Replacing SSHD with SSD

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Tyrone Matthew

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Nov 24, 2015
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Hi :D

I have a Lenovo Y50-70, and I am having a bit issue with it,
so, I am a Person that really like to play games, so I use my laptop for gaming and to do school stuff,

I like to play Open World game and block game as well (lol)
so, recently I like to play Subnautica, and Minecraft and it seems that I get a tons of lag when I started the game, start a new world, and loading the world

so I asked my Friend how could I fix this, they say that its probably because if the storage speed can't keep up with my movement in game, leading to lag because of the storage need time to grab the game assets and load it in

they recommend me to replace my SSHD with an SSD

the question is, Does SSD really affect game loading / terrain loading ? and does SSD only affect that in games ?
and is it worth replacing the Storage ?

Thanks :D
 
Solution
Solandri
Yes, this is a known issue with WD SSHD used in certain Lenovo Y50 models. Basically, WD programmed the drive to park the heads after something like 8 seconds of inactivity. The next time your computer tries to access something from the drive, the computer will freeze for about a second while it waits for the heads to unpark and the drive to become ready. This is murder when playing games, and causes the lag you are seeing (frequent short freezes). (Edit: The claimed solution in the link doesn't work.)

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-P-Y-and-Z-series/Y50-70-Windows-regularly-freezes-when-1TB-SSHD-is-spinning-up/td-p/1809301

You can sidestep the issue by preventing the drive from parking its heads. There is no Windows setting...
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Boogieman_WD

Boogieman_WD

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Jul 31, 2014
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Hey there, Tyrone.

Basically all that the drive does in terms of noticeable performance during gaming is the loading part, so yes, it does have the lead role in how fast your in-game loading screens are loading, new terrain, loading of the game when you start it, etc. However I'm not really sure that this might be the issue in your case. How much RAM does your computer have and have you had any issues with any other games? Check if you have any available updates for your GPU as well.

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD
 
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Solandri

Solandri

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Jan 4, 2012
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Yes, this is a known issue with WD SSHD used in certain Lenovo Y50 models. Basically, WD programmed the drive to park the heads after something like 8 seconds of inactivity. The next time your computer tries to access something from the drive, the computer will freeze for about a second while it waits for the heads to unpark and the drive to become ready. This is murder when playing games, and causes the lag you are seeing (frequent short freezes). (Edit: The claimed solution in the link doesn't work.)

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-P-Y-and-Z-series/Y50-70-Windows-regularly-freezes-when-1TB-SSHD-is-spinning-up/td-p/1809301

You can sidestep the issue by preventing the drive from parking its heads. There is no Windows setting which can change this behavior, but there are other ways. e.g. You can run a script to write a file to the drive every 8 seconds. Create a file named write.bat and copy the following into it:

:repeat
@echo %RANDOM% > tmp.txt
ping -n 8 127.0.0.1 > NUL
goto repeat

Basically it writes a random number (to prevent caching) into a file named tmp.txt every 8 seconds. Double-click write.bat to run it, then play your game. If the lagging disappears, then you are indeed suffering from this problem.

A semi-permanent fix is using CrystalDiskInfo and disabling all the power management (APM) settings on the drive (move the slider to the right til it says FEh). That will take care of the problem, probably at the cost of a little shorter battery life. But the drive seems to reset its APM settings every reboot or few reboots.
http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html

The no-hassle fix is to just replace the drive with a SSD.
 
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