Slow Hard Drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Daniel
  • Start date Start date
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Daniel

Hi

I have Vista Ultimate, my PC is a Dual Core Pentium Extreme 3.2 Gig with
4Gig RAM.

I have two SATA Hard Drives, both Western Digital, my C: Drive is a
10,000RPM the second drive is 7,200RPM,
both are about 40% full.

When I run HD Tack I get much better performance from the 7,200 drive, about
75 Mb/s than from the 10,000 drive, 55Mb/s,I have run tests on the drives
and both are testing as okay, no errors or issues.

I am looking for ideas on how to get better performance from the 10,000RPM
drive.

Any help will be appreciated.

regrads

Daniel
 
I do not believe HD Tach, if that is program you are using, is compatible
with Vista, at least not Version 4 according to the web site.
In any event you are using Vista which for reasons known only to Microsoft
was released with performance that is time by your wristwatch slower than
the same system running XP for any and all disk access operations.
The beta SP1 in my personal experience does nothing to fix this, which is
among the most noxious flaws of the total waste that is Vista. It is not
clear to me if this is because there are too many backgound/accessory
processes running or the basic drivers just stink.
 
This was not a request for a rant on the virtues of Vista, which IMHO
is fine and SP1 makes it even better, I asked for help!!

HDTACH can be run in XP Compatibility mode and the issue is the difference
between the drives,
with the 10,000 being slower.

thanks

Daniel
 
Hi Daniel,

There are other factors besides rotational speed to be taken into
consideration when dealing with hard drives. These include capacity and, more
importantly, cache size. A drive with a larger cache size but a lower
rotational speed can, in some circumstances, outperform a similar drive which
has a faster rotational speed but a smaller cache size.
Dwarf
 
Thank, my 10K has a cache of 16MB and the 72K has 8MB, so the results look
even worse.

cheers

Daniel
 
For one thing, if you are running HD Tach in compatibility mode, can you be
sure you are getting accurate results? I would not be. I would seek out a
utility that runs in native Vista mode.
 
Richard

you are right but HDTACH is the only one I know, and because it is
comparative between two hard drives I figured, perhaps wrongly, that it was
a valid comparison.

Can you recommend a Vista program?

regards

Daniel
Richard G. Harper said:
For one thing, if you are running HD Tach in compatibility mode, can you
be sure you are getting accurate results? I would not be. I would seek
out a utility that runs in native Vista mode.

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
* NEW! Catch my blog ... http://msmvps.com/blogs/rgharper/
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* The Website - http://rgharper.mvps.org/


Daniel said:
Hi

I have Vista Ultimate, my PC is a Dual Core Pentium Extreme 3.2 Gig with
4Gig RAM.

I have two SATA Hard Drives, both Western Digital, my C: Drive is a
10,000RPM the second drive is 7,200RPM,
both are about 40% full.

When I run HD Tack I get much better performance from the 7,200 drive,
about 75 Mb/s than from the 10,000 drive, 55Mb/s,I have run tests on the
drives and both are testing as okay, no errors or issues.

I am looking for ideas on how to get better performance from the
10,000RPM drive.

Any help will be appreciated.

regrads

Daniel
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Frankly, no. I can't say that I've benchmarked a hard drive in years. You
could always try a Google search.

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
* NEW! Catch my blog ... http://msmvps.com/blogs/rgharper/
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* The Website - http://rgharper.mvps.org/


Daniel said:
Richard

you are right but HDTACH is the only one I know, and because it is
comparative between two hard drives I figured, perhaps wrongly, that it
was a valid comparison.

Can you recommend a Vista program?

regards

Daniel
Richard G. Harper said:
For one thing, if you are running HD Tach in compatibility mode, can you
be sure you are getting accurate results? I would not be. I would seek
out a utility that runs in native Vista mode.

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
* NEW! Catch my blog ... http://msmvps.com/blogs/rgharper/
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* The Website - http://rgharper.mvps.org/


Daniel said:
Hi

I have Vista Ultimate, my PC is a Dual Core Pentium Extreme 3.2 Gig with
4Gig RAM.

I have two SATA Hard Drives, both Western Digital, my C: Drive is a
10,000RPM the second drive is 7,200RPM,
both are about 40% full.

When I run HD Tack I get much better performance from the 7,200 drive,
about 75 Mb/s than from the 10,000 drive, 55Mb/s,I have run tests on the
drives and both are testing as okay, no errors or issues.

I am looking for ideas on how to get better performance from the
10,000RPM drive.

Any help will be appreciated.

regrads

Daniel
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
The problem is that the 10,000 rpm drives are only SATA1, and the 7200 rpm
drives are SATA2.
Testing my WD740ADFD gives me
Random access= 8.2ms Average read= 72.0 MB/s Burst speed= 130.5 MB/s
Testing my ST3300822AS gives me
Random access= 13.2ms Average read= 50.0 MB/s Burst speed= 231.7 MB/s

Richard G. Harper said:
Frankly, no. I can't say that I've benchmarked a hard drive in years.
You could always try a Google search.

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
* NEW! Catch my blog ... http://msmvps.com/blogs/rgharper/
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* The Website - http://rgharper.mvps.org/


Daniel said:
Richard

you are right but HDTACH is the only one I know, and because it is
comparative between two hard drives I figured, perhaps wrongly, that it
was a valid comparison.

Can you recommend a Vista program?

regards

Daniel
Richard G. Harper said:
For one thing, if you are running HD Tach in compatibility mode, can you
be sure you are getting accurate results? I would not be. I would seek
out a utility that runs in native Vista mode.

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
* NEW! Catch my blog ... http://msmvps.com/blogs/rgharper/
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* The Website - http://rgharper.mvps.org/


Hi

I have Vista Ultimate, my PC is a Dual Core Pentium Extreme 3.2 Gig
with 4Gig RAM.

I have two SATA Hard Drives, both Western Digital, my C: Drive is a
10,000RPM the second drive is 7,200RPM,
both are about 40% full.

When I run HD Tack I get much better performance from the 7,200 drive,
about 75 Mb/s than from the 10,000 drive, 55Mb/s,I have run tests on
the drives and both are testing as okay, no errors or issues.

I am looking for ideas on how to get better performance from the
10,000RPM drive.

Any help will be appreciated.

regrads

Daniel
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
both of mine are SATA 1, SATA 2 was not out when I bought the 7.2K

cheers

Daniel
CMShepard said:
The problem is that the 10,000 rpm drives are only SATA1, and the 7200 rpm
drives are SATA2.
Testing my WD740ADFD gives me
Random access= 8.2ms Average read= 72.0 MB/s Burst speed= 130.5 MB/s
Testing my ST3300822AS gives me
Random access= 13.2ms Average read= 50.0 MB/s Burst speed= 231.7 MB/s

Richard G. Harper said:
Frankly, no. I can't say that I've benchmarked a hard drive in years.
You could always try a Google search.

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
* NEW! Catch my blog ... http://msmvps.com/blogs/rgharper/
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* The Website - http://rgharper.mvps.org/


Daniel said:
Richard

you are right but HDTACH is the only one I know, and because it is
comparative between two hard drives I figured, perhaps wrongly, that it
was a valid comparison.

Can you recommend a Vista program?

regards

Daniel
For one thing, if you are running HD Tach in compatibility mode, can
you be sure you are getting accurate results? I would not be. I would
seek out a utility that runs in native Vista mode.

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
* NEW! Catch my blog ... http://msmvps.com/blogs/rgharper/
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* The Website - http://rgharper.mvps.org/


Hi

I have Vista Ultimate, my PC is a Dual Core Pentium Extreme 3.2 Gig
with 4Gig RAM.

I have two SATA Hard Drives, both Western Digital, my C: Drive is a
10,000RPM the second drive is 7,200RPM,
both are about 40% full.

When I run HD Tack I get much better performance from the 7,200 drive,
about 75 Mb/s than from the 10,000 drive, 55Mb/s,I have run tests on
the drives and both are testing as okay, no errors or issues.

I am looking for ideas on how to get better performance from the
10,000RPM drive.

Any help will be appreciated.

regrads

Daniel
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Well then, if all other things are equal except the rpm, what is it you
expect to see?
Increasing the rpm only helps the access time for seeks. If the data
transfer rate is
constrained by the interface, then what you will gain is a decrease in the
rotational
latency. What does the test show your drives random access times to be?

I will say that it is very difficult to set up a valid comparison test,
because there
are so many variables. A proper test would have both of the drives blank and
on separate identical controllers, with the OS and the test running from a
third
drive, on its own controller.

I did my test with the 10K drive as my boot drive and the 7200 drive
blank, both on the same controller. It was not a controlled test. I just did
a
simple test to get some data.

My drives are a WD 10Krpm 74GB drive and a Seagate 7200rpm 300GB drive.
Different vendors, different specs. My results are about what I expected,
though.

Perhaps you should give us more information about your setup and more
details about your test. I am running HDTach3.0.4.0 direct from the
www.simplisoftware.com website. How are your drives attached?
What motherboard are you using? I see that you are running an Intel
processor. Are you overclocking?

Daniel said:
both of mine are SATA 1, SATA 2 was not out when I bought the 7.2K

cheers

Daniel
CMShepard said:
The problem is that the 10,000 rpm drives are only SATA1, and the 7200
rpm drives are SATA2.
Testing my WD740ADFD gives me
Random access= 8.2ms Average read= 72.0 MB/s Burst speed= 130.5 MB/s
Testing my ST3300822AS gives me
Random access= 13.2ms Average read= 50.0 MB/s Burst speed= 231.7 MB/s

Richard G. Harper said:
Frankly, no. I can't say that I've benchmarked a hard drive in years.
You could always try a Google search.

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
* NEW! Catch my blog ... http://msmvps.com/blogs/rgharper/
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* The Website - http://rgharper.mvps.org/


Richard

you are right but HDTACH is the only one I know, and because it is
comparative between two hard drives I figured, perhaps wrongly, that it
was a valid comparison.

Can you recommend a Vista program?

regards

Daniel
For one thing, if you are running HD Tach in compatibility mode, can
you be sure you are getting accurate results? I would not be. I
would seek out a utility that runs in native Vista mode.

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
* NEW! Catch my blog ... http://msmvps.com/blogs/rgharper/
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* The Website - http://rgharper.mvps.org/


Hi

I have Vista Ultimate, my PC is a Dual Core Pentium Extreme 3.2 Gig
with 4Gig RAM.

I have two SATA Hard Drives, both Western Digital, my C: Drive is a
10,000RPM the second drive is 7,200RPM,
both are about 40% full.

When I run HD Tack I get much better performance from the 7,200
drive, about 75 Mb/s than from the 10,000 drive, 55Mb/s,I have run
tests on the drives and both are testing as okay, no errors or
issues.

I am looking for ideas on how to get better performance from the
10,000RPM drive.

Any help will be appreciated.

regrads

Daniel
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Hi

HDTACH results are where this all started

"When I run HD Tack I get much better performance from the 7,200 drive,
about
75 Mb/s than from the 10,000 drive, 55Mb/s,I have run tests on the drives
and both are testing as okay, no errors or issues.

The 7.2K used to be the C: drive, and I got about 75Mb/s then I had the 10K
installed and
installed the OS onto that so it is now my C: Drive.

The main issue I have is that Train Simulator gave me better performance on
the 7.2 when it was the C: drive than
I get now with the 10K as the C: drive, and general speaking it all seems
sluggish.

I have upgrade the Graphics card from a 128 MB to a 512 nVidia 8600GT and
got almost no improvement
I upgraded the CPU from a 3.2 HT to a 3.2 Dual Core with HT and still no
improvement.

Even with Drive speed check the 7.2, as the D: drive is faster that the 10K
as C: drive.

I tried installing XP but got identical results so I installed Ultimate
again, I am basically running around in circles, When I gad EIDE drives I
had a chance but these drives are SCSCI/SATA and I am totally lost, do I
need special drivers??

Any help appreciated greatly.

regards

Daniel

CMShepard said:
Well then, if all other things are equal except the rpm, what is it you
expect to see?
Increasing the rpm only helps the access time for seeks. If the data
transfer rate is
constrained by the interface, then what you will gain is a decrease in the
rotational
latency. What does the test show your drives random access times to be?

I will say that it is very difficult to set up a valid comparison test,
because there
are so many variables. A proper test would have both of the drives blank
and
on separate identical controllers, with the OS and the test running from a
third
drive, on its own controller.

I did my test with the 10K drive as my boot drive and the 7200 drive
blank, both on the same controller. It was not a controlled test. I just
did a
simple test to get some data.

My drives are a WD 10Krpm 74GB drive and a Seagate 7200rpm 300GB drive.
Different vendors, different specs. My results are about what I expected,
though.

Perhaps you should give us more information about your setup and more
details about your test. I am running HDTach3.0.4.0 direct from the
www.simplisoftware.com website. How are your drives attached?
What motherboard are you using? I see that you are running an Intel
processor. Are you overclocking?

Daniel said:
both of mine are SATA 1, SATA 2 was not out when I bought the 7.2K

cheers

Daniel
CMShepard said:
The problem is that the 10,000 rpm drives are only SATA1, and the 7200
rpm drives are SATA2.
Testing my WD740ADFD gives me
Random access= 8.2ms Average read= 72.0 MB/s Burst speed= 130.5
MB/s
Testing my ST3300822AS gives me
Random access= 13.2ms Average read= 50.0 MB/s Burst speed= 231.7 MB/s

Frankly, no. I can't say that I've benchmarked a hard drive in years.
You could always try a Google search.

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
* NEW! Catch my blog ... http://msmvps.com/blogs/rgharper/
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* The Website - http://rgharper.mvps.org/


Richard

you are right but HDTACH is the only one I know, and because it is
comparative between two hard drives I figured, perhaps wrongly, that
it was a valid comparison.

Can you recommend a Vista program?

regards

Daniel
For one thing, if you are running HD Tach in compatibility mode, can
you be sure you are getting accurate results? I would not be. I
would seek out a utility that runs in native Vista mode.

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
* NEW! Catch my blog ... http://msmvps.com/blogs/rgharper/
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* The Website - http://rgharper.mvps.org/


Hi

I have Vista Ultimate, my PC is a Dual Core Pentium Extreme 3.2 Gig
with 4Gig RAM.

I have two SATA Hard Drives, both Western Digital, my C: Drive is a
10,000RPM the second drive is 7,200RPM,
both are about 40% full.

When I run HD Tack I get much better performance from the 7,200
drive, about 75 Mb/s than from the 10,000 drive, 55Mb/s,I have run
tests on the drives and both are testing as okay, no errors or
issues.

I am looking for ideas on how to get better performance from the
10,000RPM drive.

Any help will be appreciated.

regrads

Daniel
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
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