Hard drive lag

LDavros on 14/01/2013 - 14:45

I have just installed a pair of 3TB seagate 64mb @7200rpm for movie storage in my PC
When I play movies at random points, usually only once or twice / movie the picture will freeze for a few seconds but the voice will continue and then picture will start again after making pretty patterns like the picture is melting on screen.

It is not a big issue, but I had the same problem with 1.5 TB Hitachis that spun at 5400 rpm and I thought the new 7200 spin would have taken care of the lag issue.

Thoughts on what if anything can be done?
Thanks

Computing

Comments

  • nimrod on 14/01/2013 - 15:20
    +1

    It could be that the hard drive has turned itself off to save power and when the computer reaches the end of what the ram has stored it will need to turn the hard drive back on to load more. The turning on of the hard drive takes a second or two and you will usually hear a click.

    You can change your power settings so that the hard drive always stays on and doesnt turn off. To do this goto power options -> change plan settings (for the plan currently selected) -> change advanced power settings -> Hard Disk -> Turn off hard disk after -> Change to Never

    • samfisher5986 on 14/01/2013 - 15:36
      -1

      This won't happen.

      The video will talk to the hard drive on a regular basis while the video is playing.

      My guess is the issue is a faulty hard drive or a problem with the media player or its settings. Try disabling GPU acceleration if you have it enabled.

      • nimrod on 14/01/2013 - 20:52
        +2

        I beg to differ as i've encountered this problem and ensuring the hard drive stays on all the time was the fix

        All of your suggestions are long shots at best

        • samfisher5986 on 14/01/2013 - 23:55

          What your saying doesn't happen unless the hard drive was faulty and turned itself off even if it was being used.

        • mctubster on 04/08/2013 - 20:45

          Old post, but someone else replied and it came to the top for me ;)

          Search on Thermal Calibration … sounds a bit like it, the drive will randomly go offline for a few seconds and in my experience make quite a "click" noise.

          Some drives seem to do it more than others. From memory I had 750GB or 1TB Seagates in an array that did this a bit.

          Normally more of an issue for sustained writes, where the buffer could overrun. You can buy AV rated drives that don't do this

          If you can get your video software that is playing to read ahead further (buffer more), this may be a viable workaround

  • WT on 14/01/2013 - 15:35

    picture problems? Sounds like your graphics card is playing up

    • _Bruce_ on 14/01/2013 - 15:47

      Possble, but I'd say unlikely in this case.

  • _Bruce_ on 14/01/2013 - 15:46

    This is not likely to be the HD. Even if the HD failed to supply data fast enough you should get frames dropped or paused video, but not mpeg corruption which sounds like what you describe. Be to sure though, what player are you using? Try VLC.

    Otherwise, are you sure that the files are correct and uncorrupt? Can you copy them to another system and see if it has the same problem? Are you playing locally or streaming (over wifi?)? If steaming what meathod are you using?

  • Davros on 14/01/2013 - 18:49

    No problem with files
    No problems with graphics card
    and this only happens on these large storage drives.
    If I put them on any of my other 500gb drives I have no issues,.

    • nimrod on 14/01/2013 - 21:04

      Could be some software on your computer is keeping those 500gb drives from going into sleep by constantly accessing them.

      I'm not saying that my solution is relevent in your case but i did experience something similar and looked into it and found that keeping the hard drives on was the solution.

    • _Bruce_ on 14/01/2013 - 22:12

      I still would like to know what player you are using because buffer starvation shouldn't cause that symptom.

    • retiredfeline on 14/01/2013 - 22:16

      I'm with Bruce. The freezing and melting images symptom is typical of MPEG corruption. Not necessary of the file, but somehow the stream received by the player is corrupt, or the player cannot handle something in it, and keeps having to resynchronise. You also have to compare exactly the same software player because older versions might not handle the stream as well.

  • Davros on 15/01/2013 - 00:52

    I am using VLC and have done for years

    • retiredfeline on 15/01/2013 - 08:20

      I have seen VLC misbehave on some videos that other players coped with. Up to date and all that? New release came out recently.

  • Davros on 15/01/2013 - 00:53

    "The freezing and melting images symptom is typical of MPEG corruption."

    I can go back and play the same section and the "melting" and pause is not there anymore

    • _Bruce_ on 15/01/2013 - 07:43

      I can go back and play the same section and the "melting" and pause is not there anymore

      Two reasons why this doesn't prove a lot:

      1: MPEG video streams are differential and are based on video that came before the current frame. When you skip to a point in the video the player has to do extra work to assemble the frame, which may be subtly different to playing the video through normally. If you skip over 45 seconds before the issue and play it though then the test is valid.

      2: As discussed above the corruption is probably happening in the stream, not the file. This is also based on time, computer load, network traffic, etc.

      I have never seen VLC do this due to buffer starvation, but it seems the most likely cause at this point. However if you are playing locally (not over a network) something is very wrong if your system with ANY hard drive cannot deliver the video in real time. Perhaps check/update your SATA drivers?

  • Davros on 15/01/2013 - 08:19

    1) When I am playing video I am doing nothing else in background apart from running outlook and maybe (on occasion) utorrent, hardly cpu intensive operations.
    2) I am not playing over a network
    3) All drivers are up to date.

    • _Bruce_ on 15/01/2013 - 08:34

      With things like this is is not what you are doing in the background but what other processes are (ie: file indexing, virus scan, malware). Also measuring load may not help as it is the occasional breif demand which would cause your problem.

      To rule out the HD you can use a tool to check the SMART data.

  • Jabba the Hutt on 15/01/2013 - 14:30
    +1

    Check hard disk suspend is disabled in power management settings. The drive you're playing the video from will not be spinning down, but other drives may, and when they spin back up this can cause some systems to freeze briefly.

    • Davros on 16/01/2013 - 08:27

      I havent changed those, it is on balanced settings and set for screen to sleep after 10 and computer to sleep after 20 of inactivity.
      Hard drive is also set to sleep after 20.
      Obviously if a movie is playing it is not inactive.

      • ThadtheChad on 16/01/2013 - 15:32

        "Obviously if a movie is playing it is not inactive."

        Incorrect. There is buffering that is performed. The amount of video stored in the buffer may exceed the hdd spin down time as a result there may be a slight latency when additional data is pulled into the buffer. I've experienced a similar issue with wd green drives.

        • samfisher5986 on 16/01/2013 - 16:35

          Might be the case with really small videos, but the buffer is generally quite small compared to a 720p or higher video.

        • ThadtheChad on 16/01/2013 - 17:33

          While this may not relate to the case being discussed, I've found some access latency on multi disk systems.

          My setup is as follows:

          1x 128GB Intel 520 as my OS drive
          2x 1TB Spinpoint F3s in RAID-0 as my Program+game drives
          1x 1.5TB WD Green as my "content drive"

          When I access my green drive after a period of inactivity (i.e. content on the drive is not accessed), there is a significant latency before content is available.

          I have noticed similar symptoms to OP when I try playing back high bitrate videos (720/1080p) from an external drive via USB. Occasional stuttering (and the weird corruption for a few secs) on VLC if you skip ahead too far. The potential problem could be that when you seek ahead the content may not be within the buffer thereby resulting in a page fault. Since these hard drives have aggressing power saving features (2.5" drives optimised for portable devices; same thing with Green drives) the page fault results in "waking the drive" and subsequent access to the region where the data is stored. This results in latency which could lead the video stream being interrupted while the audio playback continues. This manifests itself as artifacts in the playback.

          Please correct me if I'm wrong. :)

        • _Bruce_ on 16/01/2013 - 19:20

          What you have written is fine however the idle case is different as you are not describing while the video is playing. The USB case is also very different as USB is NOT designed for sustained throughput and any other USB device can interrupt the stream, so this doesn't surprise me at all.

  • _Bruce_ on 15/01/2013 - 14:45

    Couple more thoughts:

    1: You said 'installed', does that mean with SATA? USB is likely to cause such problems (just checking).

    2: You could be running out of RAM and hitting swap. Playing the video shouldn't use too much by itself, but we don't know how much you have or any other system details.

    Again, this is something that should never happen no matter what HD you are using, so something is going very wrong. I do wonder of VLC is not gracefully handling the starvation because it is checking that the file is local and thus assuming that file system reads will always return in time?

  • Davros on 16/01/2013 - 08:21

    Yes, they are sata
    and I also installed an extra 4gb of ram during the HD install

  • netsurfer on 24/06/2013 - 20:56

    When you put your new 3TB in there, did you re-install everything (clean install)?
    What files are you playing? Are they mkv files? If yes, what CPU & graphics cards do you have?
    Hard drives (even 5400rpm ones) are fast enough to playback 1080p blu-ray backups.

    Try the following:

    • When playing back the movie, use the task manager to check the CPU usage. If it is near 100% all the time, that means your player is unable to detect or support your graphics card (or integrated graphics).
    • If not, do you have these type of pauses when you run other apps (like unable to see what you type for a second or two or jerky mouse movement for a second or two)?

    The more info you can provide, the better people here can help you.

  • ethereal88 on 05/08/2013 - 08:01

    Why has nobody mentioned system specs and the media player + settings? If the OP is playing these on a P4, then yes it will stutter. Specs?

    • Davros on 05/08/2013 - 08:15

      Since then that PC died
      All HD's are in a new build AMD FX 6300 six core with 8gb ram and no such issues have been encountered since.
      It was the motherboard that smoked on the last one, perhaps the video problems were a sign it was on its way out.

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