Is my HDD dying?

[Kaz Aanh]

Hey there

 

Is there anyone know knows about PCs? I need a little help with diagnostics.

 

I've recently had problem with sudden drop of FPS in games. Its nearly unplayable for me.

 

- In League of Legends my FPS is stable in the beginning but later it just gets worse ( Im losing like 20-30 fps )

- In Skyrim I have total FPS loss with stutters

 

At first I've thought cleaning PC from dusts will help , nope that didn't. Scanning for malware/adwares/rootkits and other by various programms didn't helped at all.

It revealed some PUPs and even a trojan but removing them did nothing.

 

Even some scanner found a trojan in my windows folder 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The problem is that its a free version can't delete it. So how should I deal with it? Will System Repair ( boot'ed from Windows CD )  overwrite it without any problems?

 

- I did several temperature checks and my PC isn't overheating 

- I've updated my drivers

 

The worst thing is that I have two OS , Win7 and XP and on both systems I'm experiencing these issues ( with FPS drops in games ).

 

So I ran a CrystalDiskInfo to check my HDD health status and . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

Does it means my HDD is dying ? 

Could this lead to my FPS problems in games ?

 

Iam really glad for any help.

[Guest corespore]

According to your crystaldisk you got nearly 27,000 hours out of that HDD, that's three years continuous run time which translated to around five years of actual time. The average failure rate for a HDD disk after three years runtime is about 20%. The first thing to start breaking down in  HDD is the sector connections, which is what appears to be happening to your HDD, it appears your HDD had fallen into that 20% bracket. So yes, I'm sad to say most likely your HDD is dying, The good news is that the costs of 500gig HDD drives have really come down over the past few years, a stock one runs around 30 (US) and a good quality one still costs less than 50. 

 EDIT: According to several consumer reviews, your HDD lasts an average of five years, it also says if the drive starts making and clicking noises it's close to complete failure. I would                  backup your data to disk or USB to be on the safeside. 

[Kaz Aanh]

Thank you very much for these usefull informations.

 

Well my HDD was always running "loudly" so it was hard for me to notice any failures until FPS in games started to be very low.

[Slammer64]

As for the trojan, get a copy of Malwarebytes, it's free and it'll remove it.

[D_ManXX2]

be careful witch spyware removal your using, not all of them are trustworthy and some are spyware themselves.

[Rayblue]

 

 

 

Oh, shit, you're pretty screwed there. It's not your hard disk that's dying, your drive is infected.

 

You have to remove it immediately. Like now.

 

http://www.pcworld.com/article/243818/how_to_remove_malware_from_your_windows_pc.html

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/security/3318759/get-rid-of-malware-from-pc/

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/how-to-remove-a-trojan-virus-worm-or-malware/ <-- best available information

http://www.malwarebytes.org/

[Guest corespore]

 

 

 

Oh, shit, you're pretty screwed there. It's not your hard disk that's dying, your drive is infected.

 

You have to remove it immediately. Like now.

 

http://www.pcworld.com/article/243818/how_to_remove_malware_from_your_windows_pc.html

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/security/3318759/get-rid-of-malware-from-pc/

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/how-to-remove-a-trojan-virus-worm-or-malware/ <-- best available information

http://www.malwarebytes.org/

They got a point. You won't be able to tell the real condition of your HDD until that bug is removed from your PC. Lord only knows what's going to happen to you computer when whatever that trogan is carrying decided to activate. Hopefully i was wrong and cleaning that up will fix any performance issues. But you'll have to remove that virus before you will know for sure. 

[Captain Cobra]

I'd just get a new one anyways.

[vandals01]

While there is a possibility of dying HDD, but that doesn't always lead to FPS drop.

 

In fact dying HDD is more associated with:

1. Windows / program failed to Load

2. Blue Screen of Death

3. File In-accessible

4. Strange sound coming from HDD

 

The first thing I would do is back-up everything then do a Format + re-install windows.  This would eliminate any software related possibilities like Virus / Trojan / Adware etc.

 

Should the problem persist, then you know it would definitely be hardware.

 

As for FPS, its more of a Graphic card issue but by no mean exclusive.  Friends of mine had similar problem and it turns out to be his i5 750's memory controller were about to die.  To find out which hardware component, we do have a few software available like memtest / software that reads S.M.A.R.T data and so forth, but they doesn't always gives the correct answer.

 

To help us pin down the problem, there's nothing better than swap test.

 

Source: Personal experience (Assemble PC since 1999)

[Kamen Rider Kuuga]

If you're going to get a new one, spring for a solid state drive on top of it for your OS and whatever other programs that don't involve a lot of file writing.

[Guest corespore]

If you're going to get a new one, spring for a solid state drive on top of it for your OS and whatever other programs that don't involve a lot of file writing.

Thats what im doing with this next upcoming tax refund. After seeing benchmark tests of how quickly a SSD can run Skyrim it was without a doubt going to be my next PC purchase.

[Kaz Aanh]

So I've ordered myself a brand new SEAGATE Barracuda 1TB ST100DM003 and before it will arrive I have borrowed a HDD from my friend to find IF IT was really a HDD issues.

 

After installing a fresh OS yes my games got a slight boost in FPS but I wasn't happy with that.

 

FPS were stable 28-35 but without any slowdowns or stutters but it felt like PC was eating 20 FPS,  so instead of stable 50 I get 30.

 

 

 

 

Here is a temp. of my CPU while in idle :

 

 

And while working with browsers/other small programs ( eg: chrome/youtube/winamp/steam if its downloads/updates )

 

 

So I think it looks pretty bad . . . right ? 

 

I have removed my PC side frames becouse of HDD replacement . I'll reapply them when my new HDD arrives ( probably tomorrow ).

 

 

 

 

GPU temp was okay I think it varied from 40-55 , GPU usage was almost at 100% ( 92% + ). In games of course. While in idle it was at 38-42.

I don't know how to post log from MSI afterburner sadly.

 

I did memtest in bios and it shown that my RAMs are working good without any errors.

 

I'll check meanwhile if my CPU fan even works . . . becouse it looks like it don't.

 

 

@Well it runs but kinda slow, cables from my new Power Supplly are covering fans a bit uhhh.

 

I don't feel any airflow there either. Just my GPU fan works like madness.

 

 

Here is a image log showing my entire PC temps currently.

 

 

 

 

 

[vandals01]

Ar Ha!! Nvidia Graphic Card, GTS 450, League of Legends...

 

I have reasons to believe this is a problem with your graphic card Driver!!!

 

Friend of mine (using GTX 550 Ti), had problems with massive FPS drop (to 1x) a few weeks ago with League of Legend.

It was fine for the first game or couple of games, then the Frame rates just falls down the slope.

On his Dual Monitor setup, it even reports the driver were crashed and system recovered.

 

Then on Tuesday or yesterday (29/1/2014), Nvidia released a new driver and fixed a number of these issues.

I'm not sure if it brings the FPS back to the 60s, but at least the massive drop was gone.

 

(People always says Nvidia Driver were better then AMD and I have my reasons to disagree).

[Kaz Aanh]

Oh thats a handy info but still my CPU overheates. 

 

This time I've tried to speed up CPU fans without any interesting results.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is temp while playing a Vindictus/Mabinogi Heroes ( FPS was 20-30 ), temp was raising even up to 80.

 

Someone told there is something like "thermal paste " . Why I didn't knew about this before ? Im not a tech guy but still . . . a 6 years old paste may be a big problem. I bet its dried like a Sahara desert.

 

Also its time to clean properly a radiator, I'll post results tomorrow if it helped . . .

[Guest corespore]

When your remove the heatsink on the CPU the thermal paste is the white paste between the top of the CPU and the bottom of the heatsink. Its a silicon based compound the help conduct heat from the CPU and transfer it to the heatsink (radiator). If it is dry and crumbles it would need to be replaced, it should be mostly the consistency of smooth peanut butter. You can purchase a tube of heatsink compound (thermal paste) at any radio shack store for about three bucks. 

 

 

 

[vandals01]

Heat doesn't affect the performance of you PC

 

If you over-heat the CPU, it will shut down the entire system.  But before it hits that shut down point, performance wise is no different from 30C to 70C.

The only benefit you gain from a cooler CPU is:

1. Allowing you to overclock even further - if you are into over-clocking that is.

2. Preserve the life span of your CPU - cooler components lives longer than hot components.  It makes degrading slower.

 

For graphic card, if you over-heat by crazy number, it will also shut down.  But before that, you can also get snowflake / black screen

But still, performance will the same at 30C to 80C.  This is because performance on graphic card is determined by GPU / VRAM's Clock rate.  And those do not change according to temperature.

Just like CPU, you'll want your Graphic card to stay cool because:

1. It allows you to change the Clock rate to achieve more FPS.  Not so much for Nvidia's card because they are very much fixed for Nvidia's cards, but for AMD, CCC does allow you to select higher clock speed.

2. Lives longer.

[Kaz Aanh]

Due to heat increase CPU is underclocking , thus I experience a lower perfomance ( thats what I think heh).

 

I did this thing with a thermal paste cleaning/replacing + radiator cleaning. It didn't helped at all sadly.

 

Temperature overall should be 15 degrees lower but that doesn't make sense why it is overheating right now. In stress I get 70-80 ,at idle 45-55.

If I lauched a Skyrim with ENB it could explode or just flew away becouse fans are working so fast.

 

So again no Idea what causes this. Maybe Its overclocked? I don't think viruses are capable of doing this. . . Or maybe I'm missing some critical drivers.

 

But I did a fresh OS installation on the borrowed HDD. . .

[Guest Ragna_Rok]

what about your cpu-usage? if your cpu still does the job, old or not, so when its still working on other programs at full speed, and only the games are fucked up, i place my bet on either graphiccard saying "fuck you" or the driver got messed up.

 

reinstall the graphiccards driver and see if that fixes the issue. if it doesnt, i would set the updates to "not without my permission" and install the driver-version BEFORE THAT LAST UPDATE. maybe they fucked it up, happens for older cards.

 

just my 2 cents.

 

ps: before my old computer harddisk broke it ran about 10 years without any repairs. amount of sectors that broke / became unusable  were in total like 2gb of 250 gb at the end. guess i was quite lucky

[Guest corespore]

Due to heat increase CPU is underclocking , thus I experience a lower perfomance ( thats what I think heh).

 

I did this thing with a thermal paste cleaning/replacing + radiator cleaning. It didn't helped at all sadly.

 

Temperature overall should be 15 degrees lower but that doesn't make sense why it is overheating right now. In stress I get 70-80 ,at idle 45-55.

If I lauched a Skyrim with ENB it could explode or just flew away becouse fans are working so fast.

 

So again no Idea what causes this. Maybe Its overclocked? I don't think viruses are capable of doing this. . . Or maybe I'm missing some critical drivers.

 

But I did a fresh OS installation on the borrowed HDD. . .

Usually with issues like this you have to try several solutions to find the one that is the problem. Now that you know it isn't a malfunction with the cooling system that narrows down the possible problems. It appears all signs point to the virus infection. Depending on what type it is it could cause several load issues on your PC, i would focus on getting rid of that next. Afterward, a driver update couldn't hurt.

But keep an eye on your HDD drive, if it starts making any clicking noises you need to shut it down and backup any important data. 

[Kaz Aanh]

Oh I was thinking about :

 

- downgrading my GPU drivers to some "ancient"  ( from 334 to 314 )

- BIOS upgrade? Could bios get damaged by a virus? Afaik bios is stored in some little chip but again its a risky thing if you are updating . PC may won't boot up .

- underclocking and undervolting mu CPU could be the best solution I think

Maybe my CPU is using too much power, the last one ( Power Supply ) was damaged and a new one 650w could make these problems.

- . . . CPU on death bed ? I don't know how long CPU's lives but this one is 6 years old.

- or motherboard is damaged.

 

Heh new HDD should have arrived today but ( screw that e-shop and their courier, thats the last thing I've bought from them ).

 

And thank you for all the replies.

[Guest Ragna_Rok]

good luck, buddy ... ... time for bed, exams getting again closer...

[Guest corespore]

You'll get it fixed just don't give up

[Mana Yakushima]

I can't for the life of me find a straight answer to the "reallocated sectors count", besides this which seems to make sense, but again, I'm not an expert:

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1480430

 

SMART uses a normalised system, so a value of 100 for reallocated sectors actually means there are very few bad, or even zero. As more bad sectors develop, the value will count downwards. Once it passes the threshold the drive reports itself failed.

 

 

 

And this:

 

The raw value usually indicates the actual number of reallocated sectors.

 

 

 

The Current, Worst and Threshold figures are "normalised" values that can be thought of as health percentages. If a drive has no bad sectors, then it gets a score of 100. As defects begin to develop, then the health score falls. When the attribute value falls below the threshold, the drive is considered to have failed SMART.

 

Different brands and models will have different numbers of spare sectors. For example, some WD models only allow about 500 reallocations before the drive is considered to have failed, while some Seagate models allow 2500. This figure may also depend on the capacity of the drive. For example, a 3TB drive may allow for 3 times as many bad sectors as a 1TB drive. In a typical Seagate model, a drive may lose 1 point from its Current value for every 40 bad sectors. In such a case, a drive with a Current value of 97 will have at least 120 bad sectors.

 

 

 

So the raw value is the actual number of reallocated sectors, but even then, 8 sectors? For a HDD that seems minuscule. It all seems really convoluted, and my brain hurts.

 

Hell, look at my numbers, using that same program:

 

LOL! Wow! 38k hours! I almost feel like a BOSS.

 

Even then I haven't had any obvious issues with either of them, besides the read/write speed being slower than the newer drives, I've had no issues. No clicking or audible errors, no windows-related HDD errors, nothing. Actually the last THREE drives I've bought haven't lasted nearly as long.

 

edit: Yep, according to the SMART website, 1 sector = 512bytes, or 4096, depending on how you formatted it. Personally, I KNOW mine is in 512 bytes so 512x7= 3584 bytes (0.003417969mb), out of 79 billion bytes ( 76214.99609375mb)of HDD space. I think I'm doing this correctly...?

 

Even then, for a bigger hard drive? That number is seemingly even more insignificant.

[legendarytoyou]

Okay the community beat me to the punch but yah your CrystalDiskData shows your HDD is starting to falter.  Get what vital information you can (via external HDD, large Jump Drive or Cloud it) and get a new one.  My suggestion would be the Western Digital 1 terabyte version, IntelliPower

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136941

 

If you want something with more space I would suggest the 3 terabyte 7200RPM

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236354

 

If you're looking to spare no expense I would look to maybe investing in a SSD (solid state drive).  Expensive but with no moving parts has the potential to be a long lived hard drive.  Personally the best on the market is the SAMSUNG 840

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147251

 

With a price tag of $539.00 though you're looking at a heavy investment but one that can potentially make older HDD's obsolete.  If you want to stick to traditional HDD I would suggest staying with something above 7200RPMs or at least Intellipower.  Anything less and you'll have slow down framerate problems.  To extend the life of a new HDD make sure to do a Disk defrag every month if possible, keep it free of malware and getting it it's own heatsink is not a bad idea either.  Same goes for the SSD's to; they do have a tendency to run hot.  Also bear in mind that most SSD's are made for laptops however there are a few made for desktop as well.

[Rayblue]

 

I was surprised that you're still using a very old 80gb, and it's IDE.

 

It is really necessary you have to pick up drives for both speed, reliability and capacity.

 

 

---------------------

BTW, it's been cautioned that you cannot defrag an SSD drive. If you are planning to buy an SSD drive, as this is still very much new and expensive storage technology, some learning is much needed before installing and using SSD drives.