Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in
Your question

2nd harddrive suddenly slow (Seagate Barracuda 1TB)

Tags:
  • Storage
  • Hard Drives
Last response: in Storage
Share
October 4, 2014 8:22:59 AM

About 1½ months ago I built myself a high-end gaming desktop. Had no problems until 2 days ago, when my secondary harddrive, a Seagate Barracuda 1TB (model# ST100DM003-1ER162) became really slow.
ANY action performed on the disk will show 100% active time in Task Manager, and the read/write rates will be almost constantly locked at 0 KB/s. In short, any task performed on the disk takes a looooooooong time to complete, if the task doesn't crash along the way.
My main C: 250GB SSD disk however, runs just as smooth as ever. The problem seems to be isolated to only the secondary drive.

At one point I even noticed the Intel Rapid Storage Technology giving me an error saying it had removed the disk, afterwhich I could not find the disk in windows until I restarted the PC. (error link here: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/intel-rapid-s...)

After lurking around on the internet I have tried the following:

Checked Task Manager & Resource Monitor, no suspect thread hogging resources found.
Scanned with Malwarebytes for any viruses, none found.
Disabled Superfetch, Prefetch & Windows Search, no effect.
Checked the drive for errors with Windows disk error checking, none found.
Reformatted the drive. Writing/Reading to the disk is still as slow as before.
Checked firmware version, I seem to have the latest (CC43)
Downloaded SeaTools and tried several things, first a SMART check, took a bit long but showed no problems. I also ran a short generic test, which took a really long time (1-2 hours) but showed no problems. I also tried the "Fix All" option, but no progress was ever displayed on the progress bar, so I assumed it froze.
I did a chkdsk /r which showed no problems, but when checking bad sectors froze at 8% completion.
Switched the SATA cable between mobo and the hdd, no effect.
Moved the SATA cable to a different port on the mobo. No effect.
Checked the power cable to the disk, its also connected to the SSD, which is working fine, so I assume the cable isn't broken.
Went to BIOS and switched sata connection from AHCI to RAID. No effect.

On the offchance it might afterall be a virus or software error, I tried doing a system restore back to last month, but after the pc restarted I get the error that the system restore failed, becuase the C: drive might be corrupt. It recommended me to do a chkdsk /r on C:, which I did. Still, trying to do a system restore always gave me the error to do a chkdsk /r.

All in all, I'm pretty sure there is somethinething wrong on the disk's end, but the system restore error's I'm getting I'm starting to suspect there might be a software error somewhere else on the PC.

Any suggestions on ways to solve this?

More about : 2nd harddrive suddenly slow seagate barracuda 1tb

a b G Storage
October 4, 2014 8:50:04 AM

the seatools should been faster did you made the long test i would also check the main drive he could be part of the issue since you could not get back to restore point ,try the os repair to see what happens on the c drive .
m
1
l
October 5, 2014 7:17:15 AM

¨
scout_03 said:
the seatools should been faster did you made the long test i would also check the main drive he could be part of the issue since you could not get back to restore point ,try the os repair to see what happens on the c drive .


I didn't do a long test, only fast ones.
Did a Windows check on the C; disk, aswell as several tests with SeaTools. No problems at all, tests completed fast aswell.

I think I'm on to something though. Yesterday when running a chkdsk on the faulty disk F:, I somehow managed to get past the point where I kept getting stuck, namely stage 4 (checking for bad clusters). It said it found a huge amount of bad clusters, but also said it failed to complete stage 5 becuase of MHT or something, can't quite remember.

If I recall correctly, I managed to get past stage 4 of chkdsk when Intel Rapid Storage Technology decided to remove my F: disk (as in the link in the first post), which in turn was triggered by running a "Fix All > Fast" operation on F: from SeaTools... I think. I haven't been able to reproduce it yet. I'll update again if I ever do.

EDIT:
Managed to reproduce the "issue" making the chkdsk on F: able to proceed.
I had been running a chkdsk on the faulty F: disk for about 5 hours when I realized it had become stuck on 30% of stage 4. After doing the steps above, stage 4 completed but had 3 disk read erros becuase "the disk does not have enough space to replace bad clusters", even though only 5% or so of the 1TB is filled.

On stage 5: Looking for bad, free clusters, we get the message "232766616 free clusters processed."
And after that we get this:

Free space verification is complete.
Correcting erros in the Master File Table <MFT> mirror.
Insufficient disk space to repair master file table <MFT> mirror.
CHKDSK aborted.

So either almost all my diskspace vanished, or chkdsk lost access to it. I'm starting to realize the disk is busted. Going to contact the site where I bought it from and ask for a new one.
Incase anyone might be interested, all I can think of what might have caused this problem is either:
A: I have a habit of turning off the power to the PCU AFTER I have shut it down for the night. Though I have read from several sources that it won't cause harm to any hardware.
B: I have experienced a few times where my PC just froze whilst performing simple tasks like writing text or running Blender. Not quite sure why it froze, but when it did I had no choice but to hold down the power button (not the aforementioned button to cut power to the PCU) to shut down.
C: The disk was faulty when I recieved it but took a while to collapse into the state it is now.
m
0
l
Related resources
a b G Storage
October 5, 2014 11:51:21 AM

fail chkdsk then drive is going out and that could be why you had those froze with the system let see when you use only the main one if you still have freeze .
m
0
l
October 8, 2014 12:17:18 AM

scout_03 said:
fail chkdsk then drive is going out and that could be why you had those froze with the system let see when you use only the main one if you still have freeze .


fzabkar said:
SeaTools doesn't report the raw values of each SMART attribute. Instead you need a tool such as CrystalDiskInfo.

http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-...


Thanks for the suggestion.

On CrystalDiskInfo I get a warning about the slow disk having a reallocated sectors count of 68. I take it that's proof of a hardware error I can't fix on my own?

About the system freezes, I think I isolated the cause to the program Blender. It seems to freeze whenever I'm using it for over 30 minutes or so.
m
0
l
a b G Storage
October 8, 2014 12:32:34 PM

blender use a look of graphic process did you check all your system temp .
m
0
l
a c 326 G Storage
October 9, 2014 1:24:06 AM

Bad sectors can't be fixed. Instead they are replaced with spares and their LBAs are reallocated. Backup your data and keep a close eye on SMART. I wouldn't trust your drive in this state.
m
0
l
!