HDD Slowing Down PC

ZIMDOT · Nov 21, 2013

I Built my PC not to long ago and it works very well for what i like to do (Minecraft, TF2, Scribblenauts) But i need alittle more space so i added a HDD from my old pc and all of a sudden my computer slows down but when i removed it the computer speed went back up so i was confused and i cannot find anyone to help me im here here are my pc specs:

AMD A10-5800K 3.8GHz Quad-Core Processor
MSI FM2-A75MA-E35 Micro ATX FM2 Motherboard
Rosewill 450W ATX12V
8gb DDR3-1600 RAM
160gb HDD 5400 RPM

the HDD im trying to add is a

Western Digital WD4000KD 400Gb

I dont know if its the drive or my computer

hybird9012 · Nov 21, 2013

It is 99% your drive. Mechanical Hard Drives really only have a lifespan of 2-5 years. After that they dramatically slow down as a result of faulty moving parts over time. I recommend getting a new HD, or better yet, get an SSD and use it as your main drive (so it doesn't have to be large). You can always add your other hard drives as external or additional drives for space.

I have built over 35+ systems and the one thing I never go back to is mechanical Hard Drives. SSD's are a requirement for me now because of this reason among many.

CepheiA · Nov 21, 2013

Western Digital WD4000KD is a SATA 1.5Gb/s drive.

Your other drives are most likely 3Gb/s (twice the speed) or 6gb/s (four times the speed) if your build was even somewhat recent.

1.5, 3, and 6Gb/s refers to the drives ability to read and write data.

http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/8142

scout_03 · Nov 21, 2013

your wd4000kd is a sata 1.5 drive see this you will find a lot of details why it is slower then the other , http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/storage/wd4000.html adding this for your info on the pins settings from wd http://support.wdc.com/product/install.asp?groupid=603&lang=en

Deleted member 217926 · Nov 21, 2013

CepheiA :

That is completely wrong. Mechanical drives are limited by the spindle speed. The fastest mechanical drives can read about 160Mb/s sustained and about 200Mb/s in bursts. The only time a mechanical drive is bottlenecked by a SATA 1 ( 1.5Gb/s ) port is when transferring data in the cache.

No mechanical drive is bottlenecked by a SATA 2 ( 3Gb/s ) port at all. They just can't spin fast enough to transfer that much data.

The SATA 3 ( 6Gb/s ) interface is only needed by high end SSDs.

Now a mechanical drive is labeled as SATA 3 but that is only for marketing purposes and because it's cheaper to build everything to a common interface. It certainly has nothing to do with how fast the drive can be. Only the interface is SATA 3 ( although all SATA is backwards compatible ) not the speed of the drive.

It is 99% your drive. Mechanical Hard Drives really only have a lifespan of 2-5 years. After that they dramatically slow down as a result of faulty moving parts over time.

I have 10 year old drives still running fine. As long as there are no bad sectors they do not 'slow down over time'.

But yes the hard drive has long been the main bottleneck in a modern computer. That's why many of us moved to SSDs several years ago when they started getting cheaper. I recommend an SSD of 120GB-250GB in any new mid to high end build.

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HDD Slowing Down PC

ZIMDOT

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CepheiA

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