HDD problem? HELP!

SebastianH

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Nov 22, 2014
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I recently bought an Acer Aspire V3-772G i7-4702MQ (2.2ghz up to 3.2ghz), Nvidia GF GT 750M, 8GB DDR3, 1Tb HDD. It came FREE DOS so I had to install Windows 8. Said and done. Since the beginning I had the impression the laptops' performance is weird, sluggish, slowish in some parts but I had no ideea what's going on. I was under the impression my Windows version had problems or something so I went on installing 3 or 4 different Windows versions including Win7 and I've noticed I had high disk usage when opening chrome, downloading, installing a program or a game etc. Normally if I only use Chrome or other programs I have no problems. But if I try to do something which implies the HDDs read/write capability it starts hanging, lagging and sometimes spiking a bit. I was wondering if is there a problem with my HDD?

I acknowledged the "problem" and started looking for solutions. I've dissabled BITS, Windows Prefetch, Windows Index files, stopped the Defragment schedule, tried to alocate cache on my rams with PrimoCache. I've ran CrystalMark and my HDD health is good. I have absolutely no ideea how to feel about this since i've thrown a lot of money on it and my Desktop Dual Core 3ghz with 2gb ram, Nvidia 9600 1vgbram works better and faster than this laptop on windows (it just runs the games a lot worse hence the videocard).

I thought it's a problem coming with Windows 8, since I've seen people on the internet saying it's occured when they upgraded from 7 to 8, but I experience the same thing on Win 7 also. Could my HDD possible have some problems or it's just a plain bad HDD? I dont know what else to do and I don't know if I should go with the laptop back since i have warranty. I'm afraid they will just say this is the product or that I dont have latest BIOS intalled or whatever dumb reasons. I wanna be sure of what I'll tell them what's the problem when I go with the laptop back.
 
Solution
Try a full surface scan using MHDD (in DOS) or HDDScan (in Windows). Both programs will identify "slow" sectors, but MHDD would be more reliable as there will be no "interference" from background tasks.
Hi

You need to properly test the hard drive before having evidence it is at fault

almost all major hard drive manufacturers provide a downloadable bootable CD ISO to test their hard drives
(only exception I know of is Toshiba)

Hirens CD 15.2 has a collection of diagnostics programs for hard disks.
(if you dont know what brand you have it should be visible in Device Manager)

Did you install the motherboard, graphics , audio drivers for this model?
laptops rely more than desktop motherboards on manufacturer specific drivers rather than Microsoft generic drivers

IF you have not yet been to Acer web site find and down load and install the correct drivers.

If not you will have many problems if Windows 7 does not include them.

You would expect most desktops to have better gaming performance than laptops even if CPU clock speed is similar. Most laptop i7's are only equivalent to desktop i5's but use less energy

I am surprised any new laptop came without Windows installed, was it second hand ?
is there a windows label indicating what windows version was originally on it
some were supplied with Windows 8 or 8.1
 

SebastianH

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Nov 22, 2014
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Hello mbarnes86, ty for your reply.

I have downloaded the manufactureres tester and I've ran a quick test for which I will upload a picture. I will do a full test also this night or tomorrow morning. I have installed the Chipset and Audio drivers from Acer site, but graphics we're installed by Windows. All I did I updated the Nvidia driver. I'm talking about my present Windows 8 installtion. On Windows 7 my laptop worked even worse and I hardly found the right drivers. I had to install some of the Windows 8 drivers on Windows 7 because I was unable to find good ones for W7. Of course I'm expecting desktops to perform better, but I'm not talking about gaming. Gaming on this Laptop (i've ran Skyrim and had only tiny spikes in menu when trying to save, nothing important) is good, im satisfied. Its the performance in Windows which is bad, as I've stated in my previous post.

Although I had some spam flier with windows 8 inside the Laptop's case, it came with Linux Limpus. And it's new. I have 2 year warranty.
 

SebastianH

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Nov 22, 2014
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Hello, ty for your reply.

I have started looking for what you said, but I have no ideea how to use this MHDD in dos? I thought dos is inexistent on the newer Windows OSs. Can you fill me with some more info, please? Ty



 

SebastianH

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Nov 22, 2014
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I will try to make a USB flash drive with MHDD. Do you happen to now how much time will this scan take? 1tb HDD