Update: I mistakenly thought it was my SSD that was acting up, but it's actually my HDD. I have corrected everything below.

Update: This HDD is 18 years old. I guess it's a bit dumb of me to even think it should work at all at this point. But it seems like age is probably the culprit.

I have an older (~6yrs) desktop that I run a media server on. I updated to Windows 10 recently and I started noticing serious lag. I think I've narrowed it down to an extremely slow HDD, which holds the Windows install. I can't say for certain whether this started with Windows 10 or whether I'm just now noticing it, so it could have nothing to do with the OS. The speeds reported from the Windows DiskSpd tool are:

• Command: diskspd -d60 -W15 -C15 -c128M -t4 -o4 -b8k -L -r -Sh -w50 c:\disk-speed-test.dat
• Read: 0.78 MiB/s
• Write: 0.76 MiB/s

Yes those numbers are correct. These are obviously far lower than even an average HDD. Oddly, even when I run DiskSpd pointed at a file on the secondary HDD, I still see reduced performance, though nothing nearly as bad as the Primary.

A few notes about the hardware:

• The Motherboard doesn't support AHCI and so it runs the SATA drives in IDE mode. (N68C-GS4 FX )
• The SATA ports are SATA II 3GB/s.
• BIOS is up to date
• Hard drives are both Western Digital Blue class. Primary is 150GB HDD, Secondary is 1TB HDD. Western Digital doesnt publish drivers and their WD Dashboard is useless.

Easy things I have tried are:

• replaced all SATA cables
• Unplugged other devices (third HDD and DVD drive)

None of this has fixed the issue. I'm trying to figure out what I should try next, based on difficulty and cost. My thoughts on what to do next:

• I have read that it could be the power supply dying, but in the same token read that power issues would likely be seen on the CPU and Memory first, since hard drives consume far less power.
• The drive could be dying, but there haven't been any data errors or system crashes during normal use. It's hard to imagine that it's dying without causing any crashes.
• I may need to upgrade the motherboard to one that supports AHCI, but from what I've read, using IDE for those drives should not result in the type of performance that I'm seeing.

So...

• Is there anything else I can do the further narrow down the issue, before taking more serious steps to replace hardware?
• Is my DiskSpd test valid?

Update: I tried a couple suggestions:

• Updating the SATA driver did not improve things.
• I ran CrystalDiskMark and got the following results:
  • SEQ 41 MB/s , 36 MB/s
  • RND 1.5 MB/s , 1.28 MB/s
• I disconnected the drive and ran the same test from another PC and all numbers were nearly the same (within 15%).

6

1 Answer

Summary

The easiest way to solve your problem is to install your Windows10 on your SSD or to buy a new SSD with 128 GB to 256 GB depending on the storage needs of additional programs but taking into account that a big RAM figure results in a big hibernation file that eats up your SSD space as well.

Missing points of your problem description (Pretty much everything)

Unfortunately you did not mention any bottleneck parameters in your posting.

1. RAM?

You did not say a word about the available RAM. You did not state if you installed Win10 in a 32 bit or a 64 bit version. If you installed for example the 32 bit version your usable RAM size would be cut to approx. 3 GByte even if you had installed much more, say 8GB.

2. Old Operating system?

You did not state which operating system you ran before where speed was not an issue.

3. Maker AND! model of the drive in question?

You spoke twice about the hard disk drive in question without specifying the model, effectively leaving us in the dark about its sustained data rate and its rotational spindle speed which determines access times. As operating system involve accessing lots of small executable files, spindle speed is important because it determines the access speed of a HDD.

4. State of health of your HDD, described by its SMART parameters?

Even if your drive heads and surfaces are perfect after 18 years I would expect a failure too due to capacitor degradation which result in lower capacity and rising ESR (electrical series resistance).

5. Use profile?

You did not say any work about your work load, the programs that you use and your habits to run them in parallel.

Typical bottleneck parameters

RAM and SSD technologies are the easiest and cheapest tuning parts.

If the RAM is too small, the operating system has to swap RAM into slower storage like HDDs or SSDs. Once you exceed a certain load barrier RAM becomes so scarce that the operating is only occupied with swapping stuff in and out. This is called "thrashing". On a system with a HDD you will notice that the drive is extremely busy without progressing in following your keyboard or mouse instructions.

When using more than 4GB of RAM, use of 64 bit version of the operating system.

Conclusion

My advice is to run the operating system on a SSD and ensuring the installation of sufficient RAM to prevent reaching a threashing situation which could wear down your SSD more quickly.

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