Intermitent freezing in game, possible hard drive issue

Hello,

I have a predator helios 300 G3-572. It came with a crappy 2TB 5400 rpm HD that seems to have a weird problem. No matter what game I run, it freezes intermittently every several minute. The freeze only lasts 2-3 seconds at most, but it's constantly. It's annoying, and during competitive games like CS: GO or Starcraft it can literally cost me the match. It happens in new games, in very old games, during intensive gameplay, during light gameplay, during cutscenes, even in the menu. No matter what I'm playing or how little the game is taxing the computer, this happens. I've never dealt with this before.

I added an SSD, and this doesn't happen when running games from it, but the SSD has less than 200GB of usable memory, most of my games are kept in the HD. Despite the fact the HD is way slower than the SSD, this shouldn't explain the issue, given that it happens even in cutscenes or in old games. I had an Alienware gaming laptop for 7 years with the same kind of HD and this never happened. Hopefully there's something that can be done besides sending it to Acer for repair.

Regards,

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sri369

This is a rendering issue, and might not be a HDD issue... I have my games loaded on SSD and still face the stutter at times. There could be a variety of factors... for example I face this in RUST when rust server spawns entities such as animals and such. It stutters for about a second and then continues. This issue may not be sourced from your hardware too perhaps, and could be dependent on servers too. I also face this at times when scene changes out of the blue and needs a heavy frame to be rendered. But the lag is a fraction of a second, not multiple seconds. 2-3 seconds is a very long time, if you asked me.
Your case might be different here since you say it happens in all your games.

Try reducing graphics settings a bit and see if that helps.

Also, what graphics card do you have? And also I presume you are connected 100% of time to power supply while gaming.

asad814

i solved this issue by adding the 500gb samsung 860 evo ssd and my problem was solved...btw i am on the old version of windows(maybe january update) cheers!!!!!

Caim

sri369 said:

This is a rendering issue, and might not be a HDD issue... I have my games loaded on SSD and still face the stutter at times. There could be a variety of factors... for example I face this in RUST when rust server spawns entities such as animals and such. It stutters for about a second and then continues. This issue may not be sourced from your hardware too perhaps, and could be dependent on servers too. I also face this at times when scene changes out of the blue and needs a heavy frame to be rendered. But the lag is a fraction of a second, not multiple seconds. 2-3 seconds is a very long time, if you asked me.
Your case might be different here since you say it happens in all your games.

Try reducing graphics settings a bit and see if that helps.

Also, what graphics card do you have? And also I presume you are connected 100% of time to power supply while gaming.

Yeah, I'm connected to the the power supply. It can't have anything to do with servers, it happens in every game, online or offline. Even in cutscenes. The graphics card is the GTX1060 6GB.

asad814 said:

i solved this issue by adding the 500gb samsung 860 evo ssd and my problem was solved...btw i am on the old version of windows(maybe january update) cheers!!!!!

Did you also have the same problem when running games from an HD?

sri369

Caim said:

Yeah, I'm connected to the the power supply. It can't have anything to do with servers, it happens in every game, online or offline. Even in cutscenes. The graphics card is the GTX1060 6GB.

That's kind of weird... cos when I put heavy games on my HDD they used to go with a bit low FPS, but not like freezing up. Moving them to SSD got right of the low FPS. Guess your HDD was reaching end of life.

Caim

sri369 said:

Caim said:

Yeah, I'm connected to the the power supply. It can't have anything to do with servers, it happens in every game, online or offline. Even in cutscenes. The graphics card is the GTX1060 6GB.

That's kind of weird... cos when I put heavy games on my HDD they used to go with a bit low FPS, but not like freezing up. Moving them to SSD got right of the low FPS. Guess your HDD was reaching end of life.

This laptop is barely 3 months old, and this happened from day one. I've never dealt with an issue like this before, either in laptops or desktops. Does this justify invoking the warranty? Would a different HDD solve the issue (large SSDs are too expensive, I'd rather have a large HDD where I can store most games and use the small SSD for the ones I'm currently playing or that benefit the most from the SSD like open worlds)? Is there any type software fix I can try? I'm at a loss.

sri369

Caim... here is my setup, if that helps:

Primary: SSD - 512 --> split into 120 + rest for games
Secondary: HDD - 1 TB - 4 years old - 3 partitions - first one (fastest partition) for games, second for videos, third (slowest) for documents n such

What I can suggest for you is to partition your SSD into 80 for windows and rest for games.
On your HDD, create partitions, and use the first for games.
First partition on HDD would make that on the inner most rings making it faster than any of the remaining partitions (cos later ones would be created on the outer rings).

On HDD store only low to mid level games; putting heavy hitters on SSD. Windows 10 can live on 80 GB partition... quite more than enough.

And then map your documents folder to the outermost partition on your HDD so your documents sit on HDD and not SSD.

Below is the map from mine:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/wt/7vhfjxybw1l8.png

asad814

yes i have 7200rpm hdd and was still facing the issue....but by adding an ssd works..now my games are not freezing

Caim

sri369 said:

Caim... here is my setup, if that helps:

Primary: SSD - 512 --> split into 120 + rest for games
Secondary: HDD - 1 TB - 4 years old - 3 partitions - first one (fastest partition) for games, second for videos, third (slowest) for documents n such

What I can suggest for you is to partition your SSD into 80 for windows and rest for games.
On your HDD, create partitions, and use the first for games.
First partition on HDD would make that on the inner most rings making it faster than any of the remaining partitions (cos later ones would be created on the outer rings).

On HDD store only low to mid level games; putting heavy hitters on SSD. Windows 10 can live on 80 GB partition... quite more than enough.

And then map your documents folder to the outermost partition on your HDD so your documents sit on HDD and not SSD.

I haven't messed with partitions in ages and I'm not terribly tech savvy, but I'll try that.

asad814 said:

yes i have 7200rpm hdd and was still facing the issue....but by adding an ssd works..now my games are not freezing

So it's not an issue with the HD speed then, in which case replacing the HD with a 7200 rpm or hybrid wouldn't work. Does this happen with every Acer laptop? Is there any point to sending it back to Acer or odds are they'll return it saying there are no issues?

sri369

Caim said:
So it's not an issue with the HD speed then, in which case replacing the HD with a 7200 rpm or hybrid wouldn't work. Does this happen with every Acer laptop? Is there any point to sending it back to Acer or odds are they'll return it saying there are no issues?

G3-572 here... No issues. When I initially had games on my HDD i faced longer load times and slightly reduced FPS... and that's about it. No lag whatsoever what you guys are mentioning. Using SSD only decreased load times and increased FPS.

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