Stutter while copying

[Asingo]

On my WD green that I use as my storage disk when I was copying something and listening music from that HDD I got a little stutter in music. Is that normal because of file copying? I also noticed one time when SSD booted Windows I immediately enter my WD green and there was a blank screen for a couple of seconds than everything was ok (probably it needed time to read files??). Smart data are OK. Slow or failling disk?

 

[deustroop]

Are you able to reproduce the problems or are they one-time issues ? I suspect that If the stutter always happens (and the blank screen), the drive is faulty. If they are one-offs, the drive is slow and other anomalies will occur.

 

[Asingo]

Are you able to reproduce the problems or are they one-time issues ? I suspect that If the stutter always happens (and the blank screen), the drive is faulty. If they are one-offs, the drive is slow and other anomalies will occur.

Didn`t noticed constant stutter. I will try today look some film and play some music from that HDD and I will see will stutter occur. Today I copied one 20GB file from my other drive to WD green and paralllel when I wanted to opened music player that already has playlist from WD green I needed to wait around 5-10 seconds before music started.

HD tune error scan is good, all green, speed in HD tune test always the same.

Here is the picture of read test and picture when I coped that big 20gb file. Seems ok to me.

https://imgur.com/a/Lq4Mv

I am worried because my HDD already has around 28000 working hours. If it goes in prefail state I would get a message in SMART or something?

 

[deustroop]

Perhaps someone more knowledgeable about this drive will help out. It is a very slow drive as the results you post indicate. You should have a backup system in place so if it fails you are covered. I would consider it a slow drive unless something other than mere slowness happens, like corrupt files or constant stuttering. Then just replace it, try a Blue drive next time. Remember the Socratic method, Prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

 

[Elixer]

If the bus is saturated, then, yeah, it can cause lots of odd issues.

OP didn't say what their system specs are, so, could be many things.

 

[VirtualLarry]

IMHO, it's on the way out, and should be pro-actively replaced, as the budget allows. Make backups.

Edit: Just make sure that you don't have two different anti-virus or internet security-type software packages installed. If you do, they can fight each other, and bring your disk I/O performance down to nearly nothing. (Seen it firsthand, on Win7 64-bit.)

 

[Ranulf]

If the bus is saturated, then, yeah, it can cause lots of odd issues.

Yup. This could just be a normal traffic jam. If a constant issue then it might be something serious, hard to know for sure. On start up the hard drive is going to be slower than an ssd in getting up and running. You can see the same thing if you have the storage drive set to sleep after X minutes of no use. Waking it back up will have a delay where you see a blank screen, frozen, loading icon in file explorer etc. and loading files or programs.

 

[ch33zw1z]

IMXP, you need t test the disk, use the WDC lifeguard program.

and get a backup

the last time this happened to me, my disk was starting to fail.

 

[Asingo]

If the bus is saturated, then, yeah, it can cause lots of odd issues.

OP didn't say what their system specs are, so, could be many things.

What means that bus is saturated? My system spec are:

Asrock x370 K4
r5 1600
16gb ram
Win10
1ssd for system, 2 hdd for storage

IMXP, you need t test the disk, use the WDC lifeguard program.

and get a backup

the last time this happened to me, my disk was starting to fail.

I tryed WDC Lifeguard short and extended test (lasted couple of hours), everything is fine. HD sentinel (surface test), HD tune (error scan), Crystal disk info - eveything OK.

I am thinking of using this WD green for one more year than I would buy a new one (what is more quieter and reliable, WD Red or Seagate Ironwolf?) and use this for my backup. If by some chance I got an error in copying on WD green, would I be warned by SMART? In your case when your disk started to fail, did you get any warning before or it just die all of a sudden?

I listened to music and watched movies from wd green last couple of days, didn`t notice anything strange. Also copied some large files, everything was fine. Maybe is just a slow old disk.

 

[ch33zw1z]

my drive started stuttering playing music, its a WD black, so I tested it, failed diags, and RMA'd

i would not be relying on a WD green for my main disk, backups only.

 

[Elixer]

What means that bus is saturated? My system spec are:

Asrock x370 K4
r5 1600
16gb ram
Win10
1ssd for system, 2 hdd for storage

Specs are fine.
You enabled AHCI in BIOS? Also, which storage drivers are you using?
Basically, open up Task manager (hit left ctrl + left shift + ESC) and go to performance, and select the disk in question, and if that hits 100%, then you have lots of activity on it, and responses to the system get to be slower than normal.

Also, check event viewer (right click over the 'start' menu, and select event viewer) and see if you see any red "!" or yellow "?" events and report back.

 

[Asingo]

Specs are fine.
You enabled AHCI in BIOS? Also, which storage drivers are you using?
Basically, open up Task manager (hit left ctrl + left shift + ESC) and go to performance, and select the disk in question, and if that hits 100%, then you have lots of activity on it, and responses to the system get to be slower than normal.

Also, check event viewer (right click over the 'start' menu, and select event viewer) and see if you see any red "!" or yellow "?" events and report back.

Reporting

AHCI enabled

Picture of storage drivers

Perfomance tab in idle

Perfomance tab when watching 2GB .mkv movie

Perfomance tab when copying large files from WD green to other storage disk

Event viewer - there are errors but I think that are because I used someWindwos10spying app (some windwos app can`t connect to internet). I think that no error is related to storage.

 

[Elixer]

Those look perfectly normal, but, you did cut off the part where it shows the time.
That is the most important part.
If the average response time is high, and you aren't doing much, that is one sign that a HD (or SSD or...) is having issues.

AHCI is not multithreaded, and it is all going to a single core/thread.
When you have lots of activity going on, then, yes, you will notice things like you originally talked about.
When windows refreshes the desktop icons (or...), it hits all the programs on all drives, and if you have slow (or busy) drive, then you would have noticed that black screen you were talking about while it tries to load everything.
Same with the music, if the system is busy with other stuff, and the player you are using didn't cache the music, you would notice it can stall out on you for a bit of time, while the system is busy trying to do all the I/O requests.

 

[Asingo]

Those look perfectly normal, but, you did cut off the part where it shows the time.
That is the most important part.
If the average response time is high, and you aren't doing much, that is one sign that a HD (or SSD or...) is having issues.

AHCI is not multithreaded, and it is all going to a single core/thread.
When you have lots of activity going on, then, yes, you will notice things like you originally talked about.
When windows refreshes the desktop icons (or...), it hits all the programs on all drives, and if you have slow (or busy) drive, then you would have noticed that black screen you were talking about while it tries to load everything.
Same with the music, if the system is busy with other stuff, and the player you are using didn't cache the music, you would notice it can stall out on you for a bit of time, while the system is busy trying to do all the I/O requests.

You mean this? I copied from WD green to other storage disk again some large files.

Highest response time was around 17ms. What is the alarming value?

This is when I copied files from my other storage disk to WD green (WD green selected on tab).

Is this normal (493ms), this time WD green is receiving file...

You didn`t answer me will I see any error in SMART if WD green messes something while copying? I have HD sentinel always on, so it would tell me if something in Smart goes bad.

 

[Elixer]

Is this normal (493ms), this time WD green is receiving file...

I don't have that drive, so I can't comment on that one, but, usually when you see that number get into the thousands (1 sec +) that is a sign.

You didn`t answer me will I see any error in SMART if WD green messes something while copying? I have HD sentinel always on, so it would tell me if something in Smart goes bad.

You can get a SMART attribute change on lots of things, it don't have to be on copying. Usually, when you copy, and something goes wrong, it will trip the reallocated sectors, and on the next access to that sector where it tries to write to it, it will determine if it should swap it out, or keep using it.
It is good to have HD Sentinel running... but, sadly, this and any other SMART readers don't always warn you if the HD is about to die. SMART isn't smart enough to always tell you when the drive is about to die.

If I was you, I would just keep an eye on the HD, and if access times keep getting higher, I would delegate that drive to a scratch drive where you don't care if the content on it is lost.
If you do care about the content, you should be doing backups.

 

[Asingo]

I don't have that drive, so I can't comment on that one, but, usually when you see that number get into the thousands (1 sec +) that is a sign.

You can get a SMART attribute change on lots of things, it don't have to be on copying. Usually, when you copy, and something goes wrong, it will trip the reallocated sectors, and on the next access to that sector where it tries to write to it, it will determine if it should swap it out, or keep using it.
It is good to have HD Sentinel running... but, sadly, this and any other SMART readers don't always warn you if the HD is about to die. SMART isn't smart enough to always tell you when the drive is about to die.

If I was you, I would just keep an eye on the HD, and if access times keep getting higher, I would delegate that drive to a scratch drive where you don't care if the content on it is lost.
If you do care about the content, you should be doing backups.

I think that high response time is normal when disk is receiving the files. I tryed that with my other disk and it also had high response time when receiving but low when sending.

Thank you for detailed answers, I will keep an eye on wd green and save money to Seagate Ironwolf or WD red, haven`t decided yet.

 

[Charlie22911]

Has DPC latency been ruled out? I’ve experienced similar symptoms on systems with misbehaving drivers.

 

[Asingo]

Has DPC latency been ruled out? I’ve experienced similar symptoms on systems with misbehaving drivers.

I tryed today with Latency moon (other program DPC latency checker is not so compatible with win10, it will give red bars more often).

after 1 hour everything was fine (PC idle mod)

when I returned later I found this:

This seems strange to me, nothing one hour and later red bar. How is to right way to test latency, in idle mode or to turn on music, movies with surfing?

Also can someone here test those response times when copying from HDD to HDD?