HDD making loud wongwongwong sound when loading game

Dorray

D
Sorry if this sounds stupid but when I load this game it loads just fine but something is making a wongwongwong sound as the game loads for about 10 seconds and then ends with a rrrrrrrrrrrt sound. Its starts kind of quiet, then gets loud then its over. Thats the best way to describe the sound. Like a mechanical sound, something is spinning. The tower vibrates a bit. This is the only game that does it. I play BF4, Stellaris, Star Trek Online, Cities Skylines, Bad Company 2, Alien Isolation I think thats it.... None of those games make my PC make any noise. I run them all at max. Only thing I can think of is my HD only has 25GB free space, if that would have anything to do with noise? I get steady 60fps. Game runs smoothe. No problems or lag. Just this wongwongwongwongwongWONGWONG RRRRRRRRT sound when it loads.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

FX6300
Asus M5A97 mobo
GTX1050ti
8gbram
250GB Seagate
 

Whiplash 1983

Whiplash 1983
Sounds like older equipment or limited space and ram. Newer OS's expect a lot of shoulder room and free ram. If no ram is available than the drive becomes virtual ram and gets real busy hammering away temporary storage.
 

Dorray

D
Whiplash 1983 said:
Sounds like older equipment. Newer OS's expect a lot of shoulder room and free ram. If no ram is available than the drive becomes virtual ram and gets real busy hammering away temporary storage.
Click to expand...
Thanks for reply.

Yes a few years old. Just wondering if my HDD is dying. Sounds like its truggling to find the data on the disc. Lasts no longer than 10 seconds. Only when game is loading. Then smooth sailing. No other games do that.

But my HDD is not dying???
 

Whiplash 1983

Whiplash 1983
Not yet, but if it is taking on too much of the processors workload it just might take the hit.
I can't say what the recommended system specs are for Elite just now. You should be able to look them up.
My hunch is its more than you are reporting. In any case more ram is good for any application.
Those drive sounds don't sound like a good thing though.

As a rule there should be at least 15% free space on any drive or it can't even do a good job of maintaining itself.
 

Morbad

Morbad
Free up some space and thoroughly defragment the drive; see if that improves things. Chances are that the game is spread across the drive and needs a lot of extra work to reach.

If that doesn't improve things, some of the noise could be something besides the drive. Elite: Dangerous is pretty demanding and can induce coil whine in components it wouldn't otherwise be audible in. No amount of coil whine should perceptibly vibrate the case, however.

Dorray said:
But my HDD is not dying???
Click to expand...

A vibrating drive, especially one scrambling to sift through a lot of fragmented data, doesn't imply the drive is dying, but it certainly doesn't imply that it's not.

Upwards of half of HDD failures have no warning signs at all and you should always have backups.
 

Whiplash 1983

Whiplash 1983
Don't feel too bad. I spent way too much money on an Alienware M1 back just before Core processors came out and it was under spex and would not even run "Horizons". It now sits unused to this day.
 

Dorray

D
Morbad said:
Free up some space and thoroughly defragment the drive; see if that improves things. Chances are that the game is spread across the drive and needs a lot of extra work to reach.

If that doesn't improve things, some of the noise could be something besides the drive. Elite: Dangerous is pretty demanding and can induce coil whine in components it wouldn't otherwise be audible in.



A vibrating drive, especially one scrambling to sift through a lot of fragmented data, doesn't imply the drive is dying, but it certainly doesn't imply that it's not.

Upwards of half of HDD failures have no warning signs at all and you should always have backups.
Click to expand...
I just find it weird it's this game. BF4 is more demanding. All my temps at max are below 60. According to CPUID HWmonitor.

I did uninstall a few games to make room for this. Maybe thats it?
 

Gray_Lensman

Gray_Lensman
SSD are the only way to go now... But, one thing to keep in mind... They don't have seeker heads to squirrel away data in bits and pieces, instead they need room to move data around electronically. A good rule of thumb is to figure on how much you're going to need for all your stuff/storage, add 50% and then double that. Reason is that SSD start suffering efficiency hits beyond 50% capacity and the closer you get to filling one up the more they suffer. Another thing to do if you really want to keep things working smooth is to buy a second SSD (maybe 250 Gig) and map the Windows page file to it exclusively, nothing else. Since the page file grows and shrinks dynamically, it won't affect the efficiency or the read/write timing on your main drive.
 

Morbad

Morbad
Dorray said:
I just find it weird it's this game. BF4 is more demanding. All my temps at max are below 60. According to CPUID HWmonitor.

I did uninstall a few games to make room for this. Maybe thats it?
Click to expand...

The only thing that matters for framentation is where the data is. The more full the drive, the less likely you are to have sufficient contiguous space for new applications. Removing random apps to make room for new ones, without defragmenting the drive before installing them, can compound the issue by leaving the drive even more fragmented than it would otherwise be.

The performance of mechanical HDDs is highly dependent on the data's location on the disks' surface.
 

Whiplash 1983

Whiplash 1983
I understand wear and tear on SSD's is from writing operations, and as for SSD's with no moving parts (and space being space), defragmenting a SSD drive is not recommended and puts unnecessary wear on the memory. Like above, just make sure you have a lot more space than you plan to fill.
 

Morbad

Morbad
It's true that SSDs do not benefit from defragmentation in the same manner as mechanical HDDs and that excessive P/E cycles is something to be avoided (though this is not really a concern for most consumer uses)...I won't say they don't benefit at all as having files placed contiguously still somewhat reduces page table/index size and thus overhead, plus certain volume resize operations can require LBAs to be clear past a certain point. the size OP isn't using an SSD.

Regardless, the OP does not seem to have an SSD. SSDs do not produce any appreciable noise or vibration. The OP seem to be using a mechanical HDD that is both overly full and does not appear to have been regularly maintained. Fragmentation certainly seems to be an issue here.
 

znôrt

znôrt
Dorray said:
I just find it weird it's this game. BF4 is more demanding. All my temps at max are below 60. According to CPUID HWmonitor.

I did uninstall a few games to make room for this. Maybe thats it?
Click to expand...

yes. the 'wongwong' noise could mean that the arm is moving back and forth a lot so the the read/write head can pick up information that is very scattered across the disk. while this is somewhat to be expected, in extreme cases it is much more work (hence time, energy consumption and wear and tear) than would be necessary. obvious option is running 'defrag' so related bits are placed closely together, reducing the need for the arm to move around. if the issue persists after defrag it could indeed mean that the drive has some bad sectors already that force the head to do several passes to reliably read them. that's objectively bad and would suggest a replacement is in order.

in general you'd want your hd to have as much free space as possible so information can be stored neatly in contiguous blocks, instead of filling small empty blocks scattered all over the surface. once your drive has become cramped, even if you delete stuff to make room odds are that this room isn't contiguous at all.

ssd don't have moving parts and hence don't suffer this problem.
 

Para Handy

Para Handy
I think @Morbad suggestion is a good first approach OP - if you can defragment the drive so that the heads are not shuttling around so much to find the next slice of badly fragmented files then that should reduce your symptoms. In the long run though you might benefit from sticking in another drive anyway as 250GB isn't much these days so maybe a new HDD or a SSD if you want to be amazed at how much quicker your PC starts (I use SSDs and HDDs - I try to keep progs, as well as OS, on SSDs).
 

GroG79

G
Too much guessing. Ask your hdd directly:
www.howtogeek.com

How to Check Your Hard Drive or SSD’s Health With S.M.A.R.T.

Hard drives and SSDs use S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) to gauge their own reliability and determine if they’re failing. You can view your hard drive’s S.M.A.R.T. data and see if it has started to develop problems.
www.howtogeek.com www.howtogeek.com

Also check your windows event log for bad blocks:
www.wintips.org

Fix: Event 7 Disk has a bad block at \Device\Harddisk#\DR#

The Event ID 7, on Windows Event Log, with description "\Device\Harddisk#\DR#" has a bad block", informs you, that an area of a hard drive, installed on your co
www.wintips.org www.wintips.org

If the above tools/methods yield nothing you might also check if perhaps a fan is making the noise.


Hard disks are mechanical and do fail over time (like all hardware) if you have nothing to loose just keep gaming. If you have important data back it up NOW. Do not defrag first as these are very intensive loads which may push a failing hard drive over the edge.
 

GroG79

G
Also.. Windows has been doing background defragment jobs since Vista; so unless you changed windows to not perform a defrag every week or so you can expect your hdds to be defragmented.
1577971232826.png
 

Chong-su

Chong-su
To see the heath status of hdd you can install HDD Health
Defrag the hard drive with your status is totally futile.
You could buy a new hard drive ( SSD or mechanical as you wish ( SSD 500 or more, or 2TB 256mb cache or more for example ) ) and clone the actual 250Gb in the new one
Double the ram is a good thing, for your OS and for your hard drive

Best regards
 

Morbad

Morbad
GroG79 said:
Too much guessing. Ask your hdd directly:
www.howtogeek.com

How to Check Your Hard Drive or SSD’s Health With S.M.A.R.T.

Hard drives and SSDs use S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) to gauge their own reliability and determine if they’re failing. You can view your hard drive’s S.M.A.R.T. data and see if it has started to develop problems.
www.howtogeek.com www.howtogeek.com

Also check your windows event log for bad blocks:
www.wintips.org

Fix: Event 7 Disk has a bad block at \Device\Harddisk#\DR#

The Event ID 7, on Windows Event Log, with description "\Device\Harddisk#\DR#" has a bad block", informs you, that an area of a hard drive, installed on your co
www.wintips.org www.wintips.org

If the above tools/methods yield nothing you might also check if perhaps a fan is making the noise.


Hard disks are mechanical and do fail over time (like all hardware) if you have nothing to loose just keep gaming. If you have important data back it up NOW. Do not defrag first as these are very intensive loads which may push a failing hard drive over the edge.
Click to expand...

While certain SMART events are strongly indicative of a failing drive (reallocated sectors, as one example), something like 40% of drives fail without any problems in the SMART report at all.

Getting a bit old at this point, but still very relevant for mechanical drives in general: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//archive/disk_failures.pdf

Backups should be considered mandatory for any data one cannot easily do without. I do agree it's worth checking and backing up before defragmentation.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom