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Another reason is that over time the cooling paste becomes hard and less efficient.)
Harddisks last for a long time, but it really depends on how often they are used. Windows will use the main drive (especially with default settings) always for everything, constant writes and reads, causing the ... never mind. Basically wear out issues. SSDs also have wear out issues, although they tend to collapse almost all memory cells at nearly the same time due to optimization techniques. (a lot more data will therefore be lost if it gets to that point)
You can check the age of your data storage device (HDD) using software that can read this kind of data, such as harddisk info. It can also measure drive data corruption and stuff like that.
No, windows cannot repair corrupted pieces of the drive itself, but it can work around it, so if there is for some reason a hole in the set disk, it shouldn't affect performance. That said however, things wear.
with a HDD its usually the pin that reads and writes it. It's attached to an arm and moves back and forth over the disk. If it gets worn out it may not be able to access certain parts of the disk anymore.
Considering its the system drive and the processor is from 2011, I can assume the laptop desktop has been used for almost 10 years. If the system drive has never been replaced and especially if it is next to being over used by windows due to updates, installs and the like, is also used for making backups of your OS and is used for Virtual Memory, then yeah-- life-time expectency drops quickly.
-> its the total amount of read/write operations done together and no its not you, but what happens automatically, which is way more. Your own contribution was likely not even worthy of mentioning.
Try CrystalDiskInfo and see how many writes were done. I doubt you have made that much use personally of your drive. xd
Anyway what I wanted to say is, you have done a lot of unnessecary stuff some of which to me is obviously unrelated and therefore it doesn't surprise me that has no effect, but you didn't know.
You probably got answers from people who didn't know either and thought they do. (dunning kruger).
The advise is always, first try to see if you can see what is going on.
you tried to see if you could fix it, not ask the computer 'why do you think it is corrupt'. So its always first step to grab some software and perform a small analysis.
Don't immediately tell windows to repair corruption (usually doesn't work anyway), but first try to spot it, try to find it on your disk.
If the disk is 'healthy', its a software glitch. if not, its hardware.
(also 95% healthy is still healthy, you should start looking into replacing it when it drops below 80, because 1/5th of your disk is unusable then)
anyway, if it is a software glitch, you trace what happens.
In this case, you download stuff, so it involves 'network', 'internet accessibility', Steam (the client), firewall, that stuff.
you can test if downloading big files works elsewhere through the browser, to deduce the problem.
Again once you find the problem, only then should you start to plan on how you're going to repair it, not before--
otherwise you fix things that weren't broken and may cause more issues. (at the very least you reduce the lifespan of your hard disk by a lot more)
Also zeroing bits means you made the pins write zeroes in all spaces on the HDD, so its diffidently lifespan affecting. Only do so when you want privacy.
just saying basically.
Edit: PS: I also use windows 8. It works fine, but windows corrupted some of it through updates that cannot be fixed, so sfc will always detect an error, dism will always repair that error, and windows update will corrupt it again. xD
don't fix what isn't broken, otherwise you will buy new cartridges for your printer even though they're still more than half full or buy windows 11 even though 10, 8, etc. still works.
Also, its handy to have a Linux Distro on a USB so you can test things outside of windows to see what causes issues. (especially since Live USBs just load up in ram and not use the HDD/SSD at all)
example: if you update Powershell (microsoft's newer command-promt replacement), sfc will detect file corruption and not be able to repair it, dism can repair sfc and then sfc can repair it, but then powershell doesn't work, so it uses windows update to fix it. (these small programs (sfc and dism) by default do not show exactly where they error and what they do. You have to read the logs to find out if it prints them.)
This clearly means however nothing is broken, despite them saying it.
Edit 2: Also, just saying, but IT Tech Repair professionals suck at repairing.
Because it is their profession they take the most optimal, time efficient approach to repairing something which is "replace, reinstall, test."
in other words, if you gave your laptop desktop to an IT pro, they will replace your hard drive, reinstall windows, copy stuff and give it back. (they may just copy files from your hdd to a new one, just insert that and give it back.)
Even if a little registry edit would fix the issue, reinstall windows to full default settings and you get your drive back.
(they don't have time to look around and usually aren't even trained to do so.)
Rarely you have good repair-people who know what to do. xd
Edit 3: (corrected a few words since its not a laptop apparently) as if that matters
havent read all the way through yet but no not a laptop, its a custom built tower pc as well its parts are all built 2020, so no coverage
And it also heavily suggested it was a factory stock thing.
** (small edit here): Even if it is new, its always a good idea to test things a bit. You need to make sure things are good and not assume they are just because they are new basically. CrystalDiskInfo and such tools can help with that.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T. might help with explaining what each value means.)
In case you haven't brought it to geeksquad yet and feel like picking at it a bit more:
With the new information included and if the disks are okay: the issue suggests it maybe related to the motherboard, if it fails to correctly plant data from RAM onto harddisks in multiple locations. This makes me wonder what motherboard you use. No need to tell if you don't want to.
If it happens on external drives as well (assuming that is in an okay state), did you check the connectors of the motherboard? (it includes the 'data' connectors, not just power.) Is it powered properly and does it receive enough stable power?
** (small edit 2: sometimes a faulty cable causes weird behavior.)
Did you make sure that there is no dust in any of the RAM memory slots and that all RAM is properly connected?
if all of the above is okay, ... then it starts to look like a ghost indeed.
which means it could be any software thing (including drivers) or the bios, although normally if something there is broken, nothing of it works, which is the odd part.
If it really is a ghost like issue, you could try to see if you can replicate the issue with a Linux Live USB. Try installing a game in PuppyOS or something (while in RAM, not on the disk and see if it happens. If it doesn't, try to mount the harddrive to linux and then move the library location to the hard drive, remove the game, remove the default library and set the default library on the hard drive so that Linux /Steam will download the game to the harddrive. (you can also use these same steps to see if you can install the game on a USB located Steam library or one on the external drive).
This way you can tell if it is In-Windows and not your hardware, which could give a hint.
I'll quote a few parts. (remove a bit of it.) Maybe you can see it too.
This is going to sound weird I guess, but I stopped thinking it is your hard drive. I'll try to explain why and why I put part of the first quote into a spoiler.
ReadyBoost is basically Virtual Memory. (fake RAM memory, which is also called Paging). Due to the nature of ReadyBoost this Virtual Memory is also a type of priority memory. (meaning its used a lot to keep a bunch of real system memory (the physical RAM installed) free).
As to why the spoiler: You can normally read games from USB, since its literally just reads from the USB, and not constantly being read and written to it. The USB likely overheated only because it was used as RAM, so data was being written on it constantly.
which got me thinking--...
are you still using it as RAM?
Everything your computer sees is done so from memory. Hard disk storage is just that, its storage. Things on Storage don't change unless there is stuff being written to. You 'read' a list of file names, that list gets loaded up in memory. Memory is where you actually see the filenames from and normally this is a match with the hard disk's data.
The small file sizes could be explained with memory blocks as well.
Point is, summarized: I currently think it is whatever you use as 'paging' and that this paging section is what is corrupt.
If I am right: Usually the heat can cause it to become more noticably less reliable. (heat makes it worse and causes more noticable corruption), so if you scan things early things should be less corrupt then when the USB feels way too warm.
As to why I think it isn't your physical ram, this is because for a long while you didn't get corruption and RAM tends to last very long. (it was designed to be overused.)
it doesn't hurt to try memtest86 I guess, but that takes ages. Still, I don't think it is. It's better to test and see if these things happen if you disable any form of paging on your system.
So remove readyboost and see if it happens and if it still does, disable virtual memory.
You can use this guide to see how you can window's default change paging settings:
https://www.isunshare.com/windows-8/set-virtual-memory-on-windows-8-computer.html
Unfortunately corrupted memory cannot be restored with software. You can however test which RAM drive it is, using memtest86 by going through each RAM drive one by one.
when you find the broken drive, it will need to remain disconnected from the motherboard, or it will need to be replaced.
Good luck at least.
It just fills the memory banks with random data, reads that data and clears it several times in order to test how well it works. (it expects a specific result, if it matches, your ram is fine, if it doesn't match, there is corruption.)
That is how it works. It runs several tests (using various algorythms.
To avoid false negatives, usually computer testers run the program multiple times. (by default it runs it three times in a row, you can do more if you wish)
you get the results displayed but can also save them in a file on the usb drive.
Not sure what there is to research about.
Chances are that, if you try to install it to the USB that it fails due to memory being corrupt, so make sure you run a hash check (for file integrity).
Windows memory tester sucks, because it is slow.
Due to this the ram isn't even getting warm and so it is a lot less likely corruption is found.
memtes86 can use all of your processor's capability, so its a lot faster.
You don't need the 'professional' version. The free version is enough.
Note that here I assume you used some kind of disk S.M.A.R.T. status check tool to see if the disks are corrupt anywhere as well. (I mentioned crystaldiskinfo which can do this, but there is also speedfan and some others. Some motherboard utilities might also have this capability) and I assume the disks themselves are fine.
Considering memtest86: There is also memtest86+, it is somewhat similar but its currently a lot less easy to install.
also: https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/which-is-better-ram-corruption-tester-windows-memory-diagnostic-or-memtest86.3555049/
If you want, you can read other people's opinions.
edit: note that 'boot image verification' will always fail, because some of what it writes to your usb cannot be accessed by the tool, so there is always a difference between the hash of the image (.img) and the hash you get from the files on the usb, so to test the hashes, you need to run a hash check on some of the files you extract from the image and compare it with some of the files on the usb
edit 2: To be honest there is one other explanation that could cause corruption, but it is the most unlikely scenario, especially if it is just this random. You'd expect like almost everything to be corrupt in that scenario (and so windows wouldn't even boot).
edit 3: https://forums.passmark.com/memtest86/50317-need-help-interpreting-memtest-results
here's how it looks when you find errors.
as you can see in that screenshot, he was running the program 4 times in a row, and the first time it didn't even find any error (false negatives) (likely because the memory bank wasn't warm enough yet)
As for false positives, that can happen if the usb is corrupt (but then it'd be like as if the entire ram stick is corrupt everywhere, and the results always happen at random places)
Remember that if you do find a result, then the same test during the same step should encounter the exact same error in the same place. Because you're testing more than once, you will see the difference between falsepositives and good results. The best way to avoid false positives is by hash checking the integrity of the usb.
so far, not working it keeps becoming corrupt and unreadable x.x also learned the hard way that the USB Harddisk is too powerful for the Laptop to handle and isnt able to run the harddisk so yeah thats not working x.x it keeps freezing up and crashing x.x
knowing the random write speed and lack of accuracy the disk tends to have part of me has considered that potentially the page file on the system disk itself could potentially be the culprit as that would be one of the major points where the memory interacts directly with the secondary memory, otherwise it has to be something with the ram or processor. alt for all being their connections to the Motherboard themselves or the system bios. as well still need to integrity check my kingston and the 2terrabyte usb harddrive disk well, id really rather not do ANYTHING to it, it had some pretty freaky warnings on the label especially about dropping it or unplugging it, apparently you have to wait for it to stop spinning before you can safetly disconnect it x,x
Due to this I thought you already tested if it was paging on the system disk.
hm, yeah well... fans (as well as what makes the disk spin) are power generators. They stop spinning pretty quickly though due to the magnetic fields.
You don't need to touch any of the ram drives to test and see if it is memory corruption in your actual (physical) ram banks though. You only need to remove them to find the bugged culprit, that is, if one of them is corrupt.
I won't ask you to face your fears or something like that, but know at least that it is extremely hard to break stuff, at least if the motherboard is properly soldered. Also warning stickers aren't supposed to invoke fear. They're supposed to remind you what could potentially break them. I mean, if you handle them the same as you do with cooking pots, you'll likely be fine.
Currently I just recommend testing stuff, disable virtual memory (page file) on the system disk, and if it still happens its likely one of your physical ram banks. You won't need to nessecarily test your physical ram at this point since you don't plan on repairing it yourself. The professional IT repair guys can figure it out, but with sufficient hints they can figure it out faster. (so it helps if you test memory anyway, but yeah...)
Still, if it is virtual memory (page file), you won't need to bring it to the IT pros. If you keep paging disabled, it might just fix the problem, but do note that it also means that a section on the HDD may have been overused and so, it says something about the lifespan left for it unfortunately.
Anyway good luck. I think I said enough. I wasn't trying to put pressure on you in case you wonder, just trying to see how far my knowledge could help you with this.