Sloooooooooow HDD after upgrade

After installing my new Geforce 970 GTX I could no longer start Lightroom. Then I noticed that my main data HDD was painfully slow, so slow that everytime I click to open a folder it takes nearly 5 minutes to open it and the green bar constantly looks like a search is underway. It is a 4GB HGST drive.

So I put my system back to how it was. HDD still completely unusable, but another one is also slower but not as slow. I am perplexed? I have placed the main disk in a USB cradle and it seems to be working normally (at USB speed of course). I am copying a few things just incase.

PSU is a modular 520W, should handle the card, system and then some.

Anybody please have any ideas?

Maybe its on its last legs and about to die.

My initial thought was that. But I have two 4GB drives and both slowed down. Now that I have used them, opened up folder in explorer and such, they seem to be speeding up again. Will leave it tonight and take another look tomorrow. Thanks.

Are you sure your system wasn't just doing a complete search indexing?

E.J. Peiker wrote:Are you sure your system wasn't just doing a complete search indexing?

No idea. Why would it suddenly decide to do that after a new graphics card? Windows 8.1 might be the death of me.... but I refuse to install 10

Any time Windows senses any change at all in anything it does a Search Index. It would explain why it was initially really slow and then suddenly went back to normal speed. You can turn off search indexing by typing services.msc into the run box and then finding Windows search, right clicking on it and disabling it. Of course any searches will be much slower in the future. In general in an HD system I turn it off, in an SSD system I leave it on.

Ok, will give that a go thanks. It is still slow as it just took 2 minutes to import three Raws into LR.

Here are a few questions that might lead to narrowing in on the source of whatever changed.

How are these data drives connected to the system? You make reference in the OP to putting the drive in an external USB cradle at one point. In normal use, are the drives connected externally over USB 3 (or something else?), or internally via motherboard SATA ports (or something else?). Is there any reason to believe something in the hardware got impacted accidentally during the video card installation?

Is it the case that the drives are super slow? Or are they being hammered by constant access from something like the search indexing issue E.J. mentions? If you set the Windows performance monitor tool to show disk I/O stats, does it show a huge hit to the drives before, during or after trying to run LR?

Are the affected storage drives heavily fragmented, and in need of defragmentation? Check the info reported by the WIndows defragmentation tool's analysis.

Are the drives throwing out a lot of SMART errors? Check with a disk SMART status tool like SpeedFan or Crystal Disk Info.

2 minutes is a whole different level of slow - that's like USB 1 speeds. Royce has given you some great things to go try...

OK, lots to do. The drive, my main 4TB, is an internal SATA. In the defrag stats it is 0% fragmented and Seatools find no errors in the quick check. Will need to run overnight for intensive check.

The slowness is not necessarily LR, just trying to navigate into folders in Explorer is like doing so over a dial up modem.

The only change to the SATA drives I did have plugged in 3x HDD and 1xSSD and DVD writer. My power cable had not arrived so I diverted power from 2 HDDs and the DVD to run the card. Sata cables were also removed from the disks not in use. I have done this before when installing new disks and never seen a hit?

Should you not be out shooting awsome landscapes EJ? or waiting for those stunning lights tonight?

E.J. Peiker wrote:Any time Windows senses any change at all in anything it does a Search Index.  It would explain why it was initially really slow and then suddenly went back to normal speed.  You can turn off search indexing by typing services.msc into the run box and then finding Windows search, right clicking on it and disabling it.  Of course any searches will be much slower in the future.  In general in an HD system I turn it off, in an SSD system I leave it on.

Would turning this off affect my Windows drive which is SSD?

Okay, if it's an internal drive connected to SATA on the motherboard and is slow in all kinds of operations, then potentially something at the device driver or BIOS level has been inadvertently munched. Check your motherboard firmware and/or SATA controller firmware and see if it's current; sometimes a firmware update helps with certain issues.

What physical SATA port is the 4TB drive plugged into? Is it the same port as before? Are you using the same SATA cable as before? Next, check the BIOS settings for the drive and SATA ports in question. How are they configured? Is AHCI mode enabled or not?

Another thing that hasn't been mentioned is an anti virus program gone rogue and virus checking every file every time it's accessed or worse, an actual system virus. Make sure you do a complete scan and also a malware check. It is possible that the slow down is being caused by ransomware and at some point you could get a pop-up demanding payment to unlock your drive. Just so many possibilities.

OK, will leave the AVM to run overnight! :0

Royce, I have used two different cables in differing ports. I will check for viruses over nighas that is worst case I think. Will check the firmware version tomorrow.

Cheers guys!

Also run Malwarebytes.

E.J. Peiker wrote:Also run Malwarebytes.

Will download tonight. Only thing AVG found was "Crack".

Thanks again.

AVG isn't particularly effective at Malware.

Royce Howland wrote:Okay, if it's an internal drive connected to SATA on the motherboard and is slow in all kinds of operations, then potentially something at the device driver or BIOS level has been inadvertently munched. Check your motherboard firmware and/or SATA controller firmware and see if it's current; sometimes a firmware update helps with certain issues.

What physical SATA port is the 4TB drive plugged into? Is it the same port as before? Are you using the same SATA cable as before? Next, check the BIOS settings for the drive and SATA ports in question. How are they configured? Is AHCI mode enabled or not?

Would this mean BIOS version? Is there risk involved with BIOS upgrade?

I have updated the windows SATA drivers.

Malwarebytes found a few problems and removed them.

Drive is still awful slow. Seatool tells me it passes a SMART test as does the Samsung tool I installed along with the SSD on building the PC.

My other 4GB drive (Seagate) seems to be doing the same.

Yes, of course there's always risk in upgrading anything. We presume the upgrade would fix things but it might introduce problems as well. Check the release notes of the update version (if any) to see what has changed, and whether that sounds relevant to the issue(s) going on. Also check the release date; if it's brand new (like yesterday), maybe hold off. If it has been out for awhile it's probably low risk because that means there has been time to detect and correct problems.

You might also have other motherboard firmware updates to look at, for other chipsets or controllers. Check the web site for your motherboard manufacturer.

More likely, it's not an issue with the BIOS version or other firmware you're running if the drives were working fine before the video card upgrade. So for the moment perhaps move on to the other questions I asked above, re: how the SATA ports and drives are configured within the BIOS settings.

OK thank you Royce, what should I be checking exactly?