Hard disk performance question

Windows 10 Pro - version 10.0.19043 Build 19043

I have a 1Tb Western Digital HDD attached to my PC as a second drive. Recently, I have noticed that the PC will go inactive for a few seconds. I can still use the mouse, but clicking task bar icons or buttons on windows doesn't do anything. After a couple or three seconds, the PC comes back to life again. Same happens when typing, it can stop showing the characters, then after a few seconds, I see the characters appear, usually one at a time, as if I were typing them slowly now.

I don't know if this is the cause, but (again only recently) I have noticed that when I use File Explorer to navigate this HDD, it will often say "Working on it..." for a few seconds before showing me the files in a folder. This does not seem to depend on the number of files, I see this with folders with only a handful of folders.

I have Carbonite running, which is monitoring some folders on this disk, but I tried pausing that, and it didn't make any difference, so I don't think that is the cause.

I ran chkdsk, and will paste in the results below. I checked the for fragmentation, but Windows reports it as 0% fragmented.

You can see my system spec (from Speccy) here.

Anyone any ideas? Thanks

Here is the output from chkdsk...

Code:

Chkdsk was executed in scan mode on a volume snapshot.  


Checking file system on D:
Volume label is Data.


Stage 1: Examining basic file system structure ...
  776704 file records processed.                                                         File verification completed.
 Phase duration (File record verification): 7.08 seconds.
  501 large file records processed.                                     Phase duration (Orphan file record recovery): 0.00 milliseconds.
  0 bad file records processed.                                       Phase duration (Bad file record checking): 1.43 milliseconds.


Stage 2: Examining file name linkage ...
  48530 reparse records processed.                                         926290 index entries processed.                                                        Index verification completed.
 Phase duration (Index verification): 3.37 minutes.


 Phase duration (Orphan reconnection): 600.32 milliseconds.


 Phase duration (Orphan recovery to lost and found): 18.31 milliseconds.
  48530 reparse records processed.                                        Phase duration (Reparse point and Object ID verification): 114.43 milliseconds.


Stage 3: Examining security descriptors ...
Security descriptor verification completed.
 Phase duration (Security descriptor verification): 12.18 milliseconds.
  74794 data files processed.                                             Phase duration (Data attribute verification): 2.13 milliseconds.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
  40165112 USN bytes processed.                                                            Usn Journal verification completed.
 Phase duration (USN journal verification): 1.81 seconds.


Windows has scanned the file system and found no problems.
No further action is required.


 976735868 KB total disk space.
 552259864 KB in 596711 files.
    266156 KB in 74795 indexes.
    912112 KB in use by the system.
     65536 KB occupied by the log file.
 423297736 KB available on disk.


      4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
 244183967 total allocation units on disk.
 105824434 allocation units available on disk.
Total duration: 3.53 minutes (212256 ms).


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




Stage 1: Examining basic file system structure ...


Stage 2: Examining file name linkage ...


Stage 3: Examining security descriptors ...

Hi,

It's only because your drive is waking up, If you've pinned stuff from it on your taskbar it could appear frozen for the moment the drive spins up. or could make the whole shell appears frozen for an instant.

If your drive is a SATA Drive you can configure power management to never turn off hard disk...

For USB drives these a couple solutions in this thread.

External Drive Issues

MaloK said:

Hi,

Hello, thanks for the quick reply.

MaloK said:

It's only because your drive is waking up, If you've pinned stuff from it on your taskbar it could appear frozen for the moment the drive spins up. or could make the whole shell appears frozen for an instant.

The only thing is, it's not just the first time I access the drive. For example, I just went into a folder, and after it hard shown me the files, went back up a folder, and immediately went back in to the same folder. It tool about 9 seconds to show me 36 mp3 files.
Pause for thought. Ah, I think I found the issue with File Explorer. It's only with mp3 files, presumably as it has to read the meta data. I just tried it for some non-music folders, and it showed me the files quite quickly.

So, it looks like the disk is fine, although why it takes so long to read mp3 file meta data is beyond me, as it never did this before. I guess I'll have to open a new thread about the general system freezes. Looks like the HDD isn't to blame.
Thanks again.

You can use process monitor to discover what program is reading the files.

@Ghot, as you can see from my reply just now, I don't think it's the HDD at all.

Having said that, when I went into the CrystalDiskInfo folder, it also paused for a few seconds. However, that could equally be due to whatever else is slowing up my machine.

Thanks for the link, that's a useful utility. Here's a screenshot in case it shows anything...



Thanks again.