HDD clocks out at 100% while under load.

Kosong · 8 Jun 2021 at 15:20

For the past 4-5 months now my PC has been maxing out it's HDD while under load, mostly while gaming. This is causing games to stutter and lag behind really bad at random points. We have tried all of the common troubleshooting google has to offer like disabling some windows features, playing games at lower settings, reinstalling windows & a full factory reset, the problem still persists. One thing I was curious about was if terrible internet could be the problem but I'm not sure what relation that has to the HDD. I would appreciate any knowledge on the issue and any response is appreciated. I'm also sorry if this isn't the correct place to be posting this thread.

Kosong · 8 Jun 2021 at 16:33

NVIDIA GTX 1060 3gb
AMD Ryzen 3 1300x quad-core 3.50GHz
8gb RAM
MSI B350M pro-vd Mboard

Hard drive is a 1TB Barracuda ST1000DM010, 7200rpm, 64mb, SATA 6.0GB/s

What I mean by "Maxing out" is that while viewing HD performance/processes, it seems to hit 100% load at points and that seems to be when the games would start to stutter.

Kosong · 8 Jun 2021 at 16:43

I guess my question is, is it normal for the HD to hit these percentages and could bad internet (8mb down at the best of times) be the likely cause ?

Kosong · 8 Jun 2021 at 16:57

As far as I know the MB doesn't support m2 expansion. Let me clarify something real quick. It's my partner that is having these issues and I've just been talking through her to make things easier. My system has been booting and running games from mechanical drives for some time now and I have never had this issue unless I'm running games on ultra settings sometimes. I just don't see how playing the older games that we do would cause her hardware to cause such an issue. It's not like it's a constant thing while playing, it just happens enough for it to be annoying as all hell.

Kosong · 8 Jun 2021 at 17:10

Here's the thing. My partner has better PC specs than I do and I never have this issue while gaming

Kosong · 8 Jun 2021 at 20:37

We are currently monitoring the disk queue for spikes to verify the bottlenecking. Wouldn't an SSD upgrade be more beneficial overall and provide more benefits ?

Kosong · 8 Jun 2021 at 20:48

That would explain why most people tell you to hunt down windows services and disable them although we didn't have positive results doing that..

Kosong · 8 Jun 2021 at 21:00

After reading about it, it does seem like it's designed to help give you a boost if you're lacking on the memory front. However, 8gb of memory really shouldn't be an issue for games that don't require a Nasa PC to run

Kosong · 8 Jun 2021 at 21:14

JasonM said:
Just taken this screen shot, showing Readyboost working on a 64GB computer.

The chart is showing cache hits taking load from all HDD's

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/p...aHqdqI_ZFFJMuKkUO6TPUsV1FhPjKl0=w1059-h624-no

People that say Readyboost does not work, or only works on low memory computers it's just dis-information.

Also note, less than 25% of the 64GB is in use, yet Readyboost still giving cache hits, taking load from the HDD.

Not to discredit any of your findings but to me it just seems like a waste for my situation when an SSD would provide way more benefits over a HDD

Kosong · 8 Jun 2021 at 21:22

no idea what said:
It is a waste of time with SSDs now. Readyboost was a bandaid repair for Vista systems that were woefully slow running a nasty old 5400rpm spinner on 512MB/1GB ram. A £20 SSD will improve system performance beyond anything else.

To the OP: Depending on the game you're playing, additional RAM may be a benefit too.

We play a number of MMO's including Swords of Legends, Final Fantasy 14 and retail WoW. We know when the problem is happening because various assets in the games will fail to load in like walls and buildings for example.

Kosong · 8 Jun 2021 at 21:25

JasonM said:
Not for me, as this computer has over 6TB of enterprise HDD's. And that amount of storage in SSD's would cost a lot.

That's the thing though. The point of this post was an attempt to troubleshoot my system because I am unable to enjoy playing video games with my partner. In absolutely no circumstance would I ever need 6TB worth of HDD's.

Kosong · 8 Jun 2021 at 21:29

Kosong said:
After reading about it, it does seem like it's designed to help give you a boost if you're lacking on the memory front. However, 8gb of memory really shouldn't be an issue for games that don't require a Nasa PC to run

At no point did I say Readyboost doesn't work. I am simply putting Readyboost and an SSD side by side and weighing the pros.

Kosong · 9 Jun 2021 at 23:01

JasonM said:
I was not trying to be argumentative, but you said it only really benefits computers with 2GB or under, this of course is not true.

The reason I mentioned ReadyBoost is it's a very quick (30 seconds) way to get a benefit, and it will improve your C drive and any other HDD's in the system. Plus most people have a USB memory stick available to try.

Perfect world is all your storage on SSD, but that's cost, plus time to install / setup new Windows and software. That said it's surprising quite quick when using a quick USB stick, as Readyboost moves small random access files to the stick, and keeps larger storage data on the HDD. It's surprisingly quite a fluid improvement once the Readyboost has cached it's data.

It's also quite fascinating to watch in performance monitor, as once enabled you see all the cached data building, then you can watch all the cache hits that are happening. If nothing else it's an education just to test.

That was the other person trying to help me who said that.

I'm perfectly happy with spending the money for an SSD but I am also not completely dismissing your idea of Readyboost. I just see an SSD as a long term solution for as simple as playing video games.