After installing a hard drive (HDD) in my PC, I've noticed that all of my games on the M.2 SSDs are experiencing significant stuttering. The HDD itself is unused and just plugged in, yet as soon as I remove it, my gaming performance returns to normal.
I've confirmed that the pagefile is set up correctly—only on the system drive and disabled on the other drives including the HDD. My power supply is a Corsair 750W Gold, so I doubt it's related to dying hardware.
Interestingly, whenever the HDD is connected, even when my PC is idle with no programs running and the firewall off, the drive begins to spin up for no apparent reason. During gaming sessions, I noticed the stutters coincide with the HDD spinning up briefly, almost like Windows is checking the HDD, which causes lag in my games. I also checked CrystalDiskInfo, and all my drives seem to be functioning properly. What could be causing this issue?
2 Answers
Since your HDD is empty, it could also be that Windows is trying to index it or check for any data when you first connect it. This may cause performance lags while gaming. Keep an eye on the task manager to see if any background processes are kicking in related to the HDD.
Sounds like you might have plugged the HDD into a SATA port that shares bandwidth with your M.2 slots. On some motherboards, certain SATA ports are disabled when using M.2 slots, which could lead to these performance hiccups. It's worth checking your motherboard manual—make sure you connect the HDD to a different SATA port that isn't affected by having SSDs installed.
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