Intermittent poor HDD performance

[solarsd]

Hi,

Not sure if this is the right place to ask such a question (if it isn't, please refer me to where it would).

I've been having performance issues with this system (main specs):

OS: Windows XP SP3 32-bit
CPU: Core i7-860
RAM: 3 GB
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3R
HDD: WD WD1001FALS-00E8B 1TB


From time to time it would get into a very sluggish and low-performance state - the OS seems to freeze for a minute or so whenever you select an icon (i.e. just one click) or open the start menu. I suspect that this due to the SATA controller in the system, because I have already replaced the SSD with a HDD. When the freezes are happening this is what I see with HDTune:

http://postimage.org/image/ckk2uwe01/

Have anybody seen anything like this and what should I do to troubleshoot this?

Thanks

 

[beginner99]

Sorry, but did not really get that about the ssd. You replaced a ssd with a hdd and are now wondering why performance sucks????

Anyway it's common knowledge windows gets slower over time so a re-install will in general always help.

Another thing can be that your hdd is starting to fail. Maybe check SMART values but I sure would backup your data now.

For everyday PC usage the HDD is the bottleneck, probably by orders of magnitude. So replace it with an ssd.

 

[mikeymikec]

Anyway it's common knowledge windows gets slower over time so a re-install will in general always help.

<Shakes head>

Another thing can be that your hdd is starting to fail. Maybe check SMART values but I sure would backup your data now.

That's a reasonable bit of advice. I would also check the 'System' event log for ntfs/disk errors/warnings.

Which disk is that btw? It's not a Caviar Green is it? Google/Newegg suggests its a Black, but I would I'd check.

 

[KingFatty]

This just sounds like the classic and expected symptom of waiting for the hard drive to spin-up to speed so that it may be used.

There is a setting of whether to allow hard drives to spin-down and rest to save power and heat. You can set a time to wait, like 20 minutes of non-use, before it spins down. It's a good thing. But, when you need to use it again, you need to wait for it to spin up.

Could that be happening here? maybe listen closely to the computer and see if you can hear the drive spinning up when you see the performance issue, because the computer will pause while it waits for the drive to get back up to speed.

if it's too bothersome, and you don't mind the extra wear and tear on the drive, you could disable this feature to let the drive spin constantly. I believe it's wasteful, but that would eliminate the pause to wait for spin up.

 

[beginner99]

This just sounds like the classic and expected symptom of waiting for the hard drive to spin-up to speed so that it may be used.

Don't think so. i have green drives and spin-up is maybe 5 seconds tops. Assuming OPs mentionign of "several minutes" is correct.

 

[beginner99]

<Shakes head>

It's still true so. Even with SSDs. Of course if you just use pre-installed IE to play farmville, that issue won't happen but for people who actually use their PC, this is just common knowledge.

 

[mikeymikec]

It's still true so. Even with SSDs. Of course if you just use pre-installed IE to play farmville, that issue won't happen but for people who actually use their PC, this is just common knowledge.

The only reason why your PC slows down over time (in such a way that a new clean install would help), is because of what you chose to install once upon a time, possibly didn't bother uninstalling or the uninstall system for that program doesn't work properly, and/or you install stuff that isn't particularly efficient with system resources.

If I wiped my system and reinstalled it right now, Windows 7 would still cold start in about 45 seconds (HDD here), and everything would still work perfectly quickly for me, as it did when I built the machine in 2010.

I'm curious (in a semi-amused sort of way) about what you think "actually using a PC" is about, if that's how your "actual use" results. There's about 35 apps on this machine based on a guess from my start menu / desktop shortcuts, excluding ones that come with Win7 and including games, so I doubt that falls into your definition of "using preinstalled IE to play farmville".

However, if we continue this discussion here it threatens to de-rail the original topic. If you want to start your own topic about it, feel free, but your advice is very definitely bogus unless you think that everyone here is the sort of person who ends up with 6 toolbars installed on their browser and has to clean up once in a while (and no, a thorough cleanup of browser toolbars doesn't require a reinstall either).

 

[solarsd]

Thanks for the replies, I'll go trough them in chronological order.

1. I replaced the SSD because it was faulty and I realize that the overall performance will suffer, but the performance does not just decrease (in a manner one would expect), the computer freezes completely for minutes (and that's not an overestimate). In no way is this behavior normal for HDDs, no matter how much praise went to SSDs lately.

2. I'm also not too sure if Windows just "clogging up" is to blame here. Please take another look at the linked picture - even on a sluggish Windows machine the HDTune test wouldn't show up as this.

3. I've checked the SMART values, and there are in fact some read and write errors, but the overall health assessment is 97%. I've seen some drives with read errors logged, but I've also read somewhere, that read errors are normal for modern drives as long as they are recoverable and are logged by SMART just for diagnostics purposes. Let me know if I'm wrong on this one. I can't interpret SMART values anyway, would you like me to post them here?

4. I've also checked the system event log, but there were nothing logged at all during those periods when the computer was freezing.

5. I'll check what's written on the drive when I get access to the computer.

6. I don't think that idle spin-down is the issue here. Again, as the HDTune test shows, the disk "spins-down" as the test is being performed. Also the computer is under heavy use regularly and that's when the freezing is most annoying. Unfortunately I can't listen if the drive is spinning down, clicking or parking the heads during operation because the computer is located in a heavily air conditioned room (a research lab).

What I intend to do next is to run the HDTune test with the drive attached to another computer, maybe it's a controller/chipset issue. I'll post my results here.

 

[KingFatty]

Hmm, are you sure the problem is both of your drives? Are you able to test the drives in another computer, or maybe an external enclosure or something?

Maybe it's something like the SATA cable, or motherboard controller? It's kind of fishy that your last drive supposedly went bad, and now the replacement hard drive is going bad, hmmm. If you put a 3rd test drive in there, maybe it will also go bad because the issue is the controller/sata cable? Or, does your motherboard have multiple SATA controllers and you can just switch to that one for testing?

 

[beginner99]

The only reason why your PC slows down over time (in such a way that a new clean install would help), is because of what you chose to install once upon a time, possibly didn't bother uninstalling or the uninstall system for that program doesn't work properly, and/or you install stuff that isn't particularly efficient with system resources.

Yes and have I said anything else? Your confirming me.

If I wiped my system and reinstalled it right now, Windows 7 would still cold start in about 45 seconds (HDD here), and everything would still work perfectly quickly for me, as it did when I built the machine in 2010.

of course it will boot quickly if you reinstall? You just confirmed what I said.

I'm curious (in a semi-amused sort of way) about what you think "actually using a PC" is about, if that's how your "actual use" results. There's about 35 apps on this machine based on a guess from my start menu / desktop shortcuts, excluding ones that come with Win7 and including games, so I doubt that falls into your definition of "using preinstalled IE to play farmville".

You get what I mean, don't play stupid. See first part of your own post. And 35 apps isn't exactly a lot.

 

[hhhd1]

If the ram is not enough and there is allot of access to the pagefile, then this is normal.

 

[solarsd]

So here's my follow up post.

The drive is indeed a Western Digital Caviar Black and the SMART log looks like this (sorry for the formatting)

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 198 198 051 Pre-fail Always - 493923
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0027 253 253 021 Pre-fail Always - 2425
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 314
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 074 074 000 Old_age Always - 19464
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 305
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 245
193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 314
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 112 109 000 Old_age Always - 38
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 193 193 000 Old_age Always - 1223
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 200 200 000 Old_age Offline - 1
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 001 001 000 Old_age Offline - 29209

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged
----------------------------------

I've connected the drive to another computer and it shows the same intermittent behavior as reported by HDTune (see link in the first post). Meanwhile the original system is now up and running with a Vertex 4, so we can conclude that this indeed was a HDD problem. I've never seen anything like this though.

We can close this unless somebody can suggest some remedy for this drive?

 

[Elixer]

Ugh, get crystaldiskinfo (free) and post a screenshot of the HD in question.
Reading text like that is too annoying.

 

[VirtualLarry]

1223 pending sectors? Your HD is going bad.