I will tell my little story so bear with please 🙁
Well a few months ago I ran out of space and I bought a new HDD just to store my stuff. I got myself a Seagate Barracuda ST2000DL003 just to throw a bunch of files, I didn't care for anything else (and probably this is when all my problems started).
By the time I bought this HDD, my other one died, hopefully after a complete backup. With no other option, I had to use the barracuda for a few months as my primary HDD with windows and other software/games installation.
Here things got weird. Everytime I had to write a file to the HDD big enough to last a few seconds, my keyboard/mouse would not work properly during the procedure. The "rate of failure" (like not registering a key press) was somehow proportional to how fast the copy was (faster copy = more failures). I thought it was a problem with my wireless kit so I pluged some other wired peripherals and they worked perfectly during file copies. After doing this, I convinced myself that the problem was with my wireless keyboard/mouse.
A month ago I bought a new PC and with it, a Vertex 3 SSD. I installed windows in it, some stuff etc etc and my barracuda is now again just for storing files.
Now things are weird again. A few days ago I started noticing some freezes (less than a second) during audio/video playback, be it WMP, MPC-HC, winamp, foobar, youtube, whatever. These freezes were happening exactly two or four minutes apart but I am sure that there is a pattern because the "second" is a constant here (for example, freezes at 12:31:15 / 12:33:15 / 12:37:15 and so on).
I started looking for what application might be doing something every two or four minutes in my system but I came up with nothing... Until I remembered I have uTorrent (2.0.4 and not this actual crap full of bloatware) running 24/7 and actually downloading a 364GB file, which means it is constantly writing to the HDD. Besides it, I have a few other softwares writing logs (like mIRC, netlimiter, etc) to the HDD as well.
When I turn everything off (everything which is constantly writing to the HDD), the playback freezes seems to disappear. I'm not 100% sure (99% tough) that there is a problem with my HDD, but I'm still hoping this is some Windows related shit.
End of story, here comes what I need to know...
1. Have you ever seen something like this? I hope yes, because I couldn't find anything related to it. To be honest, I don't even know how to start looking for things related to this problem.
2. If you guys know what is happening, is there a fix or something? I also hope this isn't a problem related specifically to my HDD model, I obviously didn't choose it carefully, I just went for what had better price and loads of space (but I'm prepared to assume my mistake, if I need to).
3. What are the chances of failure? If this is really a problem related to my HDD, it seems to be getting worse by now, right? Because I've been using it for the past 4 months without having these freezes until recently.
Right now I'm trying to take the load off my HDD and put it back in the SSD (logs, some other files that are constantly modified). I'm also using a 4GB RAMDisk for small torrents and web browser cache. And no, my RAMDisk won't write to the HDD unless I force it to.
If you suggest me to buy a new HDD, what would be recommended in my situation? I'm not looking for performance, just storage. Oh, and thank you for your patience if you had the guts to read everything.
Edit: Just noticed that there is a specific subforum for "Computer Help". Yeah, I fail that much, way to go recently registered member. Move It there if necessary...
Well a few months ago I ran out of space and I bought a new HDD just to store my stuff. I got myself a Seagate Barracuda ST2000DL003 just to throw a bunch of files, I didn't care for anything else (and probably this is when all my problems started).
By the time I bought this HDD, my other one died, hopefully after a complete backup. With no other option, I had to use the barracuda for a few months as my primary HDD with windows and other software/games installation.
Here things got weird. Everytime I had to write a file to the HDD big enough to last a few seconds, my keyboard/mouse would not work properly during the procedure. The "rate of failure" (like not registering a key press) was somehow proportional to how fast the copy was (faster copy = more failures). I thought it was a problem with my wireless kit so I pluged some other wired peripherals and they worked perfectly during file copies. After doing this, I convinced myself that the problem was with my wireless keyboard/mouse.
A month ago I bought a new PC and with it, a Vertex 3 SSD. I installed windows in it, some stuff etc etc and my barracuda is now again just for storing files.
Now things are weird again. A few days ago I started noticing some freezes (less than a second) during audio/video playback, be it WMP, MPC-HC, winamp, foobar, youtube, whatever. These freezes were happening exactly two or four minutes apart but I am sure that there is a pattern because the "second" is a constant here (for example, freezes at 12:31:15 / 12:33:15 / 12:37:15 and so on).
I started looking for what application might be doing something every two or four minutes in my system but I came up with nothing... Until I remembered I have uTorrent (2.0.4 and not this actual crap full of bloatware) running 24/7 and actually downloading a 364GB file, which means it is constantly writing to the HDD. Besides it, I have a few other softwares writing logs (like mIRC, netlimiter, etc) to the HDD as well.
When I turn everything off (everything which is constantly writing to the HDD), the playback freezes seems to disappear. I'm not 100% sure (99% tough) that there is a problem with my HDD, but I'm still hoping this is some Windows related shit.
End of story, here comes what I need to know...
1. Have you ever seen something like this? I hope yes, because I couldn't find anything related to it. To be honest, I don't even know how to start looking for things related to this problem.
2. If you guys know what is happening, is there a fix or something? I also hope this isn't a problem related specifically to my HDD model, I obviously didn't choose it carefully, I just went for what had better price and loads of space (but I'm prepared to assume my mistake, if I need to).
3. What are the chances of failure? If this is really a problem related to my HDD, it seems to be getting worse by now, right? Because I've been using it for the past 4 months without having these freezes until recently.
Right now I'm trying to take the load off my HDD and put it back in the SSD (logs, some other files that are constantly modified). I'm also using a 4GB RAMDisk for small torrents and web browser cache. And no, my RAMDisk won't write to the HDD unless I force it to.
If you suggest me to buy a new HDD, what would be recommended in my situation? I'm not looking for performance, just storage. Oh, and thank you for your patience if you had the guts to read everything.
Edit: Just noticed that there is a specific subforum for "Computer Help". Yeah, I fail that much, way to go recently registered member. Move It there if necessary...
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