HD xfer rates?

  • Thread starter Thread starter David G
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David G

My Dell 8400 came with a SATA HD, and I installed a second parallel ATA HD to use for data backup. I am experiencing data xfer rates from the SATA drive to the backup of around 1.5 - 1.6 MB/sec. Does this seem right? Seems slow to me. Is there something I can do to speed up the xfer rate?

TIA
David
 
A typical SATA/PATA (non WD Raptor) HD today should be at least 25-35MB/sec.
Either your calculations are incorrect, or something else is going on there.
You might want to check out Hd Tach 3 (
http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach ) and make
sure things are working normally.

Jim


My Dell 8400 came with a SATA HD, and I installed a second parallel ATA HD
to use for data backup. I am experiencing data xfer rates from the SATA
drive to the backup of around 1.5 - 1.6 MB/sec. Does this seem right?
Seems slow to me. Is there something I can do to speed up the xfer rate?

TIA
David
 
Benchmarking each drive with HDtach 3 is useful to test the
performance of the individual disk drives and interfaces. Poor
results may well indicate why the data rates the OP is experiencing
are lower than expected.

However, even if the benchmark results are acceptable, you should
*not* expect that such transfer rates will be achieved by a 'real-
world' application program.

Example: One of my systems has two hard drives. HDtach reports
average transfer rates of more than 50 MB/sec for each drive. A
drag and drop copy of a large folder of files between the two
drives runs at average 7 MB/sec.

==================================================================
 
All IDE drives should run at 100MB/s,maxtors with the right controller run at
133MB/s,SATA 150MB/s ,SCSI 320MB/s.If you run much lower(1.5-1.6) then
update youre drivers for the controller.
 
Andrew said:
All IDE drives should run at 100MB/s,maxtors with the right controller run at
133MB/s,SATA 150MB/s ,SCSI 320MB/s.If you run much lower(1.5-1.6) then
update youre drivers for the controller.

:
Click to expand...
Those data rates are a bit misleading, since they are for the bus, not for
HDs on the bus. On this PC, for example, here are some rates for the Boot
HD measured with HDtach:

- Bus data rate = 150 MB/s (SATA-150)
- Peak read rate = 120 MB/s (HD buffer to PC RAM)
- STR outer band = 72 MB/s (STR = Sustained Transfer Rate)
- STR inner band = 53 MB/s
- STR average = 65 MB/s

And some rates to copy a 1 GB file using drag'n'drop under XP:

- Boot HD to Data HD = 53 MB/s (the Data HD is a slower SATA HD)
- Data HD to Boot HD = 45 MB/s (asymmetric rates are common)
- Boot HD to Boot HD = 22 MB/s (note the cost of seeks)
 
Check the properties of the ATA HD. Is it running DMA 5 or is it running less, possible even PIO mode? Note that placing a hard drive on the same controller as a slower device, like a CD/DVD reader/writer can sometimes degrade the HD performance. If that is the case, try temporailiy disconecting the optical drive. If that fixes the problem, then look for aother ATA controller to permanently separate the two.

Also, for a test, try turning off your antivirus protection. Some antivirus software check every file on every copy. That is generally a good thing, but depending on the CPU it could slow things a lot.
My Dell 8400 came with a SATA HD, and I installed a second parallel ATA HD to use for data backup. I am experiencing data xfer rates from the SATA drive to the backup of around 1.5 - 1.6 MB/sec. Does this seem right? Seems slow to me. Is there something I can do to speed up the xfer rate?

TIA
David
 
Using HD Tach 3, I got an average 1.7 MB/sec read rate on the backup drive.
My SATA HD tests in at about 130 MB/sec.
The drivers are updated as far as I know (using Device Manager).
I have disabled my antivirus during the test to no avail.
There is something amiss here, but I am not knowledgeable enough to correct it.
Help?

David


A typical SATA/PATA (non WD Raptor) HD today should be at least 25-35MB/sec.
Either your calculations are incorrect, or something else is going on there.
You might want to check out Hd Tach 3 (
http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach ) and make
sure things are working normally.

Jim


My Dell 8400 came with a SATA HD, and I installed a second parallel ATA HD
to use for data backup. I am experiencing data xfer rates from the SATA
drive to the backup of around 1.5 - 1.6 MB/sec. Does this seem right?
Seems slow to me. Is there something I can do to speed up the xfer rate?

TIA
David
 
David said:
/Using HD Tach 3, I got an average 1.7 MB/sec read rate on the backup
drive./
/My SATA HD tests in at about 130 MB/sec./
/The drivers are updated as far as I know (using Device Manager)./
/I have disabled my antivirus during the test to no avail./
/There is something amiss here, but I am not knowledgeable enough to
correct it./
/Help?/
//
/David/
//

A typical SATA/PATA (non WD Raptor) HD today should be at least
25-35MB/sec.
Either your calculations are incorrect, or something else is going on
there.
You might want to check out Hd Tach 3 (
http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach ) and make
sure things are working normally.

Jim


"David G" <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
wrote in message
My Dell 8400 came with a SATA HD, and I installed a second parallel ATA HD
to use for data backup. I am experiencing data xfer rates from the SATA
drive to the backup of around 1.5 - 1.6 MB/sec. Does this seem right?
Seems slow to me. Is there something I can do to speed up the xfer rate?

TIA
David
Click to expand...
That's horribly slow, and HDtach is clearly pointing at the PATA HD
instead of the SATA HD as the culprit. Check to see if the PATA HD
is using PIO mode (slow) instead of DMA, and check to see if the
PATA HD has write caching enabled (caching helps performance).

What is the PATA HD? If it is an antique, 1-2 MB/s may be correct;
for anything <10 years old, that indicates a problem.
 
Bob, I need a little educating here. What is PIO and DMA mode? I have not found anything refering to this in Device Manager --- am I looking in the right place? The drive is a WD 80GB bought new about a year ago.

David


/Using HD Tach 3, I got an average 1.7 MB/sec read rate on the backup
drive./
/My SATA HD tests in at about 130 MB/sec./
/The drivers are updated as far as I know (using Device Manager)./
/I have disabled my antivirus during the test to no avail./
/There is something amiss here, but I am not knowledgeable enough to
correct it./
/Help?/
//
/David/
//

A typical SATA/PATA (non WD Raptor) HD today should be at least
25-35MB/sec.
Either your calculations are incorrect, or something else is going on
there.
You might want to check out Hd Tach 3 (
http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach ) and make
sure things are working normally.

Jim


"David G" <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
wrote in message
My Dell 8400 came with a SATA HD, and I installed a second parallel ATA HD
to use for data backup. I am experiencing data xfer rates from the SATA
drive to the backup of around 1.5 - 1.6 MB/sec. Does this seem right?
Seems slow to me. Is there something I can do to speed up the xfer rate?

TIA
David
Click to expand...
That's horribly slow, and HDtach is clearly pointing at the PATA HD
instead of the SATA HD as the culprit. Check to see if the PATA HD
is using PIO mode (slow) instead of DMA, and check to see if the
PATA HD has write caching enabled (caching helps performance).

What is the PATA HD? If it is an antique, 1-2 MB/s may be correct;
for anything <10 years old, that indicates a problem.
 
David said:
/Bob, I need a little educating here. What is PIO and DMA mode? I
have not found anything refering to this in Device Manager --- am I
looking in the right place? The drive is a WD 80GB bought new about a
year ago./
//
/David/
Click to expand...


With DMA (Direct Memory Access), the CPU tells the HD (Hard Drive) the
params
of the transfer: size, direction, starting address on HD, and starting
address
in RAM (Random Access Memory is used by the CPU); the HD executes the
transfer
by directly accessing RAM.

With PIO (Programmed Input Output), the CPU accesses RAM for the HD. As you
might imagine, data rate suffers a lot when the CPU has to fondle every
byte.
Also, PIO mode uses a lot of CPU power assisting the HD this way.

Under Device Manager, expand the IDE Controllers item, and right-click
on the
IDE Channel items, then click on the Properties of the channel your slow HD
uses - that will show you (under the Advanced Settings tab) whether it uses
PIO or DMA mode and the specific flavor of that mode. With a newish HD, I
would expect to see the Current Transfer Mode = Ultra DMA Mode 5 (or 4).
 
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