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Hiya,

Because I have so many ISO's, I'm having to use a HDD to store my ISO's... Unfortunately even though the game is running easily at 100% I get "microstutters" at moments where the game appears to be loading data off the disk (like when a new sound effect is played after a crash in a car game etc). Using task manager I can see whenever this happens there is a little spike in the HDD read activity, so I think this is the bottleneck...

My question is, is anybody else using a HDD for ISO's, and if so do you get problems? I'm planning on going even bigger with my storage for games, and SSD's at the capacity required are almost non-existent... so I need to know if it's just my current particular drive with the issue or whether lots of HDD users have this problem.

Many thanks!

Using either won't make a difference for loading games but it's certainly better then running off of a disk. You should just store the games on an HDD. What hard drive brand/model number are you currently using?

are you using external HDD e.g. WD passport

Hmmm, so the game should be able to load assets fast enough off the HDD no problem? It's an internal Samsung HM641JI, it's only 5400RPM, not 7200RPM - maybe that's why?

I pinched the HDD off an old laptop so it's probably rubbish...

Yeah 5400 drives are pretty slow, I would recommend a 7200RPM drive. Laptop drives are inherently slow as it is.

I've just noticed it happening on my PSX ISO's via RetroArch BeetlePSX too... They have an option to precache the whole CD into memory which seems to fix my problem, so it has to be the HDD I think. I'll get a 7200RPM drive for my final collection!

This may sound like an odd thing but moving your iso to someplace else temporarily (or if your drive is too slow that re ripping the iso would be faster do that) doing a defragment on the drive and copying the iso back so that it is all in one place can make a massive difference on HDD and especially slower HDD.

You could try to defragment the iso files on the disk wothout removing then coppying them to a nice open block of free space. Some defrag utilities are better then others when dealing with file sizes as large as game isos so yrmv.

Either way random read speeds are not HDD strength.

refraction, i have had laptop drives max out at 10 mbps and another at 20 mbps... I see faster off usb3 thumbdrives. 10mb ps should suffice tho for read

In theory it should do yes as it's faster than the original DVD drive, but for a complete stutter free experience you need as high as you can get.

agreed.. just stating hdd can be surprisingly slow