Hard disk troubleshooting

[Lief Siddhe]

I'm at my wits end here so I need the FHC haxxorz to step in with an advice or two

About a month ago my D hard disk partition (not an SSD, used for audio/video/file storage and games) has started... acting funny.

The thing that drives me mad is that this happened while I wasn't even home and wasn't using the computer for a week. It was working fine when I left, when I came back and turned it on it was all fucked up.

Audio and video in various games intros and cutscenes stutters. Sometimes it won't even load up a game. Not only that, but when I look in File Explorer where it shows Recently Used Files - the files it shows from that disk often have broken icons. Music is not shown with a VLC media player icon, pictures don't have those little previews as icons. Occasionally the My Computer doesn't even show my D disk at all - it only says I have a C: disk.

I've run every possible test and disk maintenance within Windows, from defragmenting to reformatting to CHKDSK etc etc and everything shows that the hard disk is "fine". Unplugged and disabled the disk, plugged it back in, reinstalled Windows, nothing seemed to help. Even ran a memtest etc. All tests report no problems whatsoever.

The strangest thing is that the gameplay itself doesn't seem to be affected, once I'm in a game there's no noticeable frame drops or anything. But as soon as a cutscene or some sort of audio/video thingy pops up (like, new quest description and icon on the side of the screen) within gameplay it shits itself and starts to stutter.

Now, is this simply a case of "your hard disk is about to dead itself, get a new SSD you pleb" or can you recommend some other programs that will allow me to run an indepth scan of the disk in question to see what the hell is going on?

Even better, any programs that would allow me to run a megatest of everything would be welcome

[Spartan Dax]

Broken icons and stutters, yeah I've had that problem in the past. Best advice I have for you is to change SATA cable and maybe the port while you're at it.

[Malcanis]

Maybe make sure that the SATA cable isn't under any stress or torsion as well.

[Lief Siddhe]

Yeah, I changed the SATA cable for another one but it doesn't seem to be the cause.

Using Battlefleet Gothic as an example that I'm currently using to test it:

When I start the game, it will stay in Background Processes for a good minute or two before it actually starts.

Once the intro movie starts, the video and audio run good for three seconds, then just freeze half a second, run another two three seconds, freeze half a second, and with time the video and subtitles desync more and more from the audio.

Then as the tutorial begins, you're supposed to learn to step by step use zoom, move map, issue attack orders etc etc. The movement etc itself work fine BUT every time I fulfill an objective and another pop-up objective appears, the game freezes for 3-5 seconds while loading it in, then I can continue playing until the next tutorial objective pops up then the freeze happens again.

All my driver are updated.

I do seem to remember there was some sort of Windows update I ran when I came back... Can't say if that was the culprit. I dunno. God I hate electronics.

[walrus]

could be an issue with the SATA controller, or the port. Have you tried sticking the cable into a different port?

[Cosmin]

Get a new drive and teracopy everything over. Worst case scenario you will have another HDD available in your PC, chances are the current drive is at the end of its life. I've had a couple Seagates with a similar presentation - random issues but they seemed "fine" when running diagnostic tools on them then suddenly completely ded.

[Mashie Saldana]

What is the SMART data for the disk reporting?

Can you try the disk in a different computer?

[Lief Siddhe]

Well, it ended up being the old hard disk. I guess these were the first stages of it dying, it just becoming laggy and slow and unresponsive despite all reports showing ok.

Bought a new SSD. Plugged it into same SATA cable, same slot. Works as new

[tulip]

Well, it ended up being the old hard disk. I guess these were the first stages of it dying, it just becoming laggy and slow and unresponsive despite all reports showing ok.

Bought a new SSD. Plugged it into same SATA cable, same slot. Works as new

Nice that it failed gradually, giving you time to save data and buy a replacement. Beats the "time to buy a new hard drive, to store all that data that you used to have" experience.

[Lief Siddhe]

Yeah, my 'good luck' basically came down to using that disk for games (easily reinstalled) and mostly video (that i mostly already watched) and music (that I also keep on my laptop) and some pictures (that are mostly in a cloud storage and I remember where I was while talking them so I don't actually need to look at again)

Don't trust electrical shit one bit, folks, pardon the pun. Keep the ole grey cells working to remember your passwords and shit

[Spartan Dax]

Don't trust electrical shit one bit, folks, pardon the pun. Keep the ole grey cells working to remember your passwords and shit

Passwords gets saved on the piece of paper next to my monitor. My grey matter is way to deteriorated to store those in a reliable manner.