CIPWTTKT&GC 0x31 - New year, new thread - Hardware & Software

It'll abort, and should spew information about bad sectors as it encounters them. You can force Clonezilla to power through it though, which can be nice if you're trying to save data on a dying drive.

So if anyone is interested the solution was removing the CPU fan from the big heatsink and putting it on the supermicro 1U heatsink. Fits perfectly. The legs that put pressure on the heatsink to stay in place work but don't clip on. Still, doesn't come off and doesn't vibrate. So now I'm out a few hundred dollars for trying to remove the backplates on a few motherboards. Lesson learned. Luckily, ebay is a thing and you can buy these cheap sometimes.

Update. Brute forced it and the drive cloned just fine. Satisfied customer is now enjoying an SSD vs a HDD that was slowly dying.

Last time I switched from a slowly dying hard drive I just copied everything using explorer

This was just 1 drive and I had to be super careful about it considering the age and how many bad sectors it actually spewed up in the console as it was cloning. It did take 2 and a half hours to do a 500GB drive. Really didn't feel like re-installing the OS and importing the chrome profile physically(it wasn't syncing and refused to sync) and having to save photos that maybe on the dead part of the drive, so the issue could still be there regardless. Benefits to me cloning. We now have a point of reference if in case shit goes south. Hoping it doesn't though. It was an 860 Pro and PBTech gave us a sweet deal on warranty cause rep. It's what I should have done when I got my 860 pro in m.2 but now it's just another games drive and it's only for games that I really play now(so FFXIV and RPCS3).

Did someone mention hard drives and age? https://i.imgur.com/8q0Tv6N.png She's soon to hit 11 years power on time guys, she's still going!

Stop tempting fate.

Ah, a fellow Spinpoint user. Best hard drive ever.

Just hit 70k hours a few days ago on my Spinpoint F1 HD103UJ 1TB. Good shit.

My PC is having more and more issues as of late, mostly with things like games stuttering/occasionally freezing, increased loading times, task bar taking ages to load up, PC sometimes going unresponsive and so on. It's maybe 4 or 5 years old, and I'm looking for either a replacement or at least upgrading some of the components. It's an Acer Predator G3-710, and specs are: System Model: Predator G3-710 BIOS: R01-A1 (type: UEFI) Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6400 CPU @ 2.70GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.7GHz Memory: 8192MB RAM Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC Display Memory: 6071 MB Dedicated Memory: 2007 MB Shared Memory: 4063 MB Current Mode: 1680 x 1050 (32 bit) (59Hz) HDR Support: Not Supported I'm not sure if all of these are necessary info, I'm assuming its mostly just the processor, card and memory that matter here, but I linked the rest just in case. Some people have said its likely an issue with the GPU getting outdated, so I'm hoping I'll be able to "get clear" simply by buying a new graphics card rather than an entirely new PC, but if people here disagree with that, I'll take it into consideration. My money is extremely limited though, so I can't really afford to buy the highest end tier parts: Simply something that'd stop the issues I'm currently having, and perhaps allowing me to play some of the more modern games more comfortably (games such as Cities: Skylines, Mordhau, Total War: Warhammer, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and so on.) Also I've never built a PC and I don't really understand hardware well at all, so if I'd buy separate components I *might* attempt installation on my own if its not too difficult, otherwise I'll have it done at some PC repair shop.

I've had this multiple times with slow/bad HDDs and Windows 10, and installing an SSD drive solved the majority of them, had one occasion where it was PSU instead tho.

The sticker on the side looks like this https://i.imgur.com/YL3r32T.png I dunno if it contains what you need regarding the PSU. As for HDD, all I know what to do regarding it is to show these ------------------------ Disk & DVD/CD-ROM Drives ------------------------ Drive: C: Free Space: 101.3 GB Total Space: 476.6 GB File System: NTFS Model: WDC WD10EZEX-21M2NA0 Drive: D: Free Space: 199.5 GB Total Space: 476.6 GB File System: NTFS Model: WDC WD10EZEX-21M2NA0 Drive: F: Free Space: 291.3 GB Total Space: 953.9 GB File System: NTFS Model: Seagate Expansion+ SCSI Disk Device And by following some online guide for checking the HDD health, I did this https://i.imgur.com/IwBqAcW.png As I said, I'm garbage at hardware stuff so unless you can check this kinda stuff with something like DxDiag, I don't really know what to do.

It's okay, it's on me for not following with the proper instructions. Also, for HDD, give me this CrystalDiskInfo – Crystal Dew World Maybe also run CrystalDiskMark – Crystal Dew World with 4x100Mb settings.

https://i.imgur.com/kMCHoO8.png https://i.imgur.com/oV02We7.png https://i.imgur.com/h7PeYJ4.png The second pic is my external drive

You should get an SSD for the operating system. It’ll drastically improve responsiveness

I'd do the following: SSD first (if that doesn't solve it's still a major usability upgrade so it's still win/win), then I'd try a known working PSU (or new one), and only after that I'd start worrying about GPU or what not.

I just don't know if I really use all that much power on my PC, according to this site's calculator the results I get are like this https://i.imgur.com/VY5fOaD.png And assuming my power supply is 500 W as was listed on the same model PC on another site, this doesn't seem like it should be the problem. I'll look into the SSD stuff definitely though. How would installing one work like? Would I have to take out the current HDD and replace it with the SSD, or do they go into different places? Also, would either of you have good suggestions for cheap-ish drives?

It's not a matter of using enough power, PSUs are a real bitch when they start to die, and the results are quite random and sometimes subtle, and they can just start dying at any given moment, regardless of PSU quality. SSDs can just be installed side-by-side with your harddrives, all you gotta do is install windows on it and set your primary boot device to point to your SSD, you can even reuse some installs, ie you can add folders to your "steam library" via the settings menu and it will find your games for you, origin will find installed files if you point to the right folder and then click download, etc. I'd recommend keeping your primary programs (your OS, Office package, CAD software, GIMP/Photoshop, etc) on your SSD, and if you can spare, a game or two where loading/data streaming is a PITA. All bulk storage (music, movies, huge-ass game hoarding, etc) on your hdds.

Ah, I don't really mind. She's mostly used as temporary storage these days anyway. But the fact that this thing still works pretty decently is astounding. And when she dies, it will have been an honor.

Oh actually, isn't this an SSD? https://i.imgur.com/4OKDgVr.jpg Its an external Seagate drive with 1TB of memory in it, I've been using it just because my games are taking more and more space. I actually uninstalled games like Dota from it and reinstalled them on the main drive, because I was under the impression that games installed on external drives will fetch the data slower than from your internal drive, so maybe that's been working against me?

By becoming faulty, yes, by getting outdated, no. It will take a while before that's your case. Also no, that's a hard disk, not a solid state drive. and yes, it's a bad idea to actually use external harddrives like that, you should be installing games on your internal hard drive. A GTX950 + i5 6400 might not be high end, but it's a decent setup for some gaming if you're okay with making graphical compromises for performance, and it shouldn't be at all freezing and stuttering.

I'll echo what others have said, getting an SSD should be your first priority if you want to improve system responsiveness. Depending on how much you're willing to spend, you can easily go for 512GB or even a 1TB one. It's literally an order of magnitude faster than a hard drive, in many situations even more. It'll dramatically improve your loading times and might even improve some stuttering situations. Then you put your OS, swap file and software on it (might as well do a fresh install while you're at it to make sure everything is running optimally), while all the stuff that doesn't require fast read/write speeds can stay on hard drives (music, video, photos, documents, download folders, etc. - you can change the location of the default folders that windows provides for you so they won't hog up your SSD). As for games, you probably won't be able to fit your entire collection on one drive, so you mostly want to install the ones that you're currently playing a lot or have long loading times on the SSD. But thankfully, Steam makes it really easy to move install locations of games at any time, while other clients are a bit more of a mixed bag. Another thing that could cause stuttering is the lack of RAM, if you run out and your system starts hitting the swap file hard, things can get really slow. But still, 8GB should be enough for most situations, even games. Unless you often see yourself hitting 90%+ memory usage, you should be ok for now. Your graphics card is probably the weakest link when it comes to games, and the CPU ain't great either, but as long as you're willing to lower the graphics settings, you should still be able to reach perfectly playable framerates in practically everything. This is something you can think of later down the line if you're not satisfied with the performance, but getting a big upgrade would require replacing most of your system.

I'll have to think about what I wanna get, I'll probably get the SSD first as well as factory reseting my PC and see what it'll do. I'm thinking of getting this (Kingston A400 (7 mm) internal SSD 480 GB ) one because I don't play terribly many games that require assloads of space so I don't think I need more space than that, plus its more in my price range too. Problem with getting other hardware is that I don't really have any income. When I got this PC it was about 900€ if I recall right, and I had to pay for it for about 1-1.5 years with monthly payments, because I simply don't have any money saved up. A new RAM that costs ~300€ would probably take 6 monthly payments, a new graphics card that costs ~600€ would take twice as long unless I increase the sum of each monthly payment, which is less money I can spend on food, so I really can't afford to try out various different components. One last question before I head to bed; Would installing the SDD in place of the HDD on my own be difficult? I assume it either comes with all the cords & cables I require, or they're already in the PC, but I've never installed any components so I don't have tools so I'd probably have to get those as well. In either case, thanks for everyone for help, I appreciate it a lot!

Keep in mind that a drive may be failing, but not *yet* be reporting problems. A surface scan or other self test would be good. SeaTools should do this for you. It will read from every sector to check for problems.

When it comes to installation, you should first check if your case has any free 2.5" drive bays (unless your motherboard also supports M.2 drives, that could make your job easier, but you'd have to look into that). If not, you can still buy 3.5" trays that will allow you to install a 2.5" drive in them. If you really don't care about organizing stuff neatly, you could just ziptie or stick the drive somewhere with tape, an SSD has no mechanical parts so it doesn't need to be held in place super securely. You'll probably also need to buy an extra SATA cable, unless your prebuilt already came with some spares. And finally, check that your power supply has a spare SATA power connector: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/SATA_power_cable.jpg If not, you might also need to buy an adapter.

That’s an external hard drive, not an SSD. It will have a normal low end laptop hard drive inside it. Your main drive appears to be 500GB. If you buy a 500GB SSD there are various pieces of software you can use to clone your main drive. The way I would do it is buy a Samsung SSD, and unplug every drive except your boot drive and the SSD. Then use Samsung’s software to clone the HDD to the SSD. After that unplug the HDD and boot off the SSD. If it boots reliable you can then wipe your old HDD and use it for more game storage.

This is extremely anecdotal. I've had my fair share of indie games and part of my steam library on my ever present fat 4TB external. Has yet to fail me. if you've got at least a USB3.0 drive which is an HDD it'll be limited by its own speed before the USB bandwidth is even reached too, so speed isn't an issue.

USB3 is actually really fast, i've got an external SSD that can pull about 500MB/s sequential over it. It seems slow alot of the time because USB to SATA bridge chips or flash memory in many devices tend to be shitty.

It's more of an issue where I've had plenty of external hard drive deaths earlier than expected due to them being overused and the drives being sorta shitty, or friends dropping them during use, but it's all anecdotal yes.

I specifically only use 3.5 inchers for external storage tbh, I don't know why but my experience with laptops and 2.5"s has never been short of annoying as all hell. So if I can, I tend to get the chonkier externals.