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#1
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hard drive too slow
I have a fairly new computer with a western digital caviar SE16 250GB 7.2K
rpm 16MB hard drive. I sometimes get lag when the drive usage goes to 100% (as shown by the nvidia monitor), and it sometimes goes on for up to 30 seconds. On advice from others I have used the perfectdisk defragger, and the WD smart utility which passes it, though I think that just means the smart functions function and doesnt say anything about whether they go as fast as they should. Is there any utility that can measure the throughput and access times to see if they are slower than spec? |
#3
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hard drive too slow
adam russell wrote:
I have a fairly new computer with a western digital caviar SE16 250GB 7.2K rpm 16MB hard drive. I sometimes get lag when the drive usage goes to 100% (as shown by the nvidia monitor), and it sometimes goes on for up to 30 seconds. On advice from others I have used the perfectdisk defragger, and the WD smart utility which passes it, though I think that just means the smart functions function and doesnt say anything about whether they go as fast as they should. Is there any utility that can measure the throughput and access times to see if they are slower than spec? You can try HDTach, and tell us the beginning and ending values of the displayed curve. Try the "long test", to smooth the curve out a bit. I just tried this an hour ago, on a new disk I got. http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public...request=HdTach Paul |
#4
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hard drive too slow
"Paul" wrote in message ... adam russell wrote: I have a fairly new computer with a western digital caviar SE16 250GB 7.2K rpm 16MB hard drive. I sometimes get lag when the drive usage goes to 100% (as shown by the nvidia monitor), and it sometimes goes on for up to 30 seconds. On advice from others I have used the perfectdisk defragger, and the WD smart utility which passes it, though I think that just means the smart functions function and doesnt say anything about whether they go as fast as they should. Is there any utility that can measure the throughput and access times to see if they are slower than spec? You can try HDTach, and tell us the beginning and ending values of the displayed curve. The curve went from 65MB/s to 35MB/sec. (Random access 13.5ms, cpu utilization 1%, average read 55MB/sec) Im not sure if that is low. The spec says: Data Transfer Rate (maximum) - Buffer to Host 300 MB/s max - Buffer to Disk KS / AAKS 748 Mbits/s max / 972 Mbits/s max Should I be seeing like 6x the speed Im getting or am I reading the spec wrong? Spec for my drive is he http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc....i=&p_topview=1 Hmm, thats a long one. Its a western digital model 2500KS. |
#5
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hard drive too slow
adam russell wrote:
"Paul" wrote in message ... adam russell wrote: I have a fairly new computer with a western digital caviar SE16 250GB 7.2K rpm 16MB hard drive. I sometimes get lag when the drive usage goes to 100% (as shown by the nvidia monitor), and it sometimes goes on for up to 30 seconds. On advice from others I have used the perfectdisk defragger, and the WD smart utility which passes it, though I think that just means the smart functions function and doesnt say anything about whether they go as fast as they should. Is there any utility that can measure the throughput and access times to see if they are slower than spec? You can try HDTach, and tell us the beginning and ending values of the displayed curve. The curve went from 65MB/s to 35MB/sec. (Random access 13.5ms, cpu utilization 1%, average read 55MB/sec) Im not sure if that is low. The spec says: Data Transfer Rate (maximum) - Buffer to Host 300 MB/s max - Buffer to Disk KS / AAKS 748 Mbits/s max / 972 Mbits/s max Should I be seeing like 6x the speed Im getting or am I reading the spec wrong? Spec for my drive is he http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc....p?p_faqid=1343 Hmm, thats a long one. Its a western digital model 2500KS. (For those Western Digital FAQ links, you can snip them off just after the p_faqid field. I had to snip your link above, so my USENET server would accept this post.) My old 80GB drive (the boot drive) gave 57MB/sec begin, 30MB/sec end, 15.8ms random access. (Seagate ST380011A 80GB 7200PRM) I used the long test, and there were still a significant number of dips in the performance curve. My brand new 80GB drive (thinner than the old one) gave 76MB/sec begin, 37MB/sec end, 14.8ms random access. (Seagate ST380215A 80GB 7200RPM) The curve for this drive was much smoother, and showed "zoned" behavior - a curve with stairsteps in it. There was only one downward "spike" near the end of the disk. A much smoother curve, implying no sector replacements or multiple read attempts as may have happened on my boot disk. Many of the specs in print, are useless without further information. The 300MB/sec is the SATA cable rate, and assumes there are no other bottlenecks at the physical level. The memory cache on the controller PCB, may be able to handle the 300MB/sec, or a somewhat lower figure. Or, the storage interface chip on the motherboard, may not be able to sustain that rate. There are many possibilities. Some people seem to think the cache on the hard drive controller board is a big deal, but I cannot really tell. The drive cannot sustain a read or write at 300MB/sec, and is limited by the media rate. The diameter of the platter changes with track being accessed, and the data rate shown in HDTach reflects that. Also, the head rate quoted in the WD spec, would be for some kind of encoded symbols. There might be 11 bits or 12 bits, to represent a byte of user data, so the spec they quote is deceptive. Also, in the page you provided, the KS model and the AAKS model, have an exact 1.3 relationship between rates, but I'm not at all sure what that means. I don't know what the differences would be, between the two of them. So your test results, have better random access than mine, and your transfer rate is in between my two generations of drives. You may have to look elsewhere, for performance issues. The way the file system works, the driver timing out when trying to talk to the disk, and having to retry, stuff like that. Not all issues that can arise on the computer, are easy to benchmark. While HDTach is nice (because it is free), there are some other tests, such as what the statistical spread on access times is. If there is the odd "long access", that implies an operation did not complete on the first attempt. Having to wait for the platter to rotate one more time, to retry a sector read, is what could put those dips in the transfer rate curve. I'm a little bit surprised, how "jumpy" the plot is for my boot drive, but since the boot drive has not complained to me about it, I'm not concerned :-) In the "good old days", someone might advise doing a "low level format", as a way of starting all over again, then restore from your backups. But a low level format now, doesn't do the same thing it used to. In the old days, one surface was reserved for servo info, and a low level format meant rewriting everything on the other surfaces. At the current time, servo info is "embedded" with the sector formatting on each surface, and that means it cannot be erased and rewritten. That stuff is written at the factory, and never gets changed after that. I'm not even sure, whether a low level format wipes all record of "grown defects", so that the spared out sectors are "unspared" or not. It should, at least, take all the sectors with a "pending" status, and do something to them, so at least those questionable sectors, that might take many tries to read, would have their status changed. In your situation, I don't know where I'd turn next. When I have a computer problem, I usually try to study it for a while, to understand what might be the underlying cause. But certainly, if time is money, just swapping in another drive, and transferring the contents over, may be a more pragmatic solution, than the way I might attack it :-) I have run into some motherboards, where from day one, each attempt by the user, to access the disk, is met by 5 seconds of "silence", where nothing happens. Then the disk access completes. Needless to say, this is extremely annoying, and for most people, would mean a death sentence for the motherboard in question. I have never seen one of those kinds of problems resolved. It could be a driver problem, but I've never seen any follow up posts with any good news. Paul |
#6
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hard drive too slow
On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 07:17:16 -0700, "adam russell"
wrote: "Paul" wrote in message ... adam russell wrote: I have a fairly new computer with a western digital caviar SE16 250GB 7.2K rpm 16MB hard drive. I sometimes get lag when the drive usage goes to 100% (as shown by the nvidia monitor), and it sometimes goes on for up to 30 seconds. On advice from others I have used the perfectdisk defragger, and the WD smart utility which passes it, though I think that just means the smart functions function and doesnt say anything about whether they go as fast as they should. Is there any utility that can measure the throughput and access times to see if they are slower than spec? You can try HDTach, and tell us the beginning and ending values of the displayed curve. The curve went from 65MB/s to 35MB/sec. (Random access 13.5ms, cpu utilization 1%, average read 55MB/sec) Im not sure if that is low. The spec says: Data Transfer Rate (maximum) - Buffer to Host 300 MB/s max - Buffer to Disk KS / AAKS 748 Mbits/s max / 972 Mbits/s max Should I be seeing like 6x the speed Im getting or am I reading the spec wrong? Spec for my drive is he http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc....i=&p_topview=1 Hmm, thats a long one. Its a western digital model 2500KS. The performance numbers are within the expected range, at this point you might consider problems with OS, background apps running, drive fitness problems (run the HDD manufacturer's diagnostics), bus/cable/drive response problems (see Event Viewer in Windows). If you have a spare data cable try it, or if not then reseat the present cable at both ends. |
#7
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hard drive too slow
"kony" wrote in message ... On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 07:17:16 -0700, "adam russell" wrote: "Paul" wrote in message ... adam russell wrote: I have a fairly new computer with a western digital caviar SE16 250GB 7.2K rpm 16MB hard drive. I sometimes get lag when the drive usage goes to 100% (as shown by the nvidia monitor), and it sometimes goes on for up to 30 seconds. On advice from others I have used the perfectdisk defragger, and the WD smart utility which passes it, though I think that just means the smart functions function and doesnt say anything about whether they go as fast as they should. Is there any utility that can measure the throughput and access times to see if they are slower than spec? You can try HDTach, and tell us the beginning and ending values of the displayed curve. The curve went from 65MB/s to 35MB/sec. (Random access 13.5ms, cpu utilization 1%, average read 55MB/sec) Im not sure if that is low. The spec says: Data Transfer Rate (maximum) - Buffer to Host 300 MB/s max - Buffer to Disk KS / AAKS 748 Mbits/s max / 972 Mbits/s max Should I be seeing like 6x the speed Im getting or am I reading the spec wrong? Spec for my drive is he http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc....i=&p_topview=1 Hmm, thats a long one. Its a western digital model 2500KS. The performance numbers are within the expected range, .. advice snipped Could you help me understand how you know the 55MB/sec average is within expected range? From the specs I cant see where the conclusion comes from. Or is it just a personal experience judgement? |
#8
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hard drive too slow
On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 22:27:40 -0700, "adam russell"
wrote: Could you help me understand how you know the 55MB/sec average is within expected range? From the specs I cant see where the conclusion comes from. Or is it just a personal experience judgement? That's what a modern desktop drive is expected to achieve. Whether some other drive is slightly faster is irrelevant as you would not perceive slowness from this minor difference. Performance degradation enough to feel it's problematic will come from another source. |
#9
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hard drive too slow
kony wrote:
On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 22:27:40 -0700, "adam russell" wrote: Could you help me understand how you know the 55MB/sec average is within expected range? From the specs I cant see where the conclusion comes from. Or is it just a personal experience judgement? That's what a modern desktop drive is expected to achieve. Whether some other drive is slightly faster is irrelevant as you would not perceive slowness from this minor difference. Performance degradation enough to feel it's problematic will come from another source. Let's try my measurements as an example. My old disk, is this one: http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/...st380011a.html INTERNAL TRANSFER RATE (Mbytes/sec) ______up to 85.4 SUSTAINED TRANSFER RATE (MB/sec)__________up to 58 My measured sustained peak (at the beginning of the disk) was 57MB/sec, which agrees very closely with the "sustained" number. The "sustained" value is what we can see as users. The "internal" transfer rate, is bits coming off the disk in encoded form, with sector headers (overhead) and the like. I doubt I could do justice to explaining the ratio. Instead, I'll just divide 85.4 by 58 and I get 1.47. Now, we'll try the WD2500KS results. 748 Mbits/s is the "internal" rate for that drive. 748/8 = 93.5MB/sec internal. The measured result was 65MB/sec at the beginning of the disk. 93.5 divided by 65 = 1.44, and that suggests to me that the measured 65MB/sec is consistent with the manufacturers 748 internal number. So the raw transfer rate of the disk appears "normal" from that perspective. It could be that operations leading up to the driver carrying out an operation on the disk, are slower than they should be. One thing the disk benchmark tells me, is you are media limited (which is normal). If you get a declining curve, that is media limited. If you get a flat line, and a reduced transfer rate, that tells you that either a lower UDMA mode is being used, or you've slipped into PIO mode. PIO mode is a flat line, at about 4MB/sec transfer rate. The other info to be obtained from HDTach, is the "smoothness" of the plot. Now, I have to be careful, not to abuse this observation, because again, the person carrying out the benchmark, could have background tasks, or other system problems (spurious interrupts), that could pollute the results. But I was pretty impressed with the fact, that my old disk is "bumpy", while the new disk, with the exception of one tiny spot, was smooth. That could be evidence of either sector substitution, or even repeated attempts to read a weak sector. Is there anything in the Event Viewer to suggest a problem ? What operations are slow ? Paul |
#10
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hard drive too slow
adam russell wrote:
I have a fairly new computer with a western digital caviar SE16 250GB 7.2K rpm 16MB hard drive. I sometimes get lag when the drive usage goes to 100% (as shown by the nvidia monitor), and it sometimes goes on for up to 30 seconds. On advice from others I have used the perfectdisk defragger, and the WD smart utility which passes it, though I think that just means the smart functions function and doesnt say anything about whether they go as fast as they should. Is there any utility that can measure the throughput and access times to see if they are slower than spec? Have you upgraded the Nvidia chipset drivers at any point? If so, reinstall the same version then reboot. If this fails try slightly older drivers. I've seen several instances where benchmarks and SMART data looked fine but AV playback was horrible. |
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