Can This Make Your Computer Run Slower?

[godreborn]

number of hdds connected to it even if they're not being used at that moment? I have 6 hdds connected to my laptop at over 25TBs.

 

[tech3475]

It’s possible if they are being accessed and need to spin up e.g. ‘my computer’.

Personally I would disconnect them if they’re not being used to avoid wear and/or you may want to look at a server of some kind.

 

[Deleted User]

No, having multiple hard drives connected to your computer won't slow down it down any. It may take slightly longer (as in, a few milliseconds) longer to boot, but it won't affect performance.

They will increase power consumption, however, so you may want to take that into consideration.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

number of hdds connected to it even if they're not being used at that moment? I have 6 hdds connected to my laptop at over 25TBs.

If anything it will make it faster, due to the data being split across several drives so it can read data from multiple places at the same time, and doesn't have to spend as much time waiting for data. That's how RAID works after all.

 

[godreborn]

hmm...'cause the internet seems sluggish, and that started after hooking this new drive up and starting this large transfer. I've not encountered it anywhere but the internet. is it possible that a ssd could be bottlenecked by the gpu or some other component causing sluggishness as it tries to keep up?

 

[Originality]

Most drives will spin down and sleep until accessed, so there will be a delay of a few seconds for them to spin up when you try and access them, but it shouldn’t affect other drives that are in use.

It is possible for the controller to get saturated if you’re sending data across multiple drives simultaneously, but that doesn’t sound like what you’re doing. It sounds like you’re transferring sequential data from one drive to another, and I’m assuming only your OS drive is otherwise being used. Then again, if the large data is from your OS drive, that will definitely slow down internet and other UI related tasks as your OS drive is being saturated with IO requests.

 

[Shadowfied]

More drives, if accessed a lot, but not all the time, will definitely slow down certain actions, cause they will have to spin up. This is usually audible as well. If you open My Computer, or anything that will query all drives, expect to wait more.

 

[godreborn]

thanks. what about putting hdds that aren't needed at that given time into storage? will they die from nonuse? that's the reason why I have so many hdds plugged in at one time.

also, I have an ssd installed as my internal hdd. is it possible that sluggishness is being caused by the gpu, or some other component, that can't keep up with the ssd? it takes mere seconds to boot up the computer, but I've found very little increases in speed for most other things.

 

[tech3475]

thanks. what about putting hdds that aren't needed at that given time into storage? will they die from nonuse? that's the reason why I have so many hdds plugged in at one time.

also, I have an ssd installed as my internal hdd. is it possible that sluggishness is being caused by the gpu, or some other component, that can't keep up with the ssd? it takes mere seconds to boot up the computer, but I've found very little increases in speed for most other things.

Hdds being mechanical devices can die from various reasons, but one of them is being regularly spun up/down.

With your SSD, check if TRIM is enabled and the firmware is up to date.

 

[Glyptofane]

thanks. what about putting hdds that aren't needed at that given time into storage? will they die from nonuse? that's the reason why I have so many hdds plugged in at one time.

I would think it would be fine as long as you don't live near the ocean or something. I have gone two or more years before without using the HDD attached to my Wii and it's still kicking. It's around 9 years old which is a bit worrying.

 

[godreborn]

alright, I'll put them into storage. actually, I'd like to format the drives, then use them with my game systems. the only problem is that I'm a bit apprehensive with having so much data on two hdds. if they fail, I'll be sol, so maybe I should just keep the data on the drives, and buy replacements. I already have a drive for the ps4, which I formatted from a 360 hdd. I do have a backup of that plugged into the 360. I backed up the internal hdd, and placed a copy of it on that external hdd. anyway, I just thought that nonuse would be worse than overuse. this seems to be true of optical drives or at least my experience with them. plus, I'm afraid of putting those drives in storage, not knowing that they've failed when they've failed, and having all that data lost. that's why I have them plugged into my laptop, all at once.

 

[Originality]

When you store them, just keep them out of sunlight and (ideally) cover them to protect from dust. Generally that’s all.

 

[godreborn]

okay, what about the sluggishness especially on the internet? could the gpu be causing this: Amd Radeon R7 (TM) Graphics and Amd Radeon R8 (TM) M445DX Graphics?

 

[JamiePashley]

okay, what about the sluggishness especially on the internet? could the gpu be causing this: Amd Radeon R7 (TM) Graphics and Amd Radeon R8 (TM) M445DX Graphics?

Really unlikely that the GPU is causing internet browsing slowness. Is the internet sluggish across different browsers? Google Chrome is RAM intensive, and could be the cause of sluggishness. I'm assuming you've run a Speed test from the laptop and confirmed you're getting the speeds your expecting? Are you using Wi-Fi? Have you tried a network cable and seeing if performance improves? Is the network sluggish on other devices?

 

[godreborn]

Really unlikely that the GPU is causing internet browsing slowness. Is the internet sluggish across different browsers? Google Chrome is RAM intensive, and could be the cause of sluggishness. I'm assuming you've run a Speed test from the laptop and confirmed you're getting the speeds your expecting? Are you using Wi-Fi? Have you tried a network cable and seeing if performance improves? Is the network sluggish on other devices?

it's not nearly as noticeable using internet explorer. I've been using firefox, which seems to use a lot of memory. I have 16GBs of ram, is that good?

 

[godreborn]

alright, I found that my internet runs over twice as fast with internet explorer than with firefox and chrome. I figured internet explorer would be the slowest. download speeds seem to be the same 100Mb/s, just loading pages is slow.