HDD Extremly slow but behaving like an SSD?

[RatKing]

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]

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

Replace your cable

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

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

 

[Shrek]

Looks like it may be a shingled drive

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

Looks like it may be a shingled drive

It's easy to ponder about that, LOL.

 

[Mussels]

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)

 

[newtekie1]

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.

 

[ThaiTaffy]

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.

 

[Mussels]

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

 

[ThaiTaffy]

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.

 

[Mussels]

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

 

[ThaiTaffy]

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.

 

[eidairaman1]

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

 

[ThaiTaffy]

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.

 

[RatKing]

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

 

[ThaiTaffy]

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.

 

[RatKing]

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

 

[Shrek]

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).

 

[ThaiTaffy]

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.

 

[RatKing]

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

 

[ThaiTaffy]

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

 

[RatKing]

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 ?

 

[ThaiTaffy]

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

 

[RatKing]

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

 

[eidairaman1]

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.

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