ASUS G75VX - HDD Slow Issues

[datacore]

Hi,

I just purchased the ASUS G75VX to replace my desktop PC. It's great but for the 2nd HDD it always has to spin up when I want to access it. I have in my power options to never put the HDD to sleep but it seems like it's doing it as I will open windows explorer and select my data drive (second drive) takes about 3-5 seconds to start accessing data. How to fix this?

THanks

[Gumwars]

Is it a Seagate?

The reason I ask is that your symptoms are more indicative of a hardware problem with the drive. Most, if not all, drive manufacturers provide diagnostic tools for trouble shooting their hardware. Seagate offers, wait for it, Seatools. You could also use a linux distro live CD and use the OS native drive tools as well. Pretty much anything that allows you to run SMART diagnostics.

[datacore]

My laptop hasn't been altered in any way, its how it came in the box out of the retail shop.

In device manager it says:
Disk drives
HGST HTS541010A9E680
LITEONIT LCM-56M3S

I have the ASUS G74VX-T4153H
It has 32GB RAM, GEFORCE 670MX, i7 CPU, 17" screen (heavy as horse) and the HDD mentioned above. Unsure if it's any different in other countries - I'm from Australia.

Is this Seagate? What software do you recommend I run to see if the HDD is faulty?

I'm so sad that I have invested 3 months of savings into a laptop that potentially is a dud...

[Gumwars]

It's a travelstar hdd, which I believe is a subsidiary of Western Digital. Here's a link for the diagnostic tool:

http://www.hgst.com/support/downloads/

The laptop is likely fine, the mechanical drive is suspect.

[Zygomorphic]

That is a hitachi hard disk drive.

[ZeroBarrier]

Some drives park the heads when idle. It doesn't necessarily stop spinning, but it does park the heads off the spinning disks. You should try putting you ear near the HDD area of your notebook and listen to see if you can hear spinning up and heads reading disks, or just heads reading disks. If you only gear the heads reading the disks without the distinct sound of disks spinning up, then your HDD is just parking the heads while idle. There's not much you can do about it either since this is controlled by the firmware of the HDD itself and not by windows.

Usually, mid to low range drives tend to park their heads when idle, high performance drives tend to park the heads only upon receiving a shock like a large bump or fall/hit to prevent damage to the magnetic disks.

[datacore]

Umm, the hgst tool didn't work, it doesn't do anything when I hit scan.

[Tomislav]

This may be a stupid question, but are your windows up to date? I had an issue with my HDD when I first bought my vx (right clicks would take ages- but this was a windows problems, that went away when I updated my OS)-try checking for updates maybe it will help. Also you can try to format your HDD and defragment (though this is a long shot since you've said that your HDD is new).
Btw you can use HWinfo64 to check all your parts,

[Zygomorphic]

@Tomislav, good point about the updates. While you are at it, make sure that you have the right version of the utility. Namely, do you have 64-bit version of the utility (I believe that they have a 32 and a 64 bit version). Also, make sure that you have recently rebooted. I have run into issues with Windows that certain things no longer function properly if you haven't rebooted in a day or two.

[datacore]

There was only one version to download.

Yes, Windows is up-to-date. I am very pedantic about this and check almost every second day. I also use the ASUS updater which came with it to make sure all firmware and drivers are up-to-date. I very much believe this drive is the problem.

How?

I removed my DoTA2 installation (which was on E: - the normal HDD) and placed it onto 😧 - the SSD and the constant lag stopped. Leading me to believe the laptop just needs another SSD. Unless it could be the main board which controls the HDD? the HGST tool when running a 'test' it comes up with everything as 'OK'. The Scan button still continues to do nothing (yes I rebooted etc as per recommended).

The only thing I have not yet tried is formatting and defragging the drive but would this really help? It's brand new (now 2 weeks old) I wouldn't imagine the drive would be fragmented yet.

Note: I really want to avoid formatting the drive as it now has data... Could there be software to test the main board? (or whatever the main controller is called).

[d_2]

I have the same problem, but it's not showing in all games. The interesting part is that it's showing as well in new games, and in very old games.
The only solution was moving the games to the SSD. So now i have a lot of free space for nothing, because I've bought this machine for gaming...