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#1
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Hard drive speed issues
Hi,
I have a Seagate 7200 SATA 250 GB Hard drive. It is almost two years old. The problem I am facing is that sometimes the hard drive gives me really slow reading and writing speed. The extreme case was when it was giving me less than 1MB/S (Megabyte per sec) writing speed but that was only once. I used a diagnosis utility and according to it, the 80 GB SATA Hard drive regularly should benchmark more than 30 MB/S as writing speed. True to the claim, last week my hard disk has clocked 31MB/S too... but at times it appears really slow. Just yesterday it was clocking in the range of 15-17 MB/S...However this did not reflect any problems in using Windows.. it went on the usual..but I am concerned why is this change in the speed of the hard drive for no reason. I have defragmented it, I have reinstalled the OS so I am certain that this is not a software issue. Is my hard drive dying? Should I just buy a new one? Please advise. I really could do with some opinions. Thank you, Aditya |
#2
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Hard drive speed issues
Aditya Kumar wrote:
Hi, I have a Seagate 7200 SATA 250 GB Hard drive. It is almost two years old. The problem I am facing is that sometimes the hard drive gives me really slow reading and writing speed. The extreme case was when it was giving me less than 1MB/S (Megabyte per sec) writing speed but that was only once. I used a diagnosis utility and according to it, the 80 GB SATA Hard drive regularly should benchmark more than 30 MB/S as writing speed. True to the claim, last week my hard disk has clocked 31MB/S too... but at times it appears really slow. Just yesterday it was clocking in the range of 15-17 MB/S...However this did not reflect any problems in using Windows.. it went on the usual..but I am concerned why is this change in the speed of the hard drive for no reason. I have defragmented it, I have reinstalled the OS so I am certain that this is not a software issue. Is my hard drive dying? Should I just buy a new one? Please advise. I really could do with some opinions. Thank you, Aditya Download a copy of HDTune (if you haven't already). http://www.hdtune.com/hdtune_255.exe The "benchmark" tab, shows overall transfer performance. The "Info" tab shows "supported" and "active" transfer modes. You'd want that to mention UDMA for example (mine does for my IDE ribbon cable drives). The "Health" tab accesses the SMART statistics on the hard drive. Are any of the statistics showing a failure condition ? The "Error Scan" provides a way to read all the sectors. The color of the blocks on the screen, shows the status. ******* If you need another test, Seagate offers free diagnostic programs. I have a Seatools for DOS floppy diskette, that I use occasionally. http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/sup...oads/seatools/ HTH, Paul |
#3
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Hard drive speed issues
On May 14, 11:34*am, Paul wrote:
Aditya Kumar wrote: Hi, I have a Seagate 7200 SATA 250 GB Hard drive. It is almost two years old. The problem I am facing is that sometimes the hard drive gives me really slow reading and writing speed. The extreme case was when it was giving me less than 1MB/S (Megabyte per sec) writing speed but that was only once. I used a diagnosis utility and according to it, the 80 GB SATA Hard drive regularly should benchmark more than 30 MB/S as writing speed. True to the claim, last week my hard disk has clocked 31MB/S too... but at times it appears really slow. Just yesterday it was clocking in the range of 15-17 MB/S...However this did not reflect any problems in using Windows.. it went on the usual..but I am concerned why is this change in the speed of the hard drive for no reason. I have defragmented it, I have reinstalled the OS so I am certain that this is not a software issue. Is my hard drive dying? Should I just buy a new one? Please advise. I really could do with some opinions. Thank you, Aditya Download a copy of HDTune (if you haven't already). http://www.hdtune.com/hdtune_255.exe The "benchmark" tab, shows overall transfer performance. The "Info" tab shows "supported" and "active" transfer modes. You'd want that to mention UDMA for example (mine does for my IDE ribbon cable drives). The "Health" tab accesses the SMART statistics on the hard drive. Are any of the statistics showing a failure condition ? The "Error Scan" provides a way to read all the sectors. The color of the blocks on the screen, shows the status. ******* If you need another test, Seagate offers free diagnostic programs. I have a Seatools for DOS floppy diskette, that I use occasionally. http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/sup...oads/seatools/ HTH, * * * Paul Paul, Thanks for this. No, I haven't used hdtune yet, I didn't know it existed. I am at work now, so once I am home I will do this first thing and would post the results here. Thanks for your message again, guess it would prove to be of much help! Thanks, Aditya |
#4
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Hard drive speed issues
"Aditya Kumar" wrote in message ... Hi, I have a Seagate 7200 SATA 250 GB Hard drive. It is almost two years old. The problem I am facing is that sometimes the hard drive gives me really slow reading and writing speed. The extreme case was when it was giving me less than 1MB/S (Megabyte per sec) writing speed but that was only once. I used a diagnosis utility and according to it, the 80 GB SATA Hard drive regularly should benchmark more than 30 MB/S as writing speed. True to the claim, last week my hard disk has clocked 31MB/S too... but at times it appears really slow. Just yesterday it was clocking in the range of 15-17 MB/S...However this did not reflect any problems in using Windows.. it went on the usual..but I am concerned why is this change in the speed of the hard drive for no reason. I have defragmented it, I have reinstalled the OS so I am certain that this is not a software issue. Is my hard drive dying? Should I just buy a new one? Please advise. I really could do with some opinions. Thank you, Aditya The standard Windows defragmenting utility is pretty useless, it defrags but leaves the files still scattered everywhere so you rarely get much of a speed up as the HD head has to whizz about all over the place. If you use JKDefrag it will defrag AND move all the files neatly to the fast end of the disk which can be twice as quick as the slow end. JKDefrag is free and best used with the also free JKDefragGUI to make it easier to use. I just defragged a 2yr old HP laptop (not mine) that was in a right state and desperately slow, the Win defrag tool sped up loading programs by 10-20% max, but JKDefrag sped it up by a factor of 2 on the slowest to load programs. One other thing to check in Device Manager is that the drive controller hasn't gone into PIO mode. |
#5
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Hard drive speed issues
On Wed, 13 May 2009 23:08:59 -0700 (PDT), Aditya Kumar
wrote: Hi, I have a Seagate 7200 SATA 250 GB Hard drive. It is almost two years old. The problem I am facing is that sometimes the hard drive gives me really slow reading and writing speed. The extreme case was when it was giving me less than 1MB/S (Megabyte per sec) writing speed but that was only once. I used a diagnosis utility and according to it, the 80 GB SATA Hard drive regularly should benchmark more than 30 MB/S as writing speed. True to the claim, last week my hard disk has clocked 31MB/S too... but at times it appears really slow. Just yesterday it was clocking in the range of 15-17 MB/S...However this did not reflect any problems in using Windows.. it went on the usual..but I am concerned why is this change in the speed of the hard drive for no reason. I have defragmented it, I have reinstalled the OS so I am certain that this is not a software issue. Is my hard drive dying? Should I just buy a new one? Please advise. I really could do with some opinions. Thank you, Aditya In addition to what others suggested, check Windows Event Viewer for reports of a drive problem. Sometimes progressively failing drives will keep working for awhile but have strange dropouts periodically. |
#6
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Hard drive speed issues
On May 15, 2:15*am, kony wrote:
On Wed, 13 May 2009 23:08:59 -0700 (PDT), Aditya Kumar wrote: Hi, I have a Seagate 7200 SATA 250 GB Hard drive. It is almost two years old. The problem I am facing is that sometimes the hard drive gives me really slow reading and writing speed. The extreme case was when it was giving me less than 1MB/S (Megabyte per sec) writing speed but that was only once. I used a diagnosis utility and according to it, the 80 GB SATA Hard drive regularly should benchmark more than 30 MB/S as writing speed. True to the claim, last week my hard disk has clocked 31MB/S too... but at times it appears really slow. Just yesterday it was clocking in the range of 15-17 MB/S...However this did not reflect any problems in using Windows.. it went on the usual..but I am concerned why is this change in the speed of the hard drive for no reason. I have defragmented it, I have reinstalled the OS so I am certain that this is not a software issue. Is my hard drive dying? Should I just buy a new one? Please advise. I really could do with some opinions. Thank you, Aditya In addition to what others suggested, check Windows Event Viewer for reports of a drive problem. *Sometimes progressively failing drives will keep working for awhile but have strange dropouts periodically. @all, I ran HD Tune pro. The mode is set to UDMA and the health status is overall "OK". But here's the thing. I ran the Error Scan and there are 4 red boxes there. What are these, "bad sectors"? Each block is of 95 MB. Do you think this is the problem? What should I do now? Thanks for your responses.... Aditya |
#7
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Hard drive speed issues
Aditya Kumar wrote:
On May 15, 2:15 am, kony wrote: On Wed, 13 May 2009 23:08:59 -0700 (PDT), Aditya Kumar wrote: Hi, I have a Seagate 7200 SATA 250 GB Hard drive. It is almost two years old. The problem I am facing is that sometimes the hard drive gives me really slow reading and writing speed. The extreme case was when it was giving me less than 1MB/S (Megabyte per sec) writing speed but that was only once. I used a diagnosis utility and according to it, the 80 GB SATA Hard drive regularly should benchmark more than 30 MB/S as writing speed. True to the claim, last week my hard disk has clocked 31MB/S too... but at times it appears really slow. Just yesterday it was clocking in the range of 15-17 MB/S...However this did not reflect any problems in using Windows.. it went on the usual..but I am concerned why is this change in the speed of the hard drive for no reason. I have defragmented it, I have reinstalled the OS so I am certain that this is not a software issue. Is my hard drive dying? Should I just buy a new one? Please advise. I really could do with some opinions. Thank you, Aditya In addition to what others suggested, check Windows Event Viewer for reports of a drive problem. Sometimes progressively failing drives will keep working for awhile but have strange dropouts periodically. @all, I ran HD Tune pro. The mode is set to UDMA and the health status is overall "OK". But here's the thing. I ran the Error Scan and there are 4 red boxes there. What are these, "bad sectors"? Each block is of 95 MB. Do you think this is the problem? What should I do now? Thanks for your responses.... Aditya Make sure your valuable personal data is backed up ? Do you at least have a copy of your email database file, and any personal data files ? ******* The red blocks mean the scan found CRC errors. At least one sector in the 95MB, must have been bad. If one of your personal data files was stored there, the file would be corrupted. Depending on the file type, the blemish might not be too serious, or it could be catastrophic (file becomes unusable). In the worst case, the computer might not be able to boot from the drive any more. The bad sectors, could also be in an area of the disk, where no file is currently stored. If that is the case, then no harm done (for now). I replace hard drives at regular intervals, and usually before they get that bad. A new hard drive, in USD, costs from $40 to $100, and is cheaper than paying a data recovery firm $500 to $1000, to try to get back lost data. On average, I buy two new hard drives per year, and my storage requirements are pretty modest (no video or music collection). To move data from the old drive to the new, Seagate offers DiscWizard if you buy one of their drives. http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.js...00dd04090aRCRD I move data using Linux "dd". If there are red blocks showing, then I'd have to use something like "dd_rescue", to skip over the bad blocks. The overall transfer, using that "dd" method, could be quite slow. The DiscWizard is a file by file transfer, and should go faster. I cannot predict what it will do, if DiscWizard hits a red block. Presumably the transferred file will be corrupted as well. It all depends on whether a red block, is in the middle of a real file or not. Paul |
#8
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Hard drive speed issues
On May 15, 11:01*am, Paul wrote:
Aditya Kumar wrote: On May 15, 2:15 am, kony wrote: On Wed, 13 May 2009 23:08:59 -0700 (PDT), Aditya Kumar wrote: Hi, I have a Seagate 7200 SATA 250 GB Hard drive. It is almost two years old. The problem I am facing is that sometimes the hard drive gives me really slow reading and writing speed. The extreme case was when it was giving me less than 1MB/S (Megabyte per sec) writing speed but that was only once. I used a diagnosis utility and according to it, the 80 GB SATA Hard drive regularly should benchmark more than 30 MB/S as writing speed. True to the claim, last week my hard disk has clocked 31MB/S too... but at times it appears really slow. Just yesterday it was clocking in the range of 15-17 MB/S...However this did not reflect any problems in using Windows.. it went on the usual..but I am concerned why is this change in the speed of the hard drive for no reason. I have defragmented it, I have reinstalled the OS so I am certain that this is not a software issue. Is my hard drive dying? Should I just buy a new one? Please advise. I really could do with some opinions. Thank you, Aditya In addition to what others suggested, check Windows Event Viewer for reports of a drive problem. *Sometimes progressively failing drives will keep working for awhile but have strange dropouts periodically. @all, I ran HD Tune pro. The mode is set to UDMA and the health status is overall "OK". But here's the thing. I ran the Error Scan and there are 4 red boxes there. What are these, "bad sectors"? Each block is of 95 MB. Do you think this is the problem? What should I do now? Thanks for your responses.... Aditya Make sure your valuable personal data is backed up ? Do you at least have a copy of your email database file, and any personal data files ? ******* The red blocks mean the scan found CRC errors. At least one sector in the 95MB, must have been bad. If one of your personal data files was stored there, the file would be corrupted. Depending on the file type, the blemish might not be too serious, or it could be catastrophic (file becomes unusable). In the worst case, the computer might not be able to boot from the drive any more. The bad sectors, could also be in an area of the disk, where no file is currently stored. If that is the case, then no harm done (for now). I replace hard drives at regular intervals, and usually before they get that bad. A new hard drive, in USD, costs from $40 to $100, and is cheaper than paying a data recovery firm $500 to $1000, to try to get back lost data. On average, I buy two new hard drives per year, and my storage requirements are pretty modest (no video or music collection). To move data from the old drive to the new, Seagate offers DiscWizard if you buy one of their drives. http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.js...=DiscWizard&vg.... I move data using Linux "dd". If there are red blocks showing, then I'd have to use something like "dd_rescue", to skip over the bad blocks. The overall transfer, using that "dd" method, could be quite slow. The DiscWizard is a file by file transfer, and should go faster. I cannot predict what it will do, if DiscWizard hits a red block. Presumably the transferred file will be corrupted as well. It all depends on whether a red block, is in the middle of a real file or not. * * Paul Paul, all: Thanks for your response. The red blocks (all of them) were scattered (two of them together) and they were in the first half of the whole diagram -- what I think it means is that the problem would be in C drive. Most of my data is on the D Drive (which is the half of the drive and I reckon physically it should be the latter half of it). The C drive has recently got a new OS installed on it so there is nothing critical. What do you think I could do now? Is there a way these sectors can be "locked" so that nothing can be written on them? In good old days I think chkdsk could do that, no? I am using Vista on this. Would it be a good idea to do the "blocking" of these sectors so that nothing can be written on it, take the drive out and put it in a USB-SATA box and use it as a external drive? I could get a new Hard drive for the PC. I have another HDD on this PC which is Linux formatted and I use Ubuntu on that. I usually use Ubuntu and mount this Windows Hard drive to get the data whenever I need. Thanks again, Aditya |
#9
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Hard drive speed issues
Aditya Kumar wrote:
Paul, all: Thanks for your response. The red blocks (all of them) were scattered (two of them together) and they were in the first half of the whole diagram -- what I think it means is that the problem would be in C drive. Most of my data is on the D Drive (which is the half of the drive and I reckon physically it should be the latter half of it). The C drive has recently got a new OS installed on it so there is nothing critical. What do you think I could do now? Is there a way these sectors can be "locked" so that nothing can be written on them? In good old days I think chkdsk could do that, no? I am using Vista on this. Would it be a good idea to do the "blocking" of these sectors so that nothing can be written on it, take the drive out and put it in a USB-SATA box and use it as a external drive? I could get a new Hard drive for the PC. I have another HDD on this PC which is Linux formatted and I use Ubuntu on that. I usually use Ubuntu and mount this Windows Hard drive to get the data whenever I need. Thanks again, Aditya I don't see anything to suggest the old "file marking" scheme. I did work with an OS years ago, that would change the file name of a file to "file.name.bad", so that an errored sector would be locked away in the file and not used again. But on modern disks, there are sparing schemes, and a bad sector can be substituted by a good one. The disk keeps a table of bad sectors, and their spares, so that more good sectors are the result. If the sparing scheme runs out of spare sectors, then the sector would stay bad. And in that case, I don't know if there is a way to mark the permanently bad sector or not. chkdsk /r would appear to be the command that scans the surface. I've never used it. And the program "Spinrite", attempts to read the sector many times, on the chance that the sector will read correctly at some point. I'd rather spend my money on a new drive, then buy a copy of Spinrite. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chkdsk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinrite I would make sure my data was safe first, before doing any further experiments with a drive like that. In other words, buy a new drive, and copy the data over. *Then*, you can run chkdsk on the old drive. There is a danger, that when chkdsk runs, it could actually do damage to the file system, during its attempts to correct things. You want your data to be *safe*, before attempting repairs. According to this, chkdsk can mark "bad" sectors, so maybe there is a facility in the file system, to avoid the sectors in question. http://www.vfrazee.com/ms-dos/6.22/help/chkdsk.htm Paul |
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