3rd HDD (Storage) stuck at 100% activity when doing anything in it

Andres Canelson · May 23, 2017

Hi,

I have 3 hard drives 1 SSD and 2 HDDs.

3rd HDD (storage unit) is a 3TB ST3000DM001-1CH166 (Segate)

Approximately a week ago it started to act up and get stuck at 100% activity whenever I was working with it (anything you did from opening a PDF to listening to music would do that) so I decided to wipe it out just to check and eliminate that topic of the table.
Still gets stuck when I copy anything into it or when I take anything out

I did a performance test and read was 361 and write was 180.

whenever it is idle is at 0%.

Antivirus found nothing, S.M.A.R.T. test found nothing.

I have have already went and checked every type of thing I could find in the fist 5 pages of any and all the search engines I could find (yes even bing I was that desperate).

only thing i haven't tried is to change the SATA cable but I did witch it with my primary disk ad the primary is still working perfectly fine so I thought that wasn't it.

All of the other drives work perfectly fine.

I was told it could be a program that could be copying anything I do on that drive but I wiped it and it is still happening but only that drive.

I was starting to think it was a mechanical problem and I would have to flush it down the toilet and get a new one but I am trying everything I can since budget is tight at the moment.

I have done some other testing too but is 2 am and brain is half dead so If anyone has any questions or wants to bounce any ideas I will gladly answer.

Thanks in advance

rhysiam · May 23, 2017

That is usually a good indication of a dying drive, but I would expect some raised values in SMART data. Do you actually know what you're looking for in SMART data? Because simple the "OK" / "not OK" flags aren't necessarily a good indication of drive health (my apologies if that sounds condescending - it's not supposed to be). Are you actually using Seatools - that's worth doing. Because different drive manufacturers actually use SMART data differently.

A few diagnostic questions...

Read @ 361, write @180... 361/180 what? That can't be MBps, no single mechanical HDD is that fast.

Does it perform badly? i.e., when it's running 100% usage does it open the PDF/play the music? Or is it hanging/locking up?

Look at the actual read and write or throughput for the drive while it's stuck at 100%, is it actually doing something meaningful (i.e. significant amount of data throughput)? If so, use the monitor processes by disk usage and see which process is hammering your HDD. If it's not actually doing anything, then it's pointing even more seriously towards a failing HDD.

Certainly don't trust that drive with any important data right now. The chance of it failing is extremely high.

Phillip Corcoran · May 23, 2017

I agree with Rhys, SMART data can be difficult to translate in to anything meaningful.

Test the drive with SeaTools for Windows for a definitive verdict on it's health, it doesn't baffle you with a long list of values that you have to make sense of. It will show either "Pass" or "Fail" for the various tests it performs when you run the long/extended test.

http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/support/downloads/seatools/

If you do have to replace the drive, I wouldn't recommend you buy another Seagate. WD is my brand of choice these days, based on many years (20+) of buying various brands. Seagate ones have had a bad track record with me.

Andres Canelson · May 23, 2017

rhysiam :

Read @ 361, write @180... 361/180 what?
I perform a benchmark performance test and the result for (IOPS) was read = 361 and write 180 (drive was formatted at the time)
Does it perform badly? i.e., when it's running 100% usage does it open the PDF/play the music? Or is it hanging/locking up?
It does perform badly, It does open the files I want to open and then goes to 100% usage and it gets stuck or when I try to move froward on a video or song it lags for like 6 secs or it stops the video for a few secs if I don' touch it.

I did check on the monitor processes by disk usage but nothing was showing as it was the cause for it that is why it was really wired.

Luckily all of my important things are somewhere else...that is just a big drive I have for my videos or music nothing special really

Andres Canelson · May 23, 2017

Phillip Corcoran :

I have tried that and SMART worked fine but the long test failed at some point (set it up to start when I went to sleep)
I was thinking it was a lost cause so I started to try some wired things so if it broke I would buy a new one or if it stayed the same I would buy a new one ...so.... I actually unallocated the entire drive and did a 35 pass format session .
In the morning I allocated the drive again and I tried copying something to it an it started working like always, I am still to do any testing since I just came back from work but I will re run the segate tools and see what comes up. at the moment it is working like a charm.

I have been bashing my head against any bit of info I could find so to actually get it working again after a week is kind of nice. I will do baby steps and update my findings just in case.

Thanks both for the help

rhysiam · May 23, 2017

Andres Canelson :

IOPS: thank you. That was the missing word that I needed. That's fine and about what you'd expect.

It does perform badly, It does open the files I want to open and then goes to 100% usage and it gets stuck or when I try to move froward on a video or song it lags for like 6 secs or it stops the video for a few secs if I don' touch it.

That's very bad. It's almost certainly dying.

I did check on the monitor processes by disk usage but nothing was showing as it was the cause for it that is why it was really wired.

Under the performance tab (I'm assuming Win10 here), what's the read and write speed while it's sitting at 100% active time? If it's sitting at 100% usage but there's actually no data being read or written, I believe that's a sure-fire sign of a dying drive. I don't think there is any other logical or vaguely likely explanation for a locked drive that's not actually transferring anything. Particularly when it was working fine previously and nothing changed (cables, SATA drivers, controllers etc) which could explain the new behaviour.

I have tried that and SMART worked fine

What do you mean when you say "worked fine"? SMART data presents a table of information which is difficult to interpret. As I said in my first post, you can't necessarily trust the "OK" / "Not OK" /"Healthy" / "Unhealthy" flags, they're based on pre-determined thresholds which can vary from between programs and manufacturers. Can you post or link to a screen shot of your SMART data table?

I have been bashing my head against any bit of info I could find so to actually get it working again after a week is kind of nice.

While I'm glad it's working for now, if I was in your shoes I wouldn't trust that drive with important data ever again. It's likely that at the very least the drive had a fair number of bad sectors, perhaps the format was able to remap those sectors to spare area and mark them as bad (preventing them being used again). If you can post the SMART data that will confirm or debunk that theory, and should give us an indication of how many sectors have failed and whether there are any other potential issues.

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