Wiping free space (3 passes) slows down hard drive?

[Hmm]

I noticed a considerable slow down in speed using defraggler benchmarks.  Is this normal with wiping free space and if so, why does this happen?

[nukecad]

Using multiple passes will take a long time, and is unnecessary.

See this post and the article linked there:
https://forum.piriform.com/topic/54792-freespace-wiping/?tab=comments#comment-309341

[Hmm]

16 hours ago, nukecad said:

Using multiple passes will take a long time, and is unnecessary.

Do you have an answer to my question?

[nukecad]

On 19/10/2019 at 07:10, Hmm said:

Is this normal with wiping free space and if so, why does this happen?

I thought that I had, using multiple passes when wiping will be slow (and is not needed).

Were you meaning something else?

[Andavari]

The way I read it the issue sounds like something that happened after using Wipe Free Space.

Things I've always did after running Wipe Free Space is to:
1. Restart the computer.
2. Immediately defragment the drive that had Wipe Free Space ran on it.

I've never experienced a slow down doing that.

The only other thing I can think if the hard disk is performing permanently slow is if it were to get stuck in PIO mode, usually that's something that only older OSes will get stuck into such as Windows XP, although it can be put back into DMA mode. Although it can also be an indication of a possible hard disk failure.

Here's a search for hard disk stuck in pio mode, although you won't know unless your read up on it and figure out if that is or isn't the actual issue. If the hard disk is in pio mode it would probably be worthwhile to use a free tool such as CrystalDiskInfo that can tell you if the S.M.A.R.T. data is good or bad, bad meaning it "could indicate a possible hard disk failure is imminent." A free tool that can run S.M.A.R.T. disk surface scans to test for a damaged hard disk/SSD, etc., is GSmartControl.

[Hmm]

On 20/10/2019 at 07:11, nukecad said:

I thought that I had, using multiple passes when wiping will be slow (and is not needed).

Were you meaning something else?

It looks like I may have worded my question poorly. What I meant was does three pass wiping cause the drive to slow down after completion. 

[Hmm]

On 20/10/2019 at 14:46, Andavari said:

The way I read it the issue sounds like something that happened after using Wipe Free Space.

Things I've always did after running Wipe Free Space is to:
1. Restart the computer.
2. Immediately defragment the drive that had Wipe Free Space ran on it.

I've never experienced a slow down doing that.

The only other thing I can think if the hard disk is performing permanently slow is if it were to get stuck in PIO mode, usually that's something that only older OSes will get stuck into such as Windows XP, although it can be put back into DMA mode. Although it can also be an indication of a possible hard disk failure.

Here's a search for hard disk stuck in pio mode, although you won't know unless your read up on it and figure out if that is or isn't the actual issue. If the hard disk is in pio mode it would probably be worthwhile to use a free tool such as CrystalDiskInfo that can tell you if the S.M.A.R.T. data is good or bad, bad meaning it "could indicate a possible hard disk failure is imminent." A free tool that can run S.M.A.R.T. disk surface scans to test for a damaged hard disk/SSD, etc., is GSmartControl.

I experienced this on my laptop. I even restored the factory image and the drive no longer has the speeds it once did.

I also experienced the same on my desktop on one my other drives as well. Perhaps it's a coincidence?

[Andavari]

Let Windows Defragment and Optimize Drives run on those disks then.

[Hmm]

Come on folks. The answer is simple, it's absolute. It's either yes or no.

Is it so hard to answer?

[Augeas]

Or 'Not as far as I know', which is more relative than absolute.

[Andavari]

I don't know if WFS could cause a hard disk to slow down or not since I've never personally experienced it myself - not even on my ancient WinXP system that has 16 year old IDE hard disks.

The only time I've ever experienced hard disks running very slow is:
* Hard disk was stuck in PIO mode - very noticeable/obvious since it acts like a resource hog is running since the whole system is barely usable speed-wise.

* Formatted a secondary hard disk using a 3rd party disk partition software and the hard disk was very slow after the format and barely usable, deleting the partition and re-initializing and re-formatting with Windows built in tools didn't fix the issue either, it looked permanent. I ended up remembering the discontinued JkDefrag and used it with the sorting option -a 6 (if I remember correctly) which almost moves everything around based on the sorting option used which did get that hard disk back to an acceptable normal speed.