problem drive is a WD Black HDD. I will include the model #s below. I have ran diagnostics on both drives, ensured that write caching is enabled for the drive, and various other solutions that I've found online. So far, nothing appears to be out of the ordinary. I would like to know if there are any other options for troubleshooting slow drive access? I have attempted to use Process Explorer and view the processes running on that drive, but am not sure what I should view as "alarming". Any help would really be appreciated!

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


Edit: Here are the results of a CrystalDiskMark benchmark run, which definitely shows some problems:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 5.2.1 x64 (C) 2007-2017 hiyohiyo
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 4.377 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 3.250 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 0.126 MB/s [ 30.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 0.000 MB/s [ 0.0 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 1.048 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 0.838 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.003 MB/s [ 0.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.000 MB/s [ 0.0 IOPS]

Test : 1024 MiB [D: 24.5% (456.0/1862.9 GiB)] (x3) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2017/05/28 15:31:14
OS : Windows 10 Professional [10.0 Build 14393] (x64)

After restarting my computer, I get the following results:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 5.2.1 x64 (C) 2007-2017 hiyohiyo
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 114.612 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 108.446 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.132 MB/s [ 276.4 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.531 MB/s [ 373.8 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 49.703 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 123.318 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.297 MB/s [ 72.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 1.354 MB/s [ 330.6 IOPS]

Test : 1024 MiB [D: 21.8% (406.0/1862.9 GiB)] (x3) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2017/05/28 16:39:41
OS : Windows 10 Professional [10.0 Build 14393] (x64)
 
Solution
Colif
it could be a mechanical failure not picked up by the full tests, I am not sure how reliable the tests are but the surface of the disks might be fine, the problem might be the connectors that the cables plug into. I see you already swapped cables so I won't suggest that.

think I would backup anything on the drive and buy a new one. If you have another PC, you could put drive in it and see if tests behave the same as would tell you if its drive or something else in your PC.

A 2tb drive shouldn't take that long to test.
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Hi Colif,

Thanks for the reply. I ran both Samsung Magician and Data Life Guard (short & long tests) in the past when the issue first started, and the HDD passed all tests. I have also checked my drivers and they are up to date. As for the power plan, it is not set to shut off the drive.

I swapped out the power and SATA cables last night. Seemed like it might be a stretch, but I couldn't think of much else to try. I will monitor it over the next couple days and see if the issue improves. Thanks again for your help and let me know if you can think of any other ideas!
 
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which version of win 10 are you on?
right click start
choose run...
type winver

if you on anything below Build 1703, then go here and click 1st button. that will download upgrade assistant and once you run it, it will update PC to latest build

I only suggested that is a few months ago there was a problem with 2nd drives on the previous version of win 10 but I haven't seen it reported a lot since Creators edition came out.
 
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I was on Build 1607 and did the update like you suggested. The problem still seems to be there. At first, everything was running fine, but after a day or so, access to the drive is extremely slow until I reboot. There are delays in the explorer, files transfer at around ~15KB/s, and every interaction with the drive is slow.
 
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have you looked in resource monitor?
open task manager/performance tab and click open resource Monitor and watch the activity when you transfer a file and see if anything unusual showing in disk
try the same process in safe mode and see if any difference

one downside is it merges both drives into same window so hard to tell what is on each drive (Process explorer isn't much better)

you might want to read about number 2 here: https://www.raymond.cc/blog/find-out-what-program-is-secretly-accessing-your-hard-disk-drive/
 
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I have a little bit of an update, but still not sure exactly what's going on. I'll step through exactly what I did last night so that maybe something will stand out.

I started off by updating my drivers to ensure that everything was up to date. I did update my SATA drivers from the ASUS website, and after the restart, everything seemed to be working fine. I also updated my sound drivers as they were a little out of date. Through the process of updating the sound drivers, the computer restarted several times and after the final restart, it could no longer detect my d: drive, which is the HDD that's been causing issues. I tried restarting the computer a couple more times, and no luck. The drive wasn't even showing up under Disk Management. I then swapped the power and SATA cables and it came back online. At that point it seemed like a hardware issue so I tried running Data Lifeguard again. The full test ran overnight and it only got about 30% of the way through the test. I cancelled it this morning and decided to try the quick test. That test took over 12 hours to complete. The entire time, the estimated time said "2 minutes". Upon finishing, the drive passed all of the tests and no issues were reported.

These issues are much worse than what I was experiencing before. I had run Data Lifeguard in the past and it was much faster. At this point, it's looking like a bad drive, but it's weird that the software doesn't detect anything. From your experience, would you say that it could be hardware-related even with passing all of the diagnostic tests?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
it could be a mechanical failure not picked up by the full tests, I am not sure how reliable the tests are but the surface of the disks might be fine, the problem might be the connectors that the cables plug into. I see you already swapped cables so I won't suggest that.

think I would backup anything on the drive and buy a new one. If you have another PC, you could put drive in it and see if tests behave the same as would tell you if its drive or something else in your PC.

A 2tb drive shouldn't take that long to test.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
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