Scammer access and drive problem

[sorcerer]

A customer brought a laptop in and told me that she had embarrassingly been the victim of a scam and allowed remote access into her machine. She quickly became suspicious about what they were doing and pulled the plug, but obviously too late.

Rightly or wrongly I always recommend a nuke and pave for these situations because there's just no way to know if they've left anything on there, so that's what I did.

After a complete reformat and clean, fresh install of Windows (10) the laptop should have been running like a new one but it felt surprisingly slow. An extended test with GSmartControl showed no disk errors at all, so I then ran a test with HDD Tune, the result of which you see below:



I have to confess to being no expert in using this software but I didn't think that the graph looked very good, so I followed the advice I've seen on here many times, i.e. if you even suspect the drive, change it.

I picked up a new drive yesterday, did the install, but still wasn't happy so again I ran tests. GSmart was clear but HDD Tune gave this graph which, to my untrained eye, looks even worse than the one above!





I took it back this afternoon and got a replacement but against all the odds, this second new drive has a trace that looks almost exactly like the other new one!





All these tests were run in 'Safe Mode' and with nothing else going on at the time - I didn't even move the mouse a millimetre!

So, is my inexperienced and untrained eye misinterpreting these graphs or do I really have two new drives that are faulty in almost exactly the same way? And what do you make of the original drive's graph? Was I correct in suspecting it to be the cause of a new Windows 10 installation being slow?

 

[Porthos]

In my opinion, The issue is a 1tb WD Blue 5400 rpm drive and not a SSD.
Win 10 will run slow until all updates including the Windows store are compleate.

 

[nerd2u]

Anything installed on a 5400 rpm drive is going to be slow. You can try tweaking the windows 10 install to squeeze some extra speed out of it but I second an SSD drive

Sent from my SM-G870W using Tapatalk

 

[sorcerer]

I know what you're both saying and I agree, but the issue of changing to SSD is a bit of a red herring here.

I've dealt with numerous machines that have had WD Blues in and not been as slow as this. Plus, the customer doesn't want to pay the price of a 1TB SSD and I think that's fair enough - and yes, she wants a 1TB same as the original as she's actually using 670GB at the moment.

So, I know I've asked for help and I'm truly grateful for any that comes along, but please let's not get bogged down in a "Put an SSD in it" conversation and let's just concentrate on the issue of test results. Yes, a WD Blue is slower than an SSD but they were perfectly adequate before SSDs came along.

 

[sorcerer]

Win 10 will run slow until all updates including the Windows store are compleate.

I know it'll be slow while it's connected to the internet and actively receiving and installing updates but I didn't connect to the internet to allow that to happen for that very reason, so are you saying that slower running will be it's normal state until updates are done, or only when actually doing them? And how would that relate to the drive test graphs?

 

[sorcerer]

Anything installed on a 5400 rpm drive is going to be slow

Again, I agree, but that's what the original drive was and it wasn't as slow as it is now, so something is clearly amiss that can't be blamed just on it being a WD Blue 5400 drive.

 

[Porthos]

she's actually using 670GB at the moment.

Thank goodness I do not see that amount of data. That would cost my clients $300 (.50 a gig) in just data transfer fees above the cost of the clean install.

 

[Porthos]

I know it'll be slow while it's connected to the internet and actively receiving and installing updates but I didn't connect to the internet to allow that to happen for that very reason, so are you saying that slower running will be it's normal state until updates are done, or only when actually doing them? And how would that relate to the drive test graphs?

Could not say for sure. What Win build is it? Is the data back on it?

 

[Joep]

A customer brought a laptop in and told me that she had embarrassingly been the victim of a scam and allowed remote access into her machine. She quickly became suspicious about what they were doing and pulled the plug, but obviously too late.

Rightly or wrongly I always recommend a nuke and pave for these situations because there's just no way to know if they've left anything on there, so that's what I did.

After a complete reformat and clean, fresh install of Windows (10) the laptop should have been running like a new one but it felt surprisingly slow. An extended test with GSmartControl showed no disk errors at all, so I then ran a test with HDD Tune, the result of which you see below:

View attachment 10878

I have to confess to being no expert in using this software but I didn't think that the graph looked very good, so I followed the advice I've seen on here many times, i.e. if you even suspect the drive, change it.

Looks fine.

 

[Markverhyden]

There's more to a laptop than the HD. Make? Model? Processor? RAM? Neighbor across the street bought her daughter a 15" HP Walmart special that had 2gb RAM and a Celeron. Nothing will make it work significantly better. I even showed her by putting in an SSD. It cut the boot time from some 5 minutes to maybe 3. Otherwise it was still a dog.

 

[fincoder]

the laptop should have been running like a new one but it felt surprisingly slow

What CPU and how much RAM? Which Windows 10 version (e.g. 1809 or 1903)? Which version was running before reinstall?
I would have made sure all updates and drivers were installed, then after settling it might have returned to the speed before reinstall.

An extended test with GSmartControl showed no disk errors at all, so I then ran a test with HDD Tune

If you have no drive errors but just suspect a slow drive then I'd suggest replacing with SSD or SSHD, because that's the only way you know for sure the computer will be noticeably faster. Otherwise replacing the HDD with another similar one risks the same result.

The HDD Tune results with the new drives (mostly speeds of 100 or 250) look better than with the original drive (speed degrading from 100 to 20). The fact that the new drive didn't really improve speeds should have told you the drive isn't the issue. Technically the new drive is a bit faster but there must be another reason for the slowness.

 

[nerd2u]

So you have actual hard numbers for the speeds of the original drive or are you simply going on the assumption the original was operating faster.



Sent from my SM-G870W using Tapatalk

 

[MDD1963]

It takes a Linux installation for a 5400 rpm drive to still feel snappy....

Win10 on an older laptop with only 4 GB of RAM on a 5400 rpm drive rivals watching dinosaur tracks harden in the mud!

 

[MDD1963]

a 1 TB Corsair MX500 is $119....

Life is too short to contend w/ 5400 rpm laptop drives anymore...

 

[sorcerer]

For goodness sake, PLEASE, just take it that the laptop is never going to go like greased lightning but she was happy with how it has performed in the past. Perhaps more importantly, so was I when I've had this machine in the workshop previously.

As my old granny used to say, "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear".

It is what it is - a budget machine - but it used to be faster than it is now so something, somewhere is amiss and causing this slowness, but it's not the fact that it's a design flaw and it left the factory as a slow machine, nor is it the fact that it doesn't have an SSD, because it has been faster than this in the past.

When I get back home I'll get you the other details such as CPU, RAM etc., but please don't just say something along the lines of, "Well what do you expect with such a low spec"? It's not the spec of the machine that's the problem - it's just not running as fast as when it left the factory and I don't know why.

If it helps, think of it as a $20,000 machine that's dropped to the performance of a $10,000 machine

 

[sorcerer]

Looks fine.

What does, the original or the new?

 

[Joep]

What does, the original or the new?

I replied to score of original, but yeah I can see how that isn't very clear.

 

[Moltuae]

Plus, the customer doesn't want to pay the price of a 1TB SSD and I think that's fair enough - and yes, she wants a 1TB same as the original as she's actually using 670GB at the moment.

Does the laptop have an optical drive?

If it does, you could install the 1TB in there (using an adaptor) and install a cheaper (~120GB) SSD in place of the main drive. If the customer still occasionally uses the CD/DVD ROM drive, get an external caddy for it (Note: Make sure you get the correct height adaptor and caddy for the drive).

 

[HFultzjr]

Pull the drive(s) and test on another machine.
Make sure you are comparing same SATA speeds ( I vs. II vs. III ), on your test machine.
Compare the results.
That will rule out processes running, updates, etc.
Then at the very least get a WD 7200rpm black.

 

[mikeroq]

Did you actually see the "speed" of this laptop before you nuked it or are you assuming it was faster?
Did you take a full image of the drive? Restore it back and see what it feels like.
What are the specs of this laptop? You said it's a budget laptop so I doubt it's going to feel "fast" with low specs and a 5400 rpm drive.
According to the tests it looks like the new drives are faster than the old one.

Personally I almost always replaced 5400rpm drives with 7200rpm before, and now with SSDs.