HD sometimes inexplicably slow

[Feranor]

I've been having some issues with a fairly new HD (Western Digital Caviar Green SATAII 1TB). According to a couple popular HD diagnosis tools, there's nothing wrong with the HD. It's also not noticably fragmented and ScanDisk says it's fine, as well.

I first noticed it when trying to record something with FRAPS onto the HD. When hitting the record hotkey, the game froze, FPS display went to 1 and stayed like that until I stopped recording. Naturally the resulting video was choppy as hell. But not always. It seems kind of random.

It's not just FRAPS, though. Opening a large folder might sometimes take minutes, sometimes it loads at normal speed.

The same thing happens when I, say, open start menu (my OS is on a SSD, so it's not affected by it) and click on a link to Firefox (which is on the weird HD), it might sometimes open right away, sometimes it seems like it's not even registering the click but opens Firefox 5 minutes later. Similarly, downloading a file might freeze the browser for a while and cause it to stutter for maybe half a minute after the download has finished.

My MB is a MSI PD55-GD65, Raid Mode is AHCI and I've already tried using a different SATA Port (there are black ones (Intel P55 Chipset) and blue ones (MSI something)). BIOS is also up to date. OS is Win7 Professional.

Any ideas?

[Deleted]

well, you can check to see if it's really the hard drive that's bottlenecking:
- open start -> click run -> enter "perfmon" -> add the counter "physical disk" -> "current disk queue" (total if you only have one physical disk)

generally, this value shouldn't exceed 2 per disk in the array (meaning 2 in total if using a single disk). if that value isn't that high, then it's probably not the disk in itself...

[Feranor]

well, you can check to see if it's really the hard drive that's bottlenecking:
- open start -> click run -> enter "perfmon" -> add the counter "physical disk" -> "current disk queue" (total if you only have one physical disk)

generally, this value shouldn't exceed 2 per disk in the array (meaning 2 in total if using a single disk). if that value isn't that high, then it's probably not the disk in itself...

That value is usually at 1 or 2 for the disk (while FRAPSing at 0 FPS, i.e. while the problem is occuring (which is the same as when it's working properly)), it rarely jumps to 4-6 very shortly.

[Deleted]

Does this problem also occur when you try and record on your SSD? Just wonderin'.

[Feranor]

Does this problem also occur when you try and record on your SSD? Just wonderin'.

No, it doesn't have anything to do with recording, I'm just using FRAPS as an example. I.e. when I record to my external HD, there are no issues.

[Deleted]

No, it doesn't have anything to do with recording, I'm just using FRAPS as an example. I.e. when I record to my external HD, there are no issues.

Fair enough, have you tried setting the raid mode to "IDE" in place of "AHCI" and see if anything changes? (I know AHCI is faster but just wanna rule out it's slow because it's incapable running in a raid mode like that)

[Feranor]

Fair enough, have you tried setting the raid mode to "IDE" in place of "AHCI" and see if anything changes? (I know AHCI is faster but just wanna rule out it's slow because it's incapable running in a raid mode like that)

Yup, when I do that the HD in question isn't recognized at all.

[Deleted]

Yup, when I do that the HD in question isn't recognized at all.

What motherboard do u have? If u have a gigabyte, turn off XHD (Extreme Hard Drive). And enable AHCI/IDE again..

[Feranor]

what motherboard do u have? If u have a gigabyte, turn off xhd (extreme hard drive). And enable ahci/ide again..

msi pd55-gd65.

[Deleted]

Install this;

Intel P55 AHCI / RAID Drivers,
JMicron JMB36x IDE Drivers,
Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver,

the bottom 3 of the page;

http://nl.msi.com/product/mb/P55-GD6...r&os=Win7%2064

I'm 98% sure your problems will be fixed.

[Sephiracle]

I've been having some issues with a fairly new HD (Western Digital Caviar Green SATAII 1TB).

Whelp, there's your problem.

[Feranor]

Install this;

Intel P55 AHCI / RAID Drivers,
JMicron JMB36x IDE Drivers,
Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver,

the bottom 3 of the page;

http://nl.msi.com/product/mb/P55-GD6...r&os=Win7%2064

I'm 98% sure your problems will be fixed.

That seems to have worked. At least I didn't encounter any stuttering so far, despite extensive test-FRAPSing. Though I thought I had already tried installing AHCI drivers... anyway, thanks a ton.

Edit: Seems like I spoke too soon, it just randomly started stuttering again, perfmon looks something like this while it's going on:

[chaud]

http://www.sagaforce.com/~sound/wdantiparkd/

[Deleted]

http://www.sagaforce.com/~sound/wdantiparkd/

Please note if you modify the firmware of your HD by disabling the intelligent 'parking' mode of that HDD you;

"By generating some write activity every 7 seconds we can prevent the drive from parking. This is like the wdidle3.exe program except it doesn't modify your firmware or voids your warranty."

Another reason i won't buy the 'green' version of HDD's.

Thanks for the handy link chaud.

[Deleted]

Ok, your disk queue is too high for a single disk. The queue depth basically says how many operations are queued - the higher the number, the more IOs are waiting. In your case, the hard drive is getting too much work to complete fluidly.

Personally, though, I don't think that it's neccessarily the drives fault. I would try to check what is causing the disk activity. You could add a counter in perfmon "Proccess" -> IO Operations/s (for both read and write) (could be called something similar, my work computer's in German and I'm too lazy to google). Enable that for all instances (or at least for suspected ones, to minimize the data flood), and you'll see how many operations each process uses.

In worst case it really is something like fraps causing more disk IO.

How much RAM do you have? Maybe too little and some applications are forced to page data which creates extra IOs....

Edit: as the other person said, it could also be a driver issue. Leave your drive in AHCI though, in IDE you miss stuff like NCQ which would degrade performance...

[Feranor]

Please note if you modify the firmware of your HD by disabling the intelligent 'parking' mode of that HDD you;

"By generating some write activity every 7 seconds we can prevent the drive from parking. This is like the wdidle3.exe program except it doesn't modify your firmware or voids your warranty."

Another reason i won't buy the 'green' version of HDD's.

Thanks for the handy link chaud.

Does that mean you're suggesting that the HD goes into some idle mode and doesn't wake up properly sometimes?

By the way, the HD didn't always have that issue. I'm not sure when it first occured, though, I had to change the mainboard twice due to a defect.

Ok, your disk queue is too high for a single disk. The queue depth basically says how many operations are queued - the higher the number, the more IOs are waiting. In your case, the hard drive is getting too much work to complete fluidly.

Personally, though, I don't think that it's neccessarily the drives fault. I would try to check what is causing the disk activity. You could add a counter in perfmon "Proccess" -> IO Operations/s (for both read and write) (could be called something similar, my work computer's in German and I'm too lazy to google). Enable that for all instances (or at least for suspected ones, to minimize the data flood), and you'll see how many operations each process uses.

In worst case it really is something like fraps causing more disk IO.

How much RAM do you have? Maybe too little and some applications are forced to page data which creates extra IOs....

Edit: as the other person said, it could also be a driver issue. Leave your drive in AHCI though, in IDE you miss stuff like NCQ which would degrade performance...

There don't seem to be any processes blocking the disk except for whatever I'm intentionally using, and again, it's not just FRAPS. Right now I tried to open a folder containing uncompressed video files (i.e. relatively large), that took about 5 minutes. Then I tried to compress one of them with VirtualDub, took about 20 minutes (without the stuttering it would have taken about 3-5). Disk Queue is between 7-8.

I currently have 4 GB of RAM, about half of which is in use.

[Deleted]

Well, it sounds like either the disk is ****, you've got screwy drivers, or your "normal" use is way higher than most user's ( ). Your drive is defo overworked - the question is why. I would personally try to uninstall your sata controller's drivers and reinstall the most current ones (provided that's not what you're using now). Should be Intel Rapid Storage Manager and /or the chipset drivers.

One other thing you could check is the SATA Cable. Is it bent, damaged, old, or not correctly plugged in? Those things can all cause problems.

Try and get a disk benchmarking tool like IOMeter or hdtune and post the results pls.