Stutter in-game when HDD usage spikes to 100%?

SM125

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Jul 16, 2014
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Playing an Arma 3 mod called Battle Royale, both of which are installed on my SSD, including steam itself. I've noticed the game will sometimes stutter for around half a second before coming back to normal and being fine for another 5 or so minutes (times are completely random, can't replicate it). I started to look for CPU spikes or GPU spikes to see what was the culprit and noticed whenever the game stutters, my HDD usage will spike to 100% before returning to little to nothing again.

What confuses me is everything I am using, at least to my knowledge, is on my SSD so the HDD shouldn't be affecting anything as far as I am aware. I had previously moved the game on steam from this HDD to the SSD, this the only thing I can think is causing it, although I can't think why.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
 
If it's a secondary HDD, then shut down and remove it to test.

If the HDD is causing the problem, it may be failing and causing the system to freeze. This can happen due to other peripherals as well.

However...
This is one game only? No spikes/stutter with other games?

If so, I'm baffled but can only suggest either a coding issue or there is some content on the HDD for that game. Usually content doesn't cause a big stutter though due to drive access.
 

SM125

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I haven't really been playing any other game long enough to notice any spikes so I can't say really, I will remove the HDD later today to see if the issue persists.

Could it be something to do with the page file? The page file springs to mind because I remember back when Battlefield 4 had a memory leak that was causing performance issues.
 

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