What the is wrong with my HDD?

edited July 2017 in Software
Yeah.. a problem with an HDD is *not* something every computer owner wants to have / talk about.

So I have an ASUS X550ZE laptop that was purchased in August of 2016, and I thought it would be great for gaming, as it came with 12 GB of DDR3 RAM, a 1TB HDD, a quad core AMD Radeon R7 clocked up to 3.9 GHz turbo speed, just to find out 9 / 10 things I do are super slow because the HDD is at constantly 100% for no dang reason. This PC runs Windows 10 Creators update, though I'm in the Windows Insider program so.. yeah.

Even my dad tried to help me out.. and it worked for about 2 weeks, though I have Norton Antivirus installed *Not the one from 1997, a more recent one*, and it has virus definition updates, and it totally just went back to HDD usage = 100% again. I tried using CCleaner to clear the cache, fix any registry errors, etc.. and didn't help much. I tried to defrag the HDD, still, not much happened. I even went as far as *resetting the Windows 10 back to factory settings* and STILL, not working.

I don't know what to do... please help if you can ;)


PS; I can try installing Windows 7 if that might help.

Comments

  • First problem is Norton. Norton is notorious for resource hogging as well as immense disk util for its unoptimized scans. And "Latest One" only means that there is more unoptimized code inside to suck up more resources.

    Next off, check your hard drive. I've had problems with HGST drives manufactured between 2015 and 2016.
    I had to work on a computer, an HP, which was also showing similar problems with Windows 10 and an HGST drive. I also noticed the same problem on yet another HGST 1TB 7200 with Vista, though the problem eased itself on through use until it failed < 1 year after purchase. All drives were manufactured from the same timeframe.

    To me, it looks like you're experiencing the same thing I've been seeing.
  • Definitely get rid of norton. Built in Windows Defender is typically pretty good, no need for a huge resource hungry piece of shit AV to run on top of everything else.

    You might also benefit from a fresh install. Lots of OEMs like ASUS love to load their pre-installs with bloatware. You might also try running decrapifier and getting rid of some stuff.

    Also, if it were me, I'd get an SSD. HDDs as OS drives (especially in 2017) are horrible. Great for mass storage, but not for loading OS's from.
  • BlueSun wrote:
    Definitely get rid of norton. Built in Windows Defender is typically pretty good, no need for a huge resource hungry piece of shit AV to run on top of everything else.

    You might also benefit from a fresh install. Lots of OEMs like ASUS love to load their pre-installs with bloatware. You might also try running decrapifier and getting rid of some stuff.

    Also, if it were me, I'd get an SSD. HDDs as OS drives (especially in 2017) are horrible. Great for mass storage, but not for loading OS's from.

    Should I try to do a fresh install of Windows 7? *I've never really been a big fan of Windows 10 in the first place*
  • alixnator wrote:
    Should I try to do a fresh install of Windows 7?
    Yes. OEM installs of Windows usually come with loads of unnecessary bullshit preloaded. A fresh install should load only the basics. And stay off Windoze Tehn as long as possible.
  • BlueSun wrote:
    Definitely get rid of norton. Built in Windows Defender is typically pretty good, no need for a huge resource hungry piece of shit AV to run on top of everything else.

    You might also benefit from a fresh install. Lots of OEMs like ASUS love to load their pre-installs with bloatware. You might also try running decrapifier and getting rid of some stuff.

    Also, if it were me, I'd get an SSD. HDDs as OS drives (especially in 2017) are horrible. Great for mass storage, but not for loading OS's from.


    SSDs are expensive.
  • They're very worth it though.
  • Yes. Definitely install Win7. Win10 makes it absolute HELL to configure privacy settings, especially with the Creators Update. With an SSD Win7 would be even better, but I understand how costly those can get: almost $200 US Dollars for a 500GB Samsung 850 EVO-- oh my! :o

    Then again, I use Windoze ME 2.0 (aka Windoze 10) because I can't buy a Win7 license for reasons I'd rather not share here. Also because my Windows tablet came with 10 pre-installed.

    But my Mac is my daily driver, so it's really not that big of an issue. At least right now.



    Offtopic Comment: This post was typed entirely on a Nintendo DSi. No kidding. (My hand hurts a lot now.)
  • Alixnator wrote:
    BlueSun wrote:
    Definitely get rid of norton. Built in Windows Defender is typically pretty good, no need for a huge resource hungry piece of shit AV to run on top of everything else.

    You might also benefit from a fresh install. Lots of OEMs like ASUS love to load their pre-installs with bloatware. You might also try running decrapifier and getting rid of some stuff.

    Also, if it were me, I'd get an SSD. HDDs as OS drives (especially in 2017) are horrible. Great for mass storage, but not for loading OS's from.

    Should I try to do a fresh install of Windows 7? *I've never really been a big fan of Windows 10 in the first place*

    No. If anything I'd do a fresh install of Windows 10.

    10 generally performs faster than 7 and has numerous security enhancements. You'll also likely have a harder time tracking down 7 drivers for your hardware. Not to mention the hell of installing all of the updates.

    If you do go with 7 though, you should check out this guide to doing a fresh install of 7 in 2017:

    https://decentsecurity.com/windows-7-fast-update/
  • More than likely, you would just want to stick by with 10.
    I had an asus win8 laptop that I believed 7 would perform better on.

    In reality 7 performed far worse than 8, it was actually quite unstable. Touchscreen did not work right, even with right drivers and chipset drivers kept throwing off crashes.
    So it would be better to just stick by with 10, that's what your laptop was designed for, and that's what the drivers are likely for.

    But if your drive is failing, a clean install won't help in the long run and you'll probably end up losing all your data.
  • I would wipe the drive and install a fresh copy of Windows 10. My HP Envy did something very similar. Don't use Norton, and as long as you tweak the settings some, Windows 10 will fun fine on anything, even the 1TB HGST drive in my HP Envy (I hate that drive with a burning passion because it is so slow.), but look into an SSD upgrade.
  • I will be honest with everyone here, most new computers are sold with drives from a manufacture called HGST. These drives are low-cost drives made in Japan, and they are nothing but junk 95% of the time. As someone who works on laptops on a daily basis, i have a stack of these drives all have failed within 3 months or the person owning the laptop, sure they could have just got a replacement from the manufacture, but i always advise against it.

    If anything look into a SATA Hybrid drive, alot faster, better performance, and will last 10x as long . And as for re-installing Windows 10, go to microsofts website and just download the ISO from there and install it, because you wont need a product key as its embedded into the BIOS, that way you dont have the junk from the pc manufacture.
  • >guykramer

    Thank god I'm not the only computer specialist(and at the same time oh no) who has seen a fair share of HGST issues.
    You mind telling me the manufacture date of your dead drives?
  • I don't know about their laptop drives, but HGST are not low budget crap drives... they have some of the lowest failure rates:

    https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-dri ... s-q1-2017/

    And as for Hybrid drives, they're crap... I have one in my old laptop and there's practically no noticeable performance difference... if you're gonna spend the money, go full SSD.
  • Well, 70% of the laptops I've received with the "my laptop won't start" have been HGST. In addition, 40% of the laptops I've received for "this laptop is slow" contained HGST. In addition, he only measured Desktop drives.

    Here's a reddit topic:
    https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comme ... _failures/
    As well as yet another computer repair site:
    http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/problems-wi ... 00-series/

    It appears as though their slim drives are unreliable, but desktop drives are solid.

    The Smart stats, which the site relies on for a large portion of their stats, does not typically work right with HGST. The HGST drives tend to suffer random catastrophic failures without warning. Here are numbers that are consistant with HGST failures. A large number of errors just appear randomly and the drive is unusable.

    Ignore the hard drive title. Samsung decided to name their sata cable that, and is what I'm using.
    Whtqv6e.png

    And this is the drive:
    vURUolL.jpg
    NOT made in Japan, made in China.

    Don't know why you got a hybrid drive. Only the first few gigs are solid-state, everything else is spinny. So there won't be any real difference for files on the platters.
  • According to the reddit thread, it's just a bad batch of 2.5" drives. Any drive manufacturer can have a bad batch, that's no reason to automatically assume every HGST drive will fail.
  • And you didn't read the comments or the second article?

    At this point I'm going to assume it isn't just a "bad batch." The failed manufacture dates can range from as seen in pic of Sep2014 thru drives I have seen manufactured mid 2015.
    The drives I get beyond those dates have not failed, but were sent for "I think I have a virus. My computer is excruciatingly slow," when the client's computer was clean with little startup programs.
    Throughout the former period, multiple batches can be manufactured and shipped out.
    This is why I wanted to see the dates of the drives @guykramer has, to produce additional evidence whether it is a specific batch or widespread across multiples.

    Yes, there will always be bad hard drives in batches, and yes there will be bad batches.
    However, this assumption that most HGST drives will fail is based on what I have seen: most computers being sent to me for repair of boot problems contained HGST drives of varying manufacture dates typically in the Q4 2014 thru Q3 2015 range.
    You then factor it will take generally half a year to a full year for a wholesaled drive to enter an OEM computer post manufacture, and computers from 2015 thru mid 2016 may be affected.
    Which happens to fall into OP's laptop timeframe.
  • You're still describing effectively a bad batch of hard drives and my point is a bad batch does not equate to most drives from that manufacturer being bad unless the bulk of their hard drives were made during the bad batch period, and since HGST isn't some brand new manufacturer, that certainly is not the case.

    As for the "I think I have a virus. My computer is excruciatingly slow," thing... that could easily be explained by the fact that 5400 RPM mechanical laptop drives ARE excruciatingly slow. Especially compared to even the cheapest piece of shit SSD.
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