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.

mickyflinn · 8 Jun 2021 at 15:41

Can you explain maxing out the hard drive , the only time a hard drive is relevant in gaming is when loading to the memory.

What hard drive is it ?

Can you also list your system spec.

Semple · 8 Jun 2021 at 15:56

If you look at performance monitor whilst it's under load, you'll see down to the individual processes who's doing lots of I/O.

That'll be your best starting point, as depending on what the process is will depend on what you can do about it.

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 ?

mickyflinn · 8 Jun 2021 at 16:46

Kosong said:
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.

You should get an sdd you have an old mechanical hard drive which takes time to load things.

Does your motherboard have an m2 slot ?

You should also download Msi afterburner and monitor cpu and gpu usage.

8 gb is ok but 16gb of ram is the sweet spot for gaming.

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.

mickyflinn · 8 Jun 2021 at 16:57

Kosong said:
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 ?

Slow internet will not affect the hard drive speed but if slow will take time to download to the drive.

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

mickyflinn · 8 Jun 2021 at 17:35

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

Well you need to check with what i previously recommended, the biggest bottleneck in that system is the hard drive .

Cpu usage, gpu usage, memory usage also.

Lower gaming resoloution see if it stutters.

JasonM · 8 Jun 2021 at 19:52

Upgrade from 8GB to 16GB, it should put less demand on HDD due to caching.

Or use a USB memory stick and setup ReadyBoost, it helps if you have a USB 3 stick.

Don't knock the Readyboost suggestion above, Readyboost does really work as I've monitored it's performance and does help HDD only systems.

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 ?

andy_mk3 · 8 Jun 2021 at 20:41

Kosong said:
Wouldn't an SSD upgrade be more beneficial overall and provide more benefits ?

Absolutely yes. Windows 10 runs like a dog on a HDD, it will be at 100% load as soon as you ask it to do anything as it's generally very IO intensive.

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..

JasonM · 8 Jun 2021 at 20:53

Kosong said:
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 ?

Yes SSD is best, but a Readyboost usb stick can be setup in 30 seconds providing you a USB stick handy and could solve part of the problem instantly.

andy_mk3 · 8 Jun 2021 at 20:56

JasonM said:
Yes SSD is best, but a Readyboost usb stick can be setup in 30 seconds providing you a USB stick handy and could solve part of the problem instantly.

Readyboost is designed for systems with very low amounts of RAM, like <2GB. It's really not the solution here. Especially when an SSD can be had for less than £20.

JasonM · 8 Jun 2021 at 20:57

no idea what said:
Readyboost is designed for systems with very low amounts of RAM, like <2GB. It's really not the solution here. Especially when an SSD can be had for less than £20.

That's not true, I've monitored and posted results on this forum of what it does, I once tested with a 32GB HDD only system.

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

JasonM · 8 Jun 2021 at 21:08

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.

Other then these charts, I'm a software dev, and have timed the improvement Readyboost made to compile times on large amounts of code contained on HDD.

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