Hard Drive Dying?

maj · 8 Jul 2016 at 18:50

So for what just seems the be the last few days, my mechanical hard drive seems to be dying a slow painful death. Takes ages to open it in Windows Explorer, same with any files and folders on it. If I play music the song stops and starts and sometimes sounds like it's playing the same song twice.

I did a chkdsk /f /r yesterday as well as a few tests with HD tune and these are the results:

I left chkdsk running overnight and found it had stopped at stage 4. Note the really slow read and write speeds in HD tune too. When I ran 'Error Scan' it didn't seem to do anything at all either. Interestingly it passed a health check.

There's been no prior issues up to this point and no clicking or obvious noises to help diagnose the problem.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

koolpc · 8 Jul 2016 at 18:51

Backup very fast!

ED209 · 8 Jul 2016 at 20:32

get what you need off the drive.

maybe try a different sata cable and port to see if it helps or check the current sata cable hasn't come loose or anything

maj · 8 Jul 2016 at 21:07

Thanks for advice so far and got what I can onto my external hard drive for now. Will double check cabling but got a new drive on order in case it does die altogether.

maj · 26 Jul 2016 at 18:44

Bumping this as had new hard drive since the 10th and still getting really slow read and write speeds.

Just used some utilities to benchmark it and these were the results:

This was all done after a fresh format of the drive.

As you can see really slow speeds and Disk Mark test wouldn't even start (was fine when I tested it with SSD straight after). It's health is only listed as good rather than 100% good like my SSD.

I've tried a different sata cable and have it plugged into sata 3 port on mobo. Have I just been really unlucky and been sent a naff drive or is something amiss? Maybe the old drive was fine after all. Mobo drivers etc up to date.

KIA · 26 Jul 2016 at 19:10

Connect the drive to a different machine or try a live environment.

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/try-ubuntu-before-you-install
http://askubuntu.com/questions/87035/how-to-check-hard-disk-performance

maj · 26 Jul 2016 at 22:08

KIA said:
Connect the drive to a different machine or try a live environment.

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/try-ubuntu-before-you-install
http://askubuntu.com/questions/87035/how-to-check-hard-disk-performance

Thanks for that. Only other PC I could try it in would be one at work but will give it a go.

Tried Linux boot disk but doesn't look like System -> Administration -> Disk Utility is available in 'try' mode so I tried to use terminal but from what my limited linux knowledge could tell, it was only checking my SSD.

maj · 27 Jul 2016 at 10:29

Ok so tested it at work using sata cable from home and speeds looked ok. Think it was a sata 2 port.

So what does this mean? :confused:

This hard drive and one before it have very slow read and write speeds when connected to my computer at home yet the SSD I have performs as expected. I may have replaced a hard drive for no reason. Disk Mark refuses to benchmark the hard drive when connected to my computer but works fine when tested elsewhere.

Ace Modder · 27 Jul 2016 at 11:12

can only be your motherboard sata ports or sata cable.

Only other option is BIOS settings, but unless you have recently changed something then whjy would it just start going slow after being fine for x amount of time.

maj · 27 Jul 2016 at 11:27

Ace Modder said:
can only be your motherboard sata ports or sata cable.

Only other option is BIOS settings, but unless you have recently changed something then whjy would it just start going slow after being fine for x amount of time.

Don't think its the cable as I've tried two and both work when tested outside of my computer. Leaves problem to be the mobo or the sata ports themselves which would mean upgrading everything as you can't buy 1155 mobos anymore and they are like gold dust 2nd hand. Plus I can't afford to upgrade anyway. Mobo will be out of warranty now.

Only recent BIOS changes were when I was overclocking my cpu. I'll try resetting everything to default though.

Is there such a thing as a SATA hub?

Ace Modder · 27 Jul 2016 at 11:32

to eliminate the sata port issue, try removing the ssd from your system and use that port for the HDD - of course you may need to install windows on it, but I'm sure just on the install you will tell if the drive is performing ok or not.

maj · 27 Jul 2016 at 11:38

Ace Modder said:
to eliminate the sata port issue, try removing the ssd from your system and use that port for the HDD - of course you may need to install windows on it, but I'm sure just on the install you will tell if the drive is performing ok or not.

It's worth a go. Will give it a try when I get home from work. I'll try just swapping the sata ports around first so the ssd uses the port the mechanical drive is currently using and vice versa. Then I'll do some benchmarking.

Ace Modder · 27 Jul 2016 at 11:46

maj said:
It's worth a go. Will give it a try when I get home from work. I'll try just swapping the sata ports around first so the ssd uses the port the mechanical drive is currently using and vice versa. Then I'll do some benchmarking.

yeah, that could work too.

maj · 27 Jul 2016 at 16:46

Just tried that and hard drive seems to be fine now I've swapped what sata 3 port each hard drive is using. Although despite being connected to a sata 3 port, the mechanical drive is getting slower benchmarks speeds that it was on sata 2.

Semple · 28 Jul 2016 at 08:20

maj said:
Just tried that and hard drive seems to be fine now I've swapped what sata 3 port each hard drive is using. Although despite being connected to a sata 3 port, the mechanical drive is getting slower benchmarks speeds that it was on sata 2.

How much slower?

I believe you'll have a separate SATA controllers for the SATA2/3 interfaces. So you may find a small difference. Are all drivers up to date?

Other potential options if this is only a data drive - USB HDD caddy, or a SATA expansion card.

maj · 7 Aug 2016 at 02:46

Semple said:
How much slower?

I believe you'll have a separate SATA controllers for the SATA2/3 interfaces. So you may find a small difference. Are all drivers up to date?

Other potential options if this is only a data drive - USB HDD caddy, or a SATA expansion card.

Sorry forgot to update this. Sadly I'm no further forward.

Here's a result from a benchmark I did on the 1st August that I forgot to post.

You can see the speeds I was getting when I tested it in another computer here.

Drivers were up to date but have uninstalled them all and reinstalled them (some are for W7 as there wasn't any for W10).

Noticed some real slowness again today so just ran a benchmark and here's the result:

A lot slower than last time. HD Tune took about 30 minutes to do its benchmarks which seems awfully slow and the speeds it got weren't very pleasing either. I've just ordered a PCI-E Sata 3 6Gbps card as I've had enough now.

Tried different sata cable, hard drive in a different computer using sata cable I'm currently using now, swapping sata 3 ports around and updated drivers. I can't seem to find any details on what the read and write speeds should be either.

maj · 12 Aug 2016 at 11:44

Bumping this again.

Latest update is due to a failed firmware update, the drive seemed to stop working all together so I raised a return claim with place I bought it from. However brung it into work again in hope of being able to somehow format it first and upon connecting it, it ran a chkdsk and everything seems okay (no chkdsk when connected to my pc)

Ran a benchmark at work and this is the result:

As you can see there's nothing wrong with the drive itself. Could it be a Windows 10 issue? As this was tested on a W7 pc although if this was a common issue I'd expect to see loads of threads like mine. SSD seems to be working ok so don't think it's my sata 3 ports or cables.

Googled the issue and one suggestion was this:

I had the same problem, fixed it by adjusting the virtual memory settings to turn off automatic adjustment, set the minimum to equal the ram amount and the maximum to 2x the ram (per MS standard) rebooted and everything worked perfectly. Hope that helps.

Which I will try when I get home. I also bought a sata controller card but I think it's meant for a small form factor as size of case means my sata cables would need to be at least double the length to reach it.

Thoughts?

KIA · 12 Aug 2016 at 18:03

maj said:
Tried Linux boot disk but doesn't look like System -> Administration -> Disk Utility is available in 'try' mode so I tried to use terminal but from what my limited linux knowledge could tell, it was only checking my SSD.

Press the windows key and search for Disks

maj · 12 Aug 2016 at 23:06

KIA said:
Press the windows key and search for Disks

Will give it a try once I've finished backing the data up that's on it. If linux detects it or doesn't what does that mean?

At the moment to get it working with my computer, I have to plug it into a caddy. Even the name of it in BIOS looks like it's corrupted. Works absolutely fine elsewhere though.