Windows 7: slow copying between partitions

mobius101 · 10 Jul 2012

Hi, I have a sata HD which is fairly old (circa 2 years) and I was wondering is it normal that copying speed from one to another partition is 22 MB/s?How can I test it?Thanks.

solarmystic · 10 Jul 2012

Hello again mobius101,

As I've mentioned in the other thread about your Video playing woes, we need to have your complete system specs to get a general idea of what your system is or isn't capable of.

Please complete your My system specs with the same tutorial I linked to in the other thread:-

System Info - See Your System Specs

mobius101 · 10 Jul 2012

Momentarily I'm checking my HD with a HDD scan program it would seem that it requiers a lots of time and I'm doing just the read test.Should I do a surface and S.M.A.R.T. extended test next?

solarmystic · 10 Jul 2012

If you wish, but that will take hours to complete, and you'll have to leave your PC on overnight...

22 MB/s copy speeds from one partition to the other on the same hard disk can be normal depending on the location and destination of the data on your hard disk platter; the further the distance between the data to be copied and the location of copy on the platter, the slower the speed.

Another good software to test your HDD performance is this:-

CrystalDiskMark - Software - Crystal Dew World

whs · 10 Jul 2012

Copying between 2 partitions on the same disk is slow in nature (unless the disk is a SSD). You are pulling the access arm away with every operation, so what do you expect. If you enable 'write caching' (in Device manager > disk properties > Policies) that may help a little.

It is often faster to first copy to a different disk and then copy from there to the original disk. Or get a SSD.

mobius101 · 10 Jul 2012

I'm worried cause it use to copy with more than 80mbs and HDD sentinel has found bad sectors last year but I cant use it now since its expensive, can this crystal dew... check same things or should I finish with manufacturers program first? and can you explain in few words to me what does smart and surface test mean exactly?
Hdd sentinel has a option to kinda refresh a partition without erasing everything (I'm not sure of the exact name of that function) how can I do the same?
I know these questions are a bit dumb but I really wanna know : )

solarmystic · 10 Jul 2012

From the good ol' wiki:-

Quote:

S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology; often written as SMART) is a monitoring system for computer hard disk drives to detect and report on various indicators of reliability, in the hope of anticipating failures.

When a failure is anticipated by S.M.A.R.T., the user may choose to replace the drive to avoid unexpected outage and data loss. The manufacturer may be able to use the S.M.A.R.T. data to discover where faults lie and prevent them from recurring in future drive designs.

mobius101 · 10 Jul 2012

Thanks, BTW I'm copying from one HD to another and it start with 70-80 and it drops after few seconds to 30 mbs so I think there is something quite wrong here!

whs · 10 Jul 2012

See whether a defrag will help.

Golden · 10 Jul 2012

Quote: Originally Posted by mobius101

....start with 70-80 and it drops after few seconds to 30

That could be normal - it depends on the volume of files, and file sizes. The faster speed is often referred to as the burst speed, which drops off to a smaller number which is referred to as the sustained speed, but usually this is only noticeable with large files.

Wolfgang mentioned defragmentation - in addition, you might also want to perform a chkdsk /R on the disk/s if there are bad sectors.

Regards,
Golden

Windows 7: slow copying between partitions

slow copying between partitions problems?