# HDD Extremly slow but behaving like an SSD?



## RatKing (Sep 29, 2021)

So I have recently been having an extreme slowdown on my OS, takes very long to boot, constantly hangs and freezes, installations take ages etc. I probably shouldn't be running an OS in an HDD in 2021 but thats besides the point because I know its slow but not this slow. Anyways, I ran some tests in HD Tuner and the results I got are pretty weird, my HDD is an Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM008.

Benchmark:





So I know the oscilations are due to me doing the benchmark while running the OS but thats not the problem, the problem is that(I think) the graph should start at the max speed and gradually go down to the min speed like a normal HDD would, this is clearly not the case even increasing at around the 1400-1500 gb mark. I am also under the impression from the research I've done that those yellow dots shouldn't be near the bottom of the graph, that is only supposed to happen on an SSD. Coincidently the blue line being kinda stable and not decreasing over time is also an SSD characteristic. 

Now I know my HDD is not an SSD because its slow to the point it makes me want to punch my monitor, so wtf is up with the graph above ?

I should also mention a funny thing that happened the first time I ran the HD tuner benchmark, the graph was even weirder but I took it as a bug since it never happened again, I'm gonna leave that graph here just in case it wasn't a bug and its an indication the HDD is faulty.


http://imgur.com/a/GPqrtId

 - Imgur link since file is too large

I assume you guys would also request a SMART health screenshot and a error scan screenshot so I also did those and everything appears to be normal.






Last but not least I also did a crystal Disk check 




Would really appreciate any feedback because this HDD is driving me insane. Is it faulty ? Should I return it ? Does seagate accept returns on HDDs roughly 1 year and half after buying them?


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 3, 2021)

W10 and HDDs dont mix especially if the OSis on the HDD.

Replace your cable


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## RJARRRPCGP (Oct 3, 2021)

The only thing that looks abnormal, for even a platter drive, is the second benchmark.


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## Shrek (Oct 3, 2021)

Looks like it may be a shingled drive


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## RJARRRPCGP (Oct 3, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> Looks like it may be a shingled drive


It's easy to ponder about that, LOL.


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## Mussels (Oct 3, 2021)

Drive is rated at 190MB/s sustained with peaks higher due to cache so the perf results seem kinda normal
It is in fact, an SMR drive (yay it has shingles)

3.5 HDD DATA SHEET (seagate.com)


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## newtekie1 (Oct 3, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> Looks like it may be a shingled drive


It looks nothing like how a shingled drive normally looks. Do you have any idea what a shingle drive behaves like? Here is a hint, reading the from drive(which the OP is doing in his benchmarks) is not affected by SMR.


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## ThaiTaffy (Oct 3, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> It looks nothing like how a shingled drive normally looks. Do you have any idea what a shingle drive behaves like? Here is a hint, reading the from drive(which the OP is doing in his benchmarks) is not affected by SMR.


Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM008 is a SMR drive according to spec sheet. 

@RatKing  as airman said I would get an SSD for your OS the price has dropped so significantly over the years that if possible everyone should be using a SSD as a boot drive.

Buy yourself a simple 120gb SATA SSD they can be picked up for the same price as a budget gaming keyboard now, move the temp files folder and trash to your HDD and leave it be. Leaving the drive with space will allow it to run at optimum speeds and not using it for anything other than your os should extend its life significantly.


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## Mussels (Oct 3, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> It looks nothing like how a shingled drive normally looks. Do you have any idea what a shingle drive behaves like? Here is a hint, reading the from drive(which the OP is doing in his benchmarks) is not affected by SMR.


the drive is in use by the OS at the time, so there is definitely a chance its writing and reading during those results


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## ThaiTaffy (Oct 3, 2021)

Mussels said:


> the drive is in use by the OS at the time, so there is definitely a chance its writing and reading during those results


What it looks like is irrelevant, specs state the drive is SMR you don't need to support your opinion @Mussels fact is fact, your view was it's shingled and you were correct I have no idea what a shingled drive looks like in a benchmark  let alone what it looks like while running a OS, so props to you.


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## Mussels (Oct 3, 2021)

I dont know what they look like either, as i moved away from mech drives a long time ago
That said, the spec sheet shows they can vary a lot, with 250MB/s ish peaks, 190MB/s sustained reads, and then... going to crap as the drive fills up thanks to SMR?

As an OS drive with programs, page file, hiberfile, and all the other non stop activity an OS has i can easily see performance going from fast (cached content, easy contigious read) to dog poop, the moment is has to write fragmented data into SMR territory


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## ThaiTaffy (Oct 3, 2021)

Mussels said:


> I dont know what they look like either, as i moved away from mech drives a long time ago
> That said, the spec sheet shows they can vary a lot, with 250MB/s ish peaks, 190MB/s sustained reads, and then... going to crap as the drive fills up thanks to SMR?
> 
> As an OS drive with programs, page file, hiberfile, and all the other non stop activity an OS has i can easily see performance going from fast (cached content, easy contigious read) to dog poop, the moment is has to write fragmented data into SMR territory


I just googled the model number and size and saw the high volume of customers fuming because they bought these drives for their NAS.


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 3, 2021)

Sounds to me SMR is for archival reasons and not brute performance like say a Velociraptor or a non SMR Baracuda


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## ThaiTaffy (Oct 3, 2021)

eidairaman1 said:


> Sounds to me SMR is for archival reasons and not brute performance like say a Velociraptor or a non SMR Baracuda


From what I read alot of those barracuda drives over 1tb use SMR the bad thing is they only seem to advertise higher cache and not the fact it uses SMR technology.


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## RatKing (Oct 3, 2021)

Damn didn't expect so many replies.
I am definitly planning on buying a SSD but I just wanted to make sure if the HDD is working correctly or if I should send it back.
Are those benchmarks actually normal ? Because my HDD is definitly not acting normal, I know its slow but it takes like 5 minutes to boot to log in and another 1-2 minutes just to log in. Windows constantly freezes and things crash when opening them and there was one time it took like 2 hours while trying to shutdown(I think it was doing an update).
I also thought the graph was supposed to decrease overtime and not maintain a stable curve, I recently read a thread in this forum where someone seems to have a similar issue to mine








						Should I RMA my HDD again?
					

Recently i had problems with one of my HDD being extremely slow and yellow warning on Crystal Disk, after that I switched my windows and boot drive to another HDD (ST2000DM008) which I only used for games and steam, but when i started using it for Windows i noticed A LOT of stuttering doing the...




					www.techpowerup.com
				



Its what made me wrote this thread in the first place, the graph looks similar to mine and I have the same problems he does but I'm not 100% sure mine is faulty and if I should send it back. Unfortunately I cant run any more tests because I recently sent my pc to be check because my Power Supply gave me a little scare and tripped my MOBO power spike protection.

Edit: Forgot to say, I heard about the SMR stuff but thought it was only a problem for NAS and the likes, in a pc mainly for gaming its not a huge deal is it ? I bought this without knowing it was SMR because it wasn't advertise anywhere only in some obscure pdf file


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## ThaiTaffy (Oct 3, 2021)

Well purchasing a SSD would be my first concern once I'd done that I could run accurate benchmarks on the HDD without the os interference even so SMR is intended for long term data storage and really shouldn't be used as a day to day HDD. 
You might get lucky I know WD was sued because they failed to advertise that their large capacity HDD's used SMR and that Seagate and Toshiba were likely to get sued also so they might end up having to replace the drive with CMR by law.


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## RatKing (Oct 3, 2021)

ThaiTaffy said:


> Well purchasing a SSD would be my first concern once I'd done that I could run accurate benchmarks on the HDD without the os interference even so SMR is intended for long term data storage and really shouldn't be used as a day to day HDD.
> You might get lucky I know WD was sued because they failed to advertise that their large capacity HDD's used SMR and that Seagate and Toshiba were likely to get sued also so they might end up having to replace the drive with CMR by law.


Yeah Ill be buying an SSD was waiting to see if I get a good deal. Do you recommend anything in particular for a good price ? I was looking for a 1TB ssd


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## Shrek (Oct 3, 2021)

ThaiTaffy said:


> Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM008 is a SMR drive according to spec sheet.



I like the 3.5" Seagate Firecuda as it is not shingled (the 2.5" is)
CMR and SMR Hard Drives | Seagate US
and has an 8GB solid state cache, but at the moment the prices seem ridiculous (more than a solid state drive).


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## ThaiTaffy (Oct 3, 2021)

RatKing said:


> Yeah Ill be buying an SSD was waiting to see if I get a good deal. Do you recommend anything in particular for a good price ? I was looking for a 1TB ssd


Like I said I would highly recommend using a small SSD for your os only then buy anything else you need for storage purposes personally I use crucial ssd's but we have had a debate on them recently also maybe someone can suggest other alternatives.


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## RatKing (Oct 3, 2021)

ThaiTaffy said:


> Like I said I would highly recommend using a small SSD for your os only then buy anything else you need for storage purposes personally I use crucial ssd's but we have had a debate on them recently also maybe someone can suggest other alternatives.


Oh I was mainly looking at 1TB because I am also interested in having heavy loading games on it and considering games these days are getting larger and larger I thought 1TB was the way to go. I was looking at the corsair mp600 core but apparently its QLC which is kinda sad it was really good for the price


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## ThaiTaffy (Oct 3, 2021)

I'm not saying don't buy a 1tb I'm just saying spend £25 and get a 120gb purely for your os


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## RatKing (Oct 3, 2021)

ThaiTaffy said:


> I'm not saying don't buy a 1tb I'm just saying spend £25 and get a 120gb purely for your os


Ah ok so you recommend getting a small SSD just for OS ? why is that ?


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## ThaiTaffy (Oct 3, 2021)

As a SSD fills up it gets slower so if you have a SSD just for os with capacity spare you won't ever notice speeds decrease due to that


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## RatKing (Oct 3, 2021)

ThaiTaffy said:


> As a SSD fills up it gets slower so if you have a SSD just for os with capacity spare you won't ever notice speeds decrease due to that


Uhm interesting, thought this was what we did back then and that its no longer worth because big SSD aren't as expensive as before and only start slowing down at like 80% capacity but I'll consider it


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 3, 2021)

ThaiTaffy said:


> Like I said I would highly recommend using a small SSD for your os only then buy anything else you need for storage purposes personally I use crucial ssd's but we have had a debate on them recently also maybe someone can suggest other alternatives.


Samsung Pro SSDs or Crucial MX are what I suggest.



RatKing said:


> Uhm interesting, thought this was what we did back then and that its no longer worth because big SSD aren't as expensive as before and only start slowing down at like 80% capacity but I'll consider it


Write lifes are still limited on SSDs, I suggest the SSD for OS and less critical items and HDD for other stuff but a backup is always a must


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## RatKing (Sep 29, 2021)

So I have recently been having an extreme slowdown on my OS, takes very long to boot, constantly hangs and freezes, installations take ages etc. I probably shouldn't be running an OS in an HDD in 2021 but thats besides the point because I know its slow but not this slow. Anyways, I ran some tests in HD Tuner and the results I got are pretty weird, my HDD is an Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM008.

Benchmark:





So I know the oscilations are due to me doing the benchmark while running the OS but thats not the problem, the problem is that(I think) the graph should start at the max speed and gradually go down to the min speed like a normal HDD would, this is clearly not the case even increasing at around the 1400-1500 gb mark. I am also under the impression from the research I've done that those yellow dots shouldn't be near the bottom of the graph, that is only supposed to happen on an SSD. Coincidently the blue line being kinda stable and not decreasing over time is also an SSD characteristic. 

Now I know my HDD is not an SSD because its slow to the point it makes me want to punch my monitor, so wtf is up with the graph above ?

I should also mention a funny thing that happened the first time I ran the HD tuner benchmark, the graph was even weirder but I took it as a bug since it never happened again, I'm gonna leave that graph here just in case it wasn't a bug and its an indication the HDD is faulty.


http://imgur.com/a/GPqrtId

 - Imgur link since file is too large

I assume you guys would also request a SMART health screenshot and a error scan screenshot so I also did those and everything appears to be normal.






Last but not least I also did a crystal Disk check 




Would really appreciate any feedback because this HDD is driving me insane. Is it faulty ? Should I return it ? Does seagate accept returns on HDDs roughly 1 year and half after buying them?


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## newtekie1 (Oct 3, 2021)

ThaiTaffy said:


> Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM008 is a SMR drive according to spec sheet.


And that doesn't matter, because the results look nothing like what a SMR drive should look like.



Mussels said:


> the drive is in use by the OS at the time, so there is definitely a chance its writing and reading during those results


So, unless it's writing massive amounts of data sequentially all at once, SMR doesn't matter.  What this looks like is just a HDD being a slow HDD and not keeping up with the random use of a system drive. This isn't caused by SMR.


RatKing said:


> Damn didn't expect so many replies.
> I am definitly planning on buying a SSD but I just wanted to make sure if the HDD is working correctly or if I should send it back.
> Are those benchmarks actually normal ? Because my HDD is definitly not acting normal, I know its slow but it takes like 5 minutes to boot to log in and another 1-2 minutes just to log in. Windows constantly freezes and things crash when opening them and there was one time it took like 2 hours while trying to shutdown(I think it was doing an update).
> I also thought the graph was supposed to decrease overtime and not maintain a stable curve, I recently read a thread in this forum where someone seems to have a similar issue to mine


The only way to test a HDD(or really SSD too) for speed is to do it when the drive isn't being used by anything else. Boot Windows from another drive than the one you are testing. If Windows is running off of it, then your results can be totally crazy looking.


ThaiTaffy said:


> SMR is intended for long term data storage and really shouldn't be used as a day to day HDD.


There is really no reason a SMR drive can't be used day to day. It's just HDDs in general shouldn't be used as OS drive anymore. But even in situations where you are writing to the drive a SMR drive often behaves exactly like a CMR drive, most people would never even know they had an SMR drive. SMR drives have a CMR cache, just like a SLC cache in a TLC SSD.


ThaiTaffy said:


> I'm not saying don't buy a 1tb I'm just saying spend £25 and get a 120gb purely for your os


This is extremely bad advise. The current 120GB drives on the market are slower than a nearly full 1TB SSD.  Also, a near full SSD only gets slower write speeds, not read speeds. So the slowdown isn't really a big deal.  And if you keep the drive about 25% empty, it never really slows down.


RatKing said:


> Uhm interesting, thought this was what we did back then and that its no longer worth because big SSD aren't as expensive as before and only start slowing down at like 80% capacity but I'll consider it


Yeah, that's basically the case now. Keep it under 80% full and you won't notice write speed decreasing. And even full an SSD won't slow down reading.

However, in your situation I'd get a smallish SSD for the OS now if you can't afford the bigger SSD. Just not too small, don't get a 120GB drive, they are slow as dog shit these days. Get a 250GB drive to use as your OS drive and then just use the HDD for storage of games. Just doing that will actually really improve how that HDD handles loading games. Since the HDD won't have to handle all the background crap that Windows is trying to do, it only has to handle loading games, so they will load way faster.


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 3, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> And that doesn't matter, because the results look nothing like what a SMR drive should look like.
> 
> 
> So, unless it's writing massive amounts of data sequentially all at once, SMR doesn't matter.  What this looks like is just a HDD being a slow HDD and not keeping up with the random use of a system drive. This isn't caused by SMR.
> ...


Yup no pagefile swapping


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## ThaiTaffy (Oct 3, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> This is extremely bad advise. The current 120GB drives on the market are slower than a nearly full 1TB SSD. Also, a near full SSD only gets slower write speeds, not read speeds. So the slowdown isn't really a big deal. And if you keep the drive about 25% empty, it never really slows down


Not sure what SSD's your talking about but I'm talking SATA here the speeds between a 120gb and a 1tb are like 10mbps



newtekie1 said:


> There is really no reason a SMR drive can't be used day to day. It's just HDDs in general shouldn't be used as OS drive anymore. But even in situations where you are writing to the drive a SMR drive often behaves exactly like a CMR drive, most people would never even know they had an SMR drive. SMR drives have a CMR cache, just like a SLC cache in a TLC SSD


So installing a game at 10mbps isn't slow as dogshit?

Or writing any large file for that matter

3hours to install most modern games sounds like a slow ass HDD to me.


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## Shrek (Oct 3, 2021)

ThaiTaffy said:


> As a SSD fills up it gets slower



An opportunity to learn! why does it slow up? is the controller busy trying to figure out what goes in what slot that remains?


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 3, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> An opportunity to learn! why does it slow up? Is the controller busy trying to figure out what goes in what slot that remains?


More data to look through, just like a HDD


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## ThaiTaffy (Oct 3, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> An opportunity to learn! why does it slow up? is the controller busy trying to figure out what goes in what slot that remains?


SSD save data largely in partially filled blocks when the capacity is almost full the ssd then needs to not only try to write data but also reorganize those blocks from partially full to full.


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## Shrek (Oct 3, 2021)

Ah, I didn't know it was moving stuff around (which causes wear); I am used to hard drives that don't (and so get fragmented).

Or at least that is how I understand it; don't forget I asked this question so as to learn.



eidairaman1 said:


> More data to look through, just like a HDD



But would that not suggest that larger drives are slower, which I believe is not the case.

I think it is just a matter of words, and I may have misinterpreted those words.


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 3, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> Ah, I didn't know it was moving stuff around; I am used to hard drives that don't (and so get fragmented).
> 
> Or at least that is how I understand it; don't forget I asked this question so as to learn.
> 
> ...


They compensate with cache and nvme design


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## ThaiTaffy (Oct 3, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> Ah, I didn't know it was moving stuff around; I am used to hard drives that don't (and so get fragmented).
> 
> Or at least that is how I understand it; don't forget I asked this question so as to learn.
> 
> ...


No it doesn't matter what size the drive is they all only organize the space that they need


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## Shrek (Oct 3, 2021)

eidairaman1 said:


> They compensate with cache



Ah yes, now I recall that cheap SSDs don't have cache.


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## ThaiTaffy (Oct 3, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> Ah yes, now I recall that cheap SSDs don't have cache.


If you want to learn about it in more detail here you go. https://www.howtogeek.com/165542/why-solid-state-drives-slow-down-as-you-fill-them-up/


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## Shrek (Oct 3, 2021)

The other question I have is what do SSDs do when all the spare sectors are used up? Anyone ever seen an error message to this effect?


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## RJARRRPCGP (Oct 3, 2021)

ThaiTaffy said:


> 3hours to install most modern games sounds like a slow ass HDD to me.


Or a faulty SSD, of course, when you get bit by a bad one or got a cheapo SSD.


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 3, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> The other question I have is what do SSDs do when all the spare sectors are used up? Anyone ever seen an error message to this effect?


Windows Warns when the drive is near max capacity and cannot defrag, or has a problem with page file. It is why I manually set the page file(swap space) to 4096MB Minimum and Max, so it has no rubber banding.


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## Shrek (Oct 3, 2021)

ThaiTaffy said:


> If you want to learn about it in more detail here you go. https://www.howtogeek.com/165542/why-solid-state-drives-slow-down-as-you-fill-them-up/



Great article, but I am not sure I completely understand TRIM; if one has little space remaining one can't really keep on using it, as that would wear it out, so one has to keep shuffling space around... and I may have just explained to myself why things slow down when little space remains. I imagine one trick is to bring the spare sectors (hidden overprovisioning) into play to ameliorate the problem.

Now it all makes a lot more sense.

And so a further question (will it ever stop); if one puts the OS on an SSD and also has a hard drive; how does one steer the paging to happen on the hard drive and not the SSD?


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 3, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> Great article, but I am not sure I completely understand TRIM; if one has little space remaining one can't really keep on using it, as that would wear it out, so one has to keep shuffling space around... and I may have just explained to myself why things slow down when little space remains. I imagine one trick is to bring the spare sectors (hidden overprovisioning) into play to ameliorate the problem.
> 
> Now it all makes a lot more sense.


Trim keeps the drive optimized and clean, it is why there is no file fragmentation like on a HDD that needs defragging from time to time, but if there is no room it cant trim either.

Rule of thumb, leave a drive 10-15% empty to avoid trouble


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## ThaiTaffy (Oct 3, 2021)

So easiest way to describe trim is with word processing terms when a file has been *copied* to fill another block rather than being *cut *its highlighted then when the ssd is in an idle state the highlighted file is deleted.


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## Shrek (Oct 3, 2021)

eidairaman1 said:


> Windows Warns when the drive is near max capacity and cannot defrag, or has a problem with page file. It is why I manually set the page file(swap space) to 4096MB Minimum and Max, so it has no rubber banding.



What happens if a program needs more RAM space that you have allowed? the memory request will be denied.


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## RatKing (Oct 3, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> And that doesn't matter, because the results look nothing like what a SMR drive should look like.
> 
> 
> So, unless it's writing massive amounts of data sequentially all at once, SMR doesn't matter.  What this looks like is just a HDD being a slow HDD and not keeping up with the random use of a system drive. This isn't caused by SMR.
> ...


Do you have any recommendation for an SSD? I have been looking at the "new" gen 4 ones but also read the speed difference is not really noticeable past the normal sata ssd and you only notice it if you're constantly moving large files. Also read this might change in the near future due to direct storage, so are they worth buying now with the price difference or should I just go for a Sata or gen 3 one ?I'm mostly gonna be using it to gaming , programming and running virtual machines.


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## Shrek (Oct 3, 2021)

eidairaman1 said:


> Rule of thumb, leave a drive 10-15% empty to avoid trouble



Above and beyond the hidden 7%?
Why Solid-State Drives Slow Down As You Fill Them Up (howtogeek.com)

I'm still trying to understand if one can have quantum tunneling (what a SSD uses) without wear.


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## RatKing (Oct 3, 2021)

eidairaman1 said:


> Samsung Pro SSDs or Crucial MX are what I suggest.
> 
> 
> Write lifes are still limited on SSDs, I suggest the SSD for OS and less critical items and HDD for other stuff but a backup is always a must


Yeah I'm thinking about the Crucial mx500 but its a bit expensive considering there are gen 3 nvme for about the same price


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## ThaiTaffy (Oct 3, 2021)

RatKing said:


> Do you have any recommendation for an SSD? I have been looking at the "new" gen 4 ones but also read the speed difference is not really noticeable past the normal sata ssd and you only notice it if you're constantly moving large files. Also read this might change in the near future due to direct storage, so are they worth buying now with the price difference or should I just go for a Sata or gen 3 one ?I'm mostly gonna be using it to gaming , programming and running virtual machine.


Personally I'd go with something like a 120gb crucial mx500 for your os I can buy them here for less than $20 and work great as a boot drive then it's totally up to you as far as storage I'm pretty much set on buying a WD black sn750 1tb as my next storage drive which is just under $80.


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 3, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> What happens if a program needs more RAM space that you have allowed? the memory request will be denied.


I have 16GB, ive yet to max it out. Swap space has been around since I believe Windows 3.1 it was used to compensate for the small expensive ram. Back then ram was not cheap like how gpus are today.

Back then if Ram was saturated with data it would refer to swap space/paging which is very slow. So data would be exchanged between ram and the swap on the hdd.


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## ThaiTaffy (Oct 3, 2021)

@RatKing if you can fill in your system specs by clicking your avatar we can be sure any suggestions we make are compatible.


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## Shrek (Oct 3, 2021)

eidairaman1 said:


> I have 16GB, ive yet to max it out. Swap space has been around since I believe Windows 3.1 it was used to compensate for the small expensive ram. Back then ram was not cheap like how gpus are today.



I use Mathematica and there RAM requirements can go crazy, depending on the problem one is working on.


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## RatKing (Sep 29, 2021)

So I have recently been having an extreme slowdown on my OS, takes very long to boot, constantly hangs and freezes, installations take ages etc. I probably shouldn't be running an OS in an HDD in 2021 but thats besides the point because I know its slow but not this slow. Anyways, I ran some tests in HD Tuner and the results I got are pretty weird, my HDD is an Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM008.

Benchmark:





So I know the oscilations are due to me doing the benchmark while running the OS but thats not the problem, the problem is that(I think) the graph should start at the max speed and gradually go down to the min speed like a normal HDD would, this is clearly not the case even increasing at around the 1400-1500 gb mark. I am also under the impression from the research I've done that those yellow dots shouldn't be near the bottom of the graph, that is only supposed to happen on an SSD. Coincidently the blue line being kinda stable and not decreasing over time is also an SSD characteristic. 

Now I know my HDD is not an SSD because its slow to the point it makes me want to punch my monitor, so wtf is up with the graph above ?

I should also mention a funny thing that happened the first time I ran the HD tuner benchmark, the graph was even weirder but I took it as a bug since it never happened again, I'm gonna leave that graph here just in case it wasn't a bug and its an indication the HDD is faulty.


http://imgur.com/a/GPqrtId

 - Imgur link since file is too large

I assume you guys would also request a SMART health screenshot and a error scan screenshot so I also did those and everything appears to be normal.






Last but not least I also did a crystal Disk check 




Would really appreciate any feedback because this HDD is driving me insane. Is it faulty ? Should I return it ? Does seagate accept returns on HDDs roughly 1 year and half after buying them?


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 3, 2021)

ThaiTaffy said:


> Personally I'd go with something like a 120gb crucial mx500 for your os I can buy them here for less than $20 and work great as a boot drive then it's totally up to you as far as storage I'm pretty much set on buying a WD black sn750 1tb as my next storage drive which is just under $80.


Even a cheap ssd will still provide faster load times.



Andy Shiekh said:


> I use Mathematica and there RAM requirements can go crazy, depending on the problem one is working on.


I presume that is a tool/program. Iirc codewarrior used to do the same, random crashes with that program due to bugs that were user created lol.

Heck Id probably quadruple or octuple what I have for the program you are using (Threadripper/Epyc anyone)


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## Shrek (Oct 3, 2021)

Yes, it does computer mathematics
Wolfram: Computation Meets Knowledge

Still wondering how to put the OS on the SSD but direct the paging to a hard drive.


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 3, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> Yes, it does computer mathematics
> Wolfram: Computation Meets Knowledge
> 
> Still wondering how to put the OS on the SSD but direct the paging to a hard drive.


Put it on another SSD.

I did this in the XP days before SSDs existed.

It is pretty easy to do


----------



## RatKing (Oct 3, 2021)

ThaiTaffy said:


> @RatKing if you can fill in your system specs by clicking your avatar we can be sure any suggestions we make are compatible.


Oh I haven't updated my specs yet because I'm waiting for stock so I can upgrade my build but once its upgraded it will probably look something like
MOBO: Msi B550 Tomahawk
Ram: Crucial Ballistix 16gb cl16
CPU:  Ryzen 5 5600x
GPU: Gtx 1070 (would like to upgrade but the prices are crazy these days)

I dont remember which PSU I have but I might upgrade it
Regarding getting a drive just for OS I think I'm just going for a 1tb SSD because by my math where I live its cheaper to just get the large ssd than two medium ones.


----------



## newtekie1 (Oct 3, 2021)

ThaiTaffy said:


> Not sure what SSD's your talking about but I'm talking SATA here the speeds between a 120gb and a 1tb are like 10mbps


Yeah, not even close. The difference between a 120GB SSD and a 250GB SSD can be double.



ThaiTaffy said:


> So installing a game at 10mbps isn't slow as dogshit?
> 
> Or writing any large file for that matter
> 
> 3hours to install most modern games sounds like a slow ass HDD to me.


You don't understand how SMR works, or even obviously used one if you think any of that is true. First of all, where are you installing this game from? The internet most likely. And your internet speed is not likely fast enough to ever fill up the CMR cache.


RatKing said:


> Do you have any recommendation for an SSD? I have been looking at the "new" gen 4 ones but also read the speed difference is not really noticeable past the normal sata ssd and you only notice it if you're constantly moving large files. Also read this might change in the near future due to direct storage, so are they worth buying now with the price difference or should I just go for a Sata or gen 3 one ?I'm mostly gonna be using it to gaming , programming and running virtual machines.


Does your computer even support a Gen4 SSD? Right now, the difference isn't that noticeable in real world use between Gen3 and 4, but the price difference is definitely noticeable.


----------



## Shrek (Oct 3, 2021)

Many thanks to all for the useful information; time for me to run silent for awhile and give you all a break.


----------



## eidairaman1 (Oct 3, 2021)

RatKing said:


> Do you have any recommendation for an SSD? I have been looking at the "new" gen 4 ones but also read the speed difference is not really noticeable past the normal sata ssd and you only notice it if you're constantly moving large files. Also read this might change in the near future due to direct storage, so are they worth buying now with the price difference or should I just go for a Sata or gen 3 one ?I'm mostly gonna be using it to gaming , programming and running virtual machines.



No a Gen 4 is too much price Wise.

A Reputable SATA Solid state drive will still net you higher performance in load times and throughput than any hard disk drive. M.2s are a solution for compact systems.

Just stick to Gen 3 or SATA.


----------



## RatKing (Oct 3, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> Does your computer even support a Gen4 SSD? Right now, the difference isn't that noticeable in real world use between Gen3 and 4, but the price difference is definitely noticeable.


I think the Msi B550 Tomahawk does support gen4. And you are absolutely right, the difference isn't noticeable but the price difference is. Was mostly wondering if the technology that makes use of gen4 speeds is coming anytime soon or if I should just buy a gen3 or sata and upgrade later when the technology comes



eidairaman1 said:


> No a Gen 4 is too much price Wise.
> 
> A Reputable SATA Solid state drive will still net you higher performance in load times and throughput than any hard disk drive. M.2s are a solution for compact systems.
> 
> Just stick to Gen 3 or SATA.


Yeah I'll probably stick to gen 3 or sata. What would you consider a decent price for a gen 3 1tb ssd ? Was looking at the sabrent rocket currently at 120€. I know the ADATA ones are cheap but they've recently been found to reduce their performance without telling anyone, so I think I'll avoid them


----------



## ThaiTaffy (Oct 3, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> Yeah, not even close. The difference between a 120GB SSD and a 250GB SSD can be double.


Maybe write speeds but were talking about an os drive here the whole idea isn't to write on it.


newtekie1 said:


> You don't understand how SMR works, or even obviously used one if you think any of that is true. First of all, where are you installing this game from? The internet most likely. And your internet speed is not likely fast enough to ever fill up the CMR cache.


Actually I've used them for a fair few years in CCTV systems but as 4k has taken over we tend to go for the newer WD red plus drives as they have reverted back to CMR.
When downloading a game files are saved temporarily to be extracted and installed once all are present. Some games might install while downloading but not all. Please stop trying to justify a SMR drive for gaming or general use  random write speeds are terrible that's why the drives are specifically for backups and large data file storage.


----------



## eidairaman1 (Oct 3, 2021)

RatKing said:


> I think the Msi B550 Tomahawk does support gen4. And you are absolutely right, the difference isn't noticeable but the price difference is. Was mostly wondering if the technology that makes use of gen4 speeds is coming anytime soon or if I should just buy a gen3 or sata and upgrade later when the technology comes
> 
> 
> Yeah I'll probably stick to gen 3 or sata. What would you consider a decent price for a gen 3 1tb ssd ? Was looking at the sabrent rocket currently at 120€. I know the ADATA ones are cheap but they've recently been found to reduce their performance without telling anyone, so I think I'll avoid them



I've liked Samsung myself and have heard the Crucial drives are good as well.

Sabrent I'm unsure about but at this rate is probably better than your smr drive.


----------



## ThaiTaffy (Oct 3, 2021)

@RatKing  the hard drive your original post was about isn't bad I should clarify this. The hard drive is designed for storage, holding film,music family photos and so on stuff you never want to delete. If you only intend to keep a few games on it that's fine but it your playing through games then deleting them to make space for another and using it as a general drive to keep temp files, small files that will be used and deleted and so on the drive will not only be slow but you will also destroy it. SMR drives as I said are for backups and large file storage that you intend to keep.


----------



## RatKing (Oct 3, 2021)

ThaiTaffy said:


> @RatKing  the hard drive your original post was about isn't bad I should clarify this. The hard drive is designed for storage, holding film,music family photos and so on stuff you never want to delete. If you only intend to keep a few games on it that's fine but it your playing through games then deleting them to make space for another and using it as a general drive to keep temp files, small files that will be used and deleted and so on the drive will not only be slow but you will also destroy it. SMR drives as I said are for backups and large file storage that you intend to keep.


Oh yeah I'm not gonna throw it away, I know its a good drive. After I get a new drive I'll run some tests on it to make sure it isn't faulty. Still have almost half a year of warranty so time isn't an issue. If it isn't faulty it will probably be used to hold junk files or other things I find unecessary to be on an ssd


----------



## eidairaman1 (Oct 3, 2021)

ThaiTaffy said:


> @RatKing  the hard drive your original post was about isn't bad I should clarify this. The hard drive is designed for storage, holding film,music family photos and so on stuff you never want to delete. If you only intend to keep a few games on it that's fine but it your playing through games then deleting them to make space for another and using it as a general drive to keep temp files, small files that will be used and deleted and so on the drive will not only be slow but you will also destroy it. SMR drives as I said are for backups and large file storage that you intend to keep.


I'd still back up any storage device to a hard copy of photos, tapes, CD/DVD/BD, USB, SD/ųSD/CF.


----------



## RatKing (Oct 3, 2021)

eidairaman1 said:


> I've liked Samsung myself and have heard the Crucial drives are good as well.
> 
> Sabrent I'm unsure about but at this rate is probably better than your smr drive.


The only problem I have with samsung drives is they place them at premium price because they are a known brand but if they are known to last a long time maybe ill pay the extra price


----------



## newtekie1 (Oct 3, 2021)

ThaiTaffy said:


> Maybe write speeds but were talking about an os drive here the whole idea isn't to write on it.


Read speeds too. 120GB SSDs are nothing more than glorified USB Flash drives at this point thanks to their single chip design, read speed are terrible too compared to bigger SSDs, some can't even hit the SATA speed limit. There just isn't a reason to get a 120GB drive, especially considering the prices are so close these days to a 250GB drive.



ThaiTaffy said:


> Actually I've used them for a fair few years in CCTV systems but as 4k has taken over we tend to go for the newer WD red plus drives as they have reverted back to CMR.


So you used them in one of the few situations they shouldn't be used in. Cool story bro.



ThaiTaffy said:


> When downloading a game files are saved temporarily to be extracted and installed once all are present. Some games might install while downloading but not all. Please stop trying to justify a SMR drive for gaming or general use random write speeds are terrible that's why the drives are specifically for backups and large data file storage.


And SMR drives work just the same as CMR drives in random writes thanks to the huge CMR cache. Heck, they act like CMR drives in most sequential writes too, again thanks to the CMR cache. Most people would be really hard pressed to even tell the difference between an SMR and CMR drive.  Hell, the WD Red drives were only exposed as SMR drives when people using them in RAID noticed they would fail during a rebuild after writing huge amounts of data was being written to the replacement SMR drive causing the cache to run out and the controller to think the new drive was failing due to the drop off of write speed. Before that, they had no idea they were using SMR drives. A SMR drive makes a great secondary drive for running games off of. Even installing large games, the CMR cache isn't used up and the performance is good enough(for a hard drive).



RatKing said:


> I think the Msi B550 Tomahawk does support gen4. And you are absolutely right, the difference isn't noticeable but the price difference is. Was mostly wondering if the technology that makes use of gen4 speeds is coming anytime soon or if I should just buy a gen3 or sata and upgrade later when the technology comes



Even if the B550 Tomahawk supports Gen4, the CPU you put in it has to support it as well.


----------



## ThaiTaffy (Oct 3, 2021)

RatKing said:


> Oh yeah I'm not gonna throw it away, I know its a good drive. After I get a new drive I'll run some tests on it to make sure it isn't faulty. Still have almost half a year of warranty so time isn't an issue. If it isn't faulty it will probably be used to hold junk files or other things I find unecessary to be on an ssd


Hopefully it passes the test but as I said using SMR drives for what you have done leads to failure rapidly so just be weary. if write speeds are vastly off when you Retest without the os it might suggest the drive is on its last legs.


----------



## eidairaman1 (Oct 3, 2021)

RatKing said:


> The only problem I have with samsung drives is they place them at premium price because they are a known brand but if they are known to last a long time maybe ill pay the extra price


Evos cost less, Pros cost more. The Pro 840 in 2014 wasnt too steep for me.


----------



## ThaiTaffy (Oct 3, 2021)

Take a look at the failure rate of his drives model number due to being used for anything other than its intended purpose. Seagate Barracuda's using SMR repeatedly rewritten have had high failure within 3 years of use.


----------



## eidairaman1 (Oct 3, 2021)

The OP has a solution suggested to him, all we can do is wait and see what he does...


----------



## RatKing (Oct 3, 2021)

eidairaman1 said:


> Evos cost less, Pros cost more. The Pro 840 in 2014 wasnt too steep for me.


Yeah the Samsung 970 evo Plus looks good, any experience with those ?


----------



## eidairaman1 (Oct 3, 2021)

RatKing said:


> Yeah the Samsung 970 evo Plus looks good, any experience with those ?


Iirc they are faster than the 840 Pros due to being refined.


----------



## newtekie1 (Oct 3, 2021)

ThaiTaffy said:


> Take a look at the failure rate of his drives model number due to being used for anything other than its intended purpose. Seagate Barracuda's using SMR repeatedly rewritten have had high failure within 3 years of use.


And so have their 3TB CMR drives too. And the WD Blue CMR drives have high failure rates too. Certain models fail more often, that's nothing new. It has nothing to do with SMR and there are plenty of SMR drive models that have totally normal failure rates in any use case.  You are grasping at straws to try to back up your irrational hate for SMR. The fact is most people will never even know the drive they are using is SMR because it behaves like a CMR drive. Even the data hoarders that discovered WD had switch their Red drives to SMR didn't discover them in normal use. They had used the drives for years and never noticed they were SMR. It was only when they had to do an array rebuild did they notice it was taking longer than it should and that is when they realized the drives were SMR.


----------



## eidairaman1 (Oct 3, 2021)

Ok can we suggest a SSD to the @RatKing please?



newtekie1 said:


> And so have their 3TB CMR drives too. And the WD Blue CMR drives have high failure rates too. Certain models fail more often, that's nothing new. It has nothing to do with SMR and there are plenty of SMR drive models that have totally normal failure rates in any use case.





ThaiTaffy said:


> Take a look at the failure rate of his drives model number due to being used for anything other than its intended purpose. Seagate Barracuda's using SMR repeatedly rewritten have had high failure within 3 years of use.





eidairaman1 said:


> The OP has a solution suggested to him, all we can do is wait and see what he does...


----------



## Shrek (Oct 3, 2021)

eidairaman1 said:


> Ok can we suggest a SSD to the @RatKing please?



I actually like the Western Digital Blue SATA SSD (actually SanDisk inside)


----------



## ThrashZone (Oct 3, 2021)

RatKing said:


> Yeah the Samsung 970 evo Plus looks good, any experience with those ?


Hi,
Run hot.


----------



## RatKing (Sep 29, 2021)

So I have recently been having an extreme slowdown on my OS, takes very long to boot, constantly hangs and freezes, installations take ages etc. I probably shouldn't be running an OS in an HDD in 2021 but thats besides the point because I know its slow but not this slow. Anyways, I ran some tests in HD Tuner and the results I got are pretty weird, my HDD is an Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM008.

Benchmark:





So I know the oscilations are due to me doing the benchmark while running the OS but thats not the problem, the problem is that(I think) the graph should start at the max speed and gradually go down to the min speed like a normal HDD would, this is clearly not the case even increasing at around the 1400-1500 gb mark. I am also under the impression from the research I've done that those yellow dots shouldn't be near the bottom of the graph, that is only supposed to happen on an SSD. Coincidently the blue line being kinda stable and not decreasing over time is also an SSD characteristic. 

Now I know my HDD is not an SSD because its slow to the point it makes me want to punch my monitor, so wtf is up with the graph above ?

I should also mention a funny thing that happened the first time I ran the HD tuner benchmark, the graph was even weirder but I took it as a bug since it never happened again, I'm gonna leave that graph here just in case it wasn't a bug and its an indication the HDD is faulty.


http://imgur.com/a/GPqrtId

 - Imgur link since file is too large

I assume you guys would also request a SMART health screenshot and a error scan screenshot so I also did those and everything appears to be normal.






Last but not least I also did a crystal Disk check 




Would really appreciate any feedback because this HDD is driving me insane. Is it faulty ? Should I return it ? Does seagate accept returns on HDDs roughly 1 year and half after buying them?


----------



## eidairaman1 (Oct 3, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> I actually like the Western Digital Blue SATA SSD (actually SanDisk inside)


Why not just buy a Sandisk directly?



ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> Run hot.


Fanning?


----------



## Shrek (Oct 3, 2021)

eidairaman1 said:


> Why not just buy a Sandisk directly?



Do they use the 3D technology, or is that just marketing hype?


----------



## eidairaman1 (Oct 3, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> Do they use the 3D technology, or is that just marketing hype?











						SanDisk Ultra 3D NAND SSD 2.5" 250 GB - 4 TB SATA III Internal SSD | Western Digital | Western Digital Store
					

Upgrade to the SanDisk Ultra 3D SSD to accelerate your PC to the next level. Faster graphics, boot-up, and load times await. Our FAST shipping matches the SSD speeds.




					shop.westerndigital.com


----------



## ThrashZone (Oct 3, 2021)

eidairaman1 said:


> Why not just buy a Sandisk directly?
> 
> 
> Fanning?


Hi,
Lots of good ssd's

I have to use one of these on my 970 evo plus and reg 970 evo sammy's temp 1 & 2 pitifully different now very close to each other this is sitting doing nothing
Amazon.com: Advancing Gene M.2 NVMe Cooler Heatsink with 20mm PWM Fan (3rd Gen): Electronics


----------



## RatKing (Oct 3, 2021)

Might buy the corsair MP600 there is a great deal that makes it cheaper or about the same price of most gen 3 ssd and apparently its one of the best ssd out there. Am I supposed to mark something as a solution? Or can I just leave it as be


----------



## ThrashZone (Oct 3, 2021)

Hi,








						Corsair MP600 Pro 1 TB Review - PCIe 4.0 Powerhouse
					

The Corsair MP600 Pro is the fastest SSD we've ever tested. It is based on the brand-new Phison E18 controller, which has support for the PCI-Express 4.0 interface that doubles maximum throughput. At $225 for the 1 TB version, the Corsair MP600 Pro is quite expensive, but could it be worth it?




					www.techpowerup.com


----------



## RatKing (Oct 3, 2021)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Yeah at the time of that review it was at 225 dollars its currently at 139 euros which seems like a fair deal considering other lower end ssds only cost about 10 euros less


----------



## ThrashZone (Oct 3, 2021)

RatKing said:


> Yeah at the time of that review it was at 225 dollars its currently at 139 euros which seems like a fair deal considering other lower end ssds only cost about 10 euros less


Hi,
Yep just make sure you have enough clearance for the heatsink on it if you do get it.


----------



## RatKing (Oct 3, 2021)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> Yep just make sure you have enough clearance for the heatsink on it if you do get it.


Yeah this is something I'm worried about, how would I go about knowing if I do without having it in my hand?


----------



## ThrashZone (Oct 3, 2021)

RatKing said:


> Yeah this is something I'm worried about, how would I go about knowing if I do without having it in my hand?


Hi,
I haven't looked back to see which mother board you have unfortunately :/
Which is it ?


----------



## RatKing (Oct 3, 2021)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> I haven't looked back to see which mother board you have unfortunately :/
> Which is it ?


MSI B550 Tomahawk


----------



## ThrashZone (Oct 3, 2021)

RatKing said:


> MSI B550 Tomahawk


Hi,
Well it's above the gpu so should be fine


----------



## RatKing (Oct 3, 2021)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> Well it's above the gpu so should be fine
> View attachment 219316


Well thats great thanks for the help! Probably gonna bite the bullet and bite this one, hopefully it lasts a long time ahah


----------



## ThrashZone (Oct 3, 2021)

RatKing said:


> Well thats great thanks for the help! Probably gonna bite the bullet and bite this one, hopefully it lasts a long time ahah


Hi,
Some of the cosmetic pieces won't be able to go back on maybe 
All m.2's have is one small screw that holds them inplace.


----------



## RatKing (Oct 3, 2021)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> Some of the cosmetic pieces won't be able to go back on maybe
> All m.2's have is one small screw that holds them inplace.
> View attachment 219318


Uhm I guess its something you will only know after trying it. Still comestic isn't that important to me


----------



## ThrashZone (Oct 3, 2021)

RatKing said:


> Uhm I guess its something you will only know after trying it. Still comestic isn't that important to me


Hi,
Is that the way your board looks with Lighning gen 4 m.2 on it ?


----------



## RatKing (Oct 3, 2021)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> Is that the way your board looks with Lighning gen 4 m.2 on it ?


Yes, from what i've read I should just take off the motherboard heatsking and use the heatsink that comes with the ssd that way it fits perfectly. Or the other way around, taking the heatsink of the ssd and using the mobo one


----------



## ThrashZone (Oct 3, 2021)

Hi,
Yep that's the deal corsairs is likely much better.


----------



## newtekie1 (Oct 3, 2021)

RatKing said:


> Might buy the corsair MP600 there is a great deal that makes it cheaper or about the same price of most gen 3 ssd and apparently its one of the best ssd out there. Am I supposed to mark something as a solution? Or can I just leave it as be


Those are really good drives. If you can get one for very near the cost of a Gen3 SSD, I say do it.


RatKing said:


> Yes, from what i've read I should just take off the motherboard heatsking and use the heatsink that comes with the ssd that way it fits perfectly. Or the other way around, taking the heatsink of the ssd and using the mobo one


You can do either. The heatsink on the MP600 just unclips and comes off easily. It just uses thermal pads, so you can easily pop it back on and re-use the pads if you want to later. But I would take the piece off that comes with the motherboard and use the heatsink that comes on the SSD, it will cool better than the motherboard's heatsink.


----------



## RatKing (Oct 3, 2021)

newtekie1 said:


> Those are really good drives. If you can get one for very near the cost of a Gen3 SSD, I say do it.
> 
> You can do either. The heatsink on the MP600 just unclips and comes off easily. It just uses thermal pads, so you can easily pop it back on and re-use the pads if you want to later. But I would take the piece off that comes with the motherboard and use the heatsink that comes on the SSD, it will cool better than the motherboard's heatsink.


Yup thats my plan, hopefully wont disappoint me. I doubt thats possible considering my hdd is miserable ahah


----------



## newtekie1 (Oct 3, 2021)

RatKing said:


> Yup thats my plan, hopefully wont disappoint me. I doubt thats possible considering my hdd is miserable ahah


Yeah, you will notice a massive difference compared to your HDD.


----------



## Mussels (Oct 3, 2021)

RatKing said:


> Damn didn't expect so many replies.
> I am definitly planning on buying a SSD but I just wanted to make sure if the HDD is working correctly or if I should send it back.
> Are those benchmarks actually normal ? Because my HDD is definitly not acting normal, I know its slow but it takes like 5 minutes to boot to log in and another 1-2 minutes just to log in. Windows constantly freezes and things crash when opening them and there was one time it took like 2 hours while trying to shutdown(I think it was doing an update).
> I also thought the graph was supposed to decrease overtime and not maintain a stable curve, I recently read a thread in this forum where someone seems to have a similar issue to mine
> ...


Normal? no.
A hardware problem? We cant tell. Software could be writing to the drive, causing it to slow down that badly - something scheduled like windows updates, for example.


And yes, SMR can be that bad. Best example is that they slow down massively as they fill up.
Mech drives have to wait for the platter heads to move back round before they can do anything else so large writing delays mean reads have to wait as well.
In theory the OS should boot and load normally, but if it's writing at the same time for some reason performance would tank until those writes finish.


This got pages of content so i'll skip a lot of it: Use the SSD's heatsink if you can, the mobo one should perform just fine if you have clearance issues. My board has a stupid design where removing the M.2 heatsinks removes part of the mobos chipset cooling as well, but fortunately even with PCI-E 4.0 drives the slim stock heatsinks are more than enough.


----------



## RatKing (Oct 3, 2021)

Mussels said:


> Normal? no.
> A hardware problem? We cant tell. Software could be writing to the drive, causing it to slow down that badly - something scheduled like windows updates, for example.
> 
> 
> ...


Yeah I'll only know whats up with that HDD once I get my new drive, hopefully its nothing that isn't fixable. Didn't want those 2tb going to waste


----------



## ThrashZone (Oct 3, 2021)

Hi,
I'm not to fond of larger than 1tb hdd's if they go out too much data goes with them.


----------



## RJARRRPCGP (Oct 3, 2021)

You also need to defrag a lot to avoid lag on HDDs.


----------



## RatKing (Sep 29, 2021)

So I have recently been having an extreme slowdown on my OS, takes very long to boot, constantly hangs and freezes, installations take ages etc. I probably shouldn't be running an OS in an HDD in 2021 but thats besides the point because I know its slow but not this slow. Anyways, I ran some tests in HD Tuner and the results I got are pretty weird, my HDD is an Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM008.

Benchmark:





So I know the oscilations are due to me doing the benchmark while running the OS but thats not the problem, the problem is that(I think) the graph should start at the max speed and gradually go down to the min speed like a normal HDD would, this is clearly not the case even increasing at around the 1400-1500 gb mark. I am also under the impression from the research I've done that those yellow dots shouldn't be near the bottom of the graph, that is only supposed to happen on an SSD. Coincidently the blue line being kinda stable and not decreasing over time is also an SSD characteristic. 

Now I know my HDD is not an SSD because its slow to the point it makes me want to punch my monitor, so wtf is up with the graph above ?

I should also mention a funny thing that happened the first time I ran the HD tuner benchmark, the graph was even weirder but I took it as a bug since it never happened again, I'm gonna leave that graph here just in case it wasn't a bug and its an indication the HDD is faulty.


http://imgur.com/a/GPqrtId

 - Imgur link since file is too large

I assume you guys would also request a SMART health screenshot and a error scan screenshot so I also did those and everything appears to be normal.






Last but not least I also did a crystal Disk check 




Would really appreciate any feedback because this HDD is driving me insane. Is it faulty ? Should I return it ? Does seagate accept returns on HDDs roughly 1 year and half after buying them?


----------



## RatKing (Oct 3, 2021)

RJARRRPCGP said:


> You also need to defrag a lot to avoid lag on HDDs.


Oh I know I once spent a whole day defragging one. Its mostly gonna be for storage from now on so it shouldn't be a big deal



ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> I'm not to fond of larger than 1tb hdd's if they go out too much data goes with them.


Backup, backup, backup. All my important stuff is either on the cloud or on some other HDD.


----------



## bobbybluz (Oct 3, 2021)

RatKing said:


> Yeah the Samsung 970 evo Plus looks good, any experience with those ?


I have 5 of the 970 EVO Plus NVMe drives in use from 500GB to 2TB in size with no complaints. All of my 840's, 850's 860's and 960's have never skipped a beat either. I bought a few Samsung 870 EVO 500GB's from Newegg last month when they had them on Shell Shocker for $52 each. In over 100+ Samsung SSD and NVMe drives I've used in my own and customer builds/repairs none have failed so far going back years to the first release of the 840 Pro. The included Samsung software is great, especially the Data Transfer.

Since my own rigs use 64-128GB of RAM I turn the hiberfil off and move the page file to a 1TB or larger 7200 rpm mechanical drive. I only use the main NVMe and SSD drives for the OS and programs, everything else goes to backup mechanical storage drives. In my A/V production rigs I use a second 500GB NVMe drive as a scratch drive as well. Weekly automatic system backups go to 5400 rpm storage drives as well as external drives. I stick with Samsung because they make everything in them and they keep working well.


----------



## newtekie1 (Oct 3, 2021)

ThrashZone said:


> Hi,
> I'm not to fond of larger than 1tb hdd's if they go out too much data goes with them.


If it is data you really want, you should have backup of it. It doesn't matter what kind of drive it is stored on or how big it is.  Remember 3-2-1


----------



## eidairaman1 (Oct 4, 2021)

RatKing said:


> Oh I know I once spent a whole day defragging one. Its mostly gonna be for storage from now on so it shouldn't be a big deal
> 
> 
> Backup, backup, backup. All my important stuff is either on the cloud or on some other HDD.


Dont trust the "cloud"


----------



## claes (Oct 4, 2021)

You are currently on the cloud get used to it


----------



## ThrashZone (Oct 4, 2021)

RatKing said:


> Oh I know I once spent a whole day defragging one. Its mostly gonna be for storage from now on so it shouldn't be a big deal
> 
> 
> Backup, backup, backup. All my important stuff is either on the cloud or on some other HDD.


Hi,
Yep I just find better deals on 1tb ssd and hdd's and so having duplicates hurts less seeing I have four systems to backup it adds up quickly 
I don't do cloud except for stuff I don't care what happens to it.


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## eidairaman1 (Oct 4, 2021)

@claes, this here is not that important to me. Compared to family photos, videos, or very important documents, I wouldn't keep those in the "cloud". Never know when data loss can occur.


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## ThaiTaffy (Oct 4, 2021)

eidairaman1 said:


> @claes, this here is not that important to me. Compared to family photos, videos, or very important documents, I wouldn't keep those in the "cloud". Never know when data loss can occur.


I still keep that kinda stuff on zip disks...


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## Mussels (Oct 4, 2021)

eidairaman1 said:


> @claes, this here is not that important to me. Compared to family photos, videos, or very important documents, I wouldn't keep those in the "cloud". Never know when data loss can occur.


I do local and cloud for those. The odds on both failing at the same time are almost zero.


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