Why is does this hard drive have slow access times?

[paul1149]

I've got a Seagate 160gb (ST9160301AS) hard drive that has a good SMART report - no bad sectors, no crc errors, etc. And it has a respectable 50MB/s throughput, over a nice smooth curve. But it's access times are really bad, at 26+ ms. I've chkdsk /r'd it, defragged and optimized it, but its performance remains abysmal. Is there anything I can do for it?

 

[DeBaas]

Goto gparted.org, download/create a bootable version.
In gparted create a new partition tabel, create a new ntfs partition and try your acces time's again.

 

[paul1149]

What would partitions and file systems have to do with hardware response times?

 

[DeBaas]

What would partitions and file systems have to do with hardware response times?

Possible wrong partitioning with extra sector/cylinder translation.
Also read http://disablehddapm.blogspot.nl/

 

[Layback Bear]

A ST9160301AS is a 5400 rpm drive and they are just slow.

From post #1

I've got a Seagate 160gb (ST9160301AS) hard drive

 

[paul1149]

I've been through dozens of these drives and never had one with access times of 26ms.

I've got the drive tethered to my desktop and after backing up with play with the mbr and partitions.

I also had turned off APM via HDDScan and it did nothing. I'm also not sure whether HDDScan's control of that setting is permanent or not.

 

[paul1149]

Ok, I deleted all partitions and created a new NTFS partition. Then I ran the test again, with no change. The Before pic is first. This is over a USB 3.0 connection, which I think doesn't restrict anything. IAC, I've seen access times of 10ms less over the same connection on other drives.

 

[DeBaas]

http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/disc/manuals/notebook/momentus/5400.6%20%28Wyatt%29/100528359d.pdf

Look at the specs on page 9 and 10.

Not only creating a new partition but also a new partition table ?
Don't know how HD Tune is testing but a full HD stroke can take up to 30 msec.

More info about HDD optimizing programs:

http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/smartmontools/wiki

 

[paul1149]

This drive's average access times approach that of what they call full stroke reads - the worst case scenario, when the target is on the other end of the drive. Maybe the arm of the drive is experiencing friction or other problems. Another interesting thing is how similar those two profiles are.

 

[user31]

Looks like it might be time for a defrag. Not sure if it is a mechanical problem.

 

[Layback Bear]

Post #1 states the drive has been defragged.

 

[user31]

Was your post edited? I didn't see that. Ok.

 

[paul1149]

For the record, I upped the RAM to 2GB (this was an Intel Atom, 1GB netbook). I created a 500mb RAM disk to handle %TEMP% and browser cache chores. I also set the machine to defrag and optimize on a continual basis during idle time. The result is pretty good. With jobs that access many files there are delays. But most of the time the response is very decent, even quite good.