Is it my HDD?!

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H47E

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Ok so this happened only in few games, such as Battlefield 4 and now Shadow of Mordor

While playing the game, the HDD LED is on all the time , and the game tends to freeze a lot , every 30 secs or so, it was much less in BF4, but the more I played the game, the more it was freezing
No impact on FPS though, in Shadow Of Mordor on lowest I have around 98, yet still those damn freezes, whenever I move the camera a bit

I did the test with Dxtory , I have around 45 - 52 mb/s , so I suppose that's pretty low, while I saw on youtube some people had over 100 mb/s

Look, as you can see while recording in Crysis I have the same issue as well, and some other games too, not as drastic but it's pretty annoying, I noticed that only with codecs which create large filesizes I tend to get freezes while recording less demanding games.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_3TowvgfdY

specs : i5 4670k , GTX 650 Ti, 4GB RAM ( I also think I need more RAM >.<)

And here it is one of the most crappiest HDD, it's also old :
Hitachi Hitachi hds72161pla380 160GB

So do you think it's the HDD or I need more RAM, I think HDD is causing this problem more since I have freezes while recording less demanding game

and no don't suggest me to get a SSD cause I don't know, I tend to record a lot and move data a lot so I heard they wear out faster by doing that and I don't have enough $$ to get a HDD and a SSD
 
Solution
Karsten75
That is puzzling. Speccy disagrees on the health of the drive, but that reinforces my hypothesis that it's your lack of RAM and slow HDD seed that leads to the freezes.

Now that you have two different opinions on the health of your hard drive, it may be good to look around for another tool to report on drive health and see if you can find a majority opinion. :D
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D_Know_WD

D_Know_WD

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Hi there H47E,

You can start with testing the HDD as Karsten75 suggested. So the games freeze no matter whether you are recording or not right? If so, and if the drive is healthy, I would say that you may need more RAM. If it is freezing only during recordings, then the HDD might be the problem. It is SATA2 right?

Cheers,
D_Know_WD
 
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Karsten75

Karsten75

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If you want, feel free to stay isolated in your little bubble of ignorance. Newer SSDs have a much better life span than previously expected. I believe that for "normal" use, Samsung SSDs are rated at about 10 years. I can find the articles, but it's more work than I care to do just before I go to bed, so I'll leave you with this. Read and be better informed.

http://techreport.com/review/27062/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-only-two-remain-after-1-5pb

 
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H

H47E

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First of all thank you for your replies

Well, not all games freeze like that

Battlefield 4 & ShadowOf Mordor - BIG Freezes/ FPS drops while not recording even on lowest settings, especially in Shadow of Mordor , not playable at all (I can barely go into the Menu)

TheMidnightGame - small freezes in average at each 2-3 mins while recording , nothing serious but annoying

Crysis - decent freezes/small fps drops while recording

So far these are the freezing experiences which I have encountered

I did some tests with several recording softwares though , with FRAPS & Action! I have small freezes in demanding games .

Then I tried Bandicam so with H264/XviD/Mpeg1 codecs I have no freezes at all (seeing on bandicam site that those codecs create a small file size)

http://www.bandicam.com/support/tips/best-codec/

I also tried Bandicam's YV12/Motion JPEG/RGB24/Lagarith Lossless codecs and I had freezes sometimes even with a game such as Dear Esther

So after these testings I am suspecting that my HDD is the problem

But the real problem is that I'm experiencing the same problem even without recording with BF4 and Shadow of Mordor and that what bugs me the most, so imagine if I'd be trying to record haha!

Here are the screenshots

http://imgur.com/QnoCwhW - CrystalDiskInfo

http://imgur.com/WpZj8Q5 - Speccy

Apparently there is a problem with my HDD, but I don't understand anything from those results, so I'd appreciate if you'd help me out

Cheers
 
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H

H47E

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Yea , I believe you, but I doubt even the budget SSD have the same performance, I don't have to spend 150-200 $ for a SSD :D

I was thinking of a SSHD though , thank you for the article though:)
 
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Karsten75

Karsten75

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Since you will write to a much smaller SSD in the SSHD, chances are you'll ruin the SS part of it much much quicker than a 128GB SSD.

You didn't open the SMART Drop-down on the SPeccy results, so those are worthless. The CrystalDisk info does show that your hard drive is failing, but not hugely so. You still have time to get your data off and on to a new hard drive.

In the light of the low sector reallocation count, I'd suspect that your RAM and perhaps your hard drive performance, is more of an issue than the health of the hard drive. I'd start by adding another 4GB of RAM.
 
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D_Know_WD

D_Know_WD

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The reallocated sectors count shows how many bad sectors the HDD had.Even though reallocated, I guess they will continue to appear. My guess of why the BF4 and Shadow of Mordor are freezing even without recording is that you do not have enough RAM. When you are recording though, I think that this freezing might come also from the HDD. So yes, it will be a good idea to get a new SATA 3 HDD and another 4GB of RAM.
I don't think that the SSHD is a that good idea.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD
 
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Karsten75

Karsten75

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In the interest of "fair and balanced advice", I would suggest that you don't comment on a product line where WD only has one 2.5" drive and Seagate has the majority of products. :) Those things can lead you into a minefield.

 
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H

H47E

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Ops, sorry, here you go!

http://imgur.com/AXDbG0b

edit: don't mind the temp , I am scanning for bad sectors now, just in case
 
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Karsten75

Karsten75

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That is puzzling. Speccy disagrees on the health of the drive, but that reinforces my hypothesis that it's your lack of RAM and slow HDD seed that leads to the freezes.

Now that you have two different opinions on the health of your hard drive, it may be good to look around for another tool to report on drive health and see if you can find a majority opinion. :D
 
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Solution
H

H47E

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http://imgur.com/jDUdF0v - HD tune

Well I will definitely get more 4gb ram and a new HDD, but my question is how much time til this old crap is gonna pass to the other world, cause atm I am low on $_$
Most of the HDD tools say that the health status is "OK"

And thank you so much for quick replies!
 
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D_Know_WD

D_Know_WD

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I am talking in general about all the SSHDs. Furthermore, I have not mentioned any brands at all in the whole thread. It is my opinion that it is a better idea to get SSD and HDD separately. SSHDs step back to SSD when talking about performance. Furthermore, SSD+HDD gives you full control of what you want to save and run it where you want to.
If you are referring to WD Black2, I would say that it is not considered to be an SSHD but a dual drive. I did not mentioned it either.
To sum it up, I was trying to support your point on the SSDs. Just bad choice of words. Sorry if it sounded in a way I did not mean to. :)

Cheers,
D_Know_WD
 
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