Solved File Transfer speed slows down over time.

[imeem]

Is this normal? Over a long period of time, my file transfer/copying speed slows down. For example, at the beginning it's 80-90 mb/s. Then like 5-10 mins later it goes to 30 mb/s or lower. I notice this for big files, not so much with smaller files.

I tried with my internal hard drive and the same hard drive in a enclosure via esata.

This is annoying especially you need to transfer over 100 GBs of data...

I notices this when copying/transferring files from my internal Seagate drive to my external WD drive and vice versa.

 

[centaur78]

Have you done Checkdisk to see if there is any errors??

Use this to post a snapshot of the SMART values of the drive you are referring to.....

What Temp is your HDD running on??

 

[imeem]

Checked for errors and none found. Here is the S.m.a.r.t. results that i got from speedfan: HDDStatus - Tool to check hard disk status, health and reliability

Pic is from crystal disk.

Also, this drive was originally from a My Book Essential usb 2.0 WDBACW0010HBK. but I took it out of it's original enclosure.

 

[centaur78]

well i need the SMART for the Seagate Barracuda,,,, and the one you showed here the external drive...

If you see crystal info... click on the second hard drive on the top... where it says caution...\

Post the pic here again

 

[paulpicks21]

What are the quoted speeds for your drive?

Usually the "sustained" speeds are considerbly lower.

I have always found transfers start off fast and slow after a few minutes.

 

[imeem]

well i need the SMART for the Seagate Barracuda,,,, and the one you showed here the external drive...

If you see crystal info... click on the second hard drive on the top... where it says caution...\

Post the pic here again

but my question is referring to my external drive tho.

What are the quoted speeds for your drive?

Usually the "sustained" speeds are considerbly lower.

I have always found transfers start off fast and slow after a few minutes.

I have no idea. srry

 

[centaur78]

yes i understand

WD is fine... there is not issue with it..... but if your are copying from the seagate to your WD... then there is a problem.... because... if the other drive has bad sectors... then your file transfer will take ages...

So if you let me knwo the SMART values of the other driver... i can advice

 

[imeem]

K here's the report on my internal drive: HDDStatus - Tool to check hard disk status, health and reliability

 

[centaur78]

There you go

you have "Reallocated sector counts"... the raw value is 45 (in decimel)... way above the Threshold value of 36..... thats an warning for a drive failure..

Please back up any files from this drive asap.... and get it replaced if under warranty

That also explains.... why you will have a slow speed of transfer from your seagate to WD

 

[imeem]

There you go

you have "Reallocated sector counts"... the raw value is 45 (in decimel)... way above the Threshold value of 36..... thats an warning for a drive failure..

Please back up any files from this drive asap.... and get it replaced if under warranty

That also explains.... why you will have a slow speed of transfer from your seagate to WD

k thx. Is there anything i can do other than back up my drive? Like run check disk/fix errors and stuff?

 

[centaur78]

Well it bad sector...

if it more of surface errors you can do a checkdisk to clear this off...

but from the looks of it...it more hardware...

just give a shot with chkdsk and let me know

 

[imeem]

Well it bad sector...

if it more of surface errors you can do a checkdisk to clear this off...

but from the looks of it...it more hardware...

just give a shot with chkdsk and let me know

i left the 2 boxes unchecked and scanned and said there was no errors.

 

[centaur78]

Well this should explain it better

You can't get rid of the smart errors using checkdisk. The HD firmware will do transparent bad sector reallocation, outside of windows control. There is reserve space on the disk for it to be able to transparently do this until that area of the disk fills up. SMART will have thresholds in place, once the reallocated sector count gets high enough it will trigger the warning/error. The bad sectors still shouldn't be visible to windows at this point.

If it ever gets to the point where windows can see bad sectors (ie you can use checkdisk to find them and mark them as bad), the area assigned for re-allocation has filled up and the HD can't do it transparently any more, and its time to chuck the disk.

 

[centaur78]

and this is the wikipedia definition of reallocated sector count

Count of reallocated sectors. When the hard drive finds a read/write/verification error, it marks that sector as "reallocated" and transfers data to a special reserved area (spare area). This process is also known as remapping, and reallocated sectors are called "remaps". The raw value normally represents a count of the bad sectors that have been found and remapped. Thus, the higher the attribute value, the more sectors the drive has had to reallocate. This allows a drive with bad sectors to continue operation; however, a drive which has had any reallocations at all is significantly more likely to fail in the near future.[2] While primarily used as a metric of the life expectancy of the drive, this number also affects performance. As the count of reallocated sectors increases, the read/write speed tends to become worse because the drive head is forced to seek to the reserved area whenever a remap is accessed.

 

[GeneO]

Your speed issue may not have anything to do with the reallocated sectors. You may not have anything to fix. The drive has sectors in reserve that it uses to replace bad ones when it detects them. Those could even be from the factory, but it probably means it has detected quite a few bad sectors and replaced them.

You can go to Seagate and get seatools to run a long drive test, but but you should back up the data first.

 

[centaur78]

GeneO

The reallocated sector count raw value is 45 and the threshold limit is 36.. which mean its 9 more than the available reserved spare space for allocation.... This could very well be scattered anywhere on the disk... and not necessary all together..

try running a file transfer on a drive with Bad sector..you will see a considerable decrease in the speed of the transfer... thats because the drive head is forced to seek the reserved area..

This drive maybe able to run for years or maybe days with these bad sectors... we cant be sure.. when it would fail...This is just an indication of an impending drive failure...

 

[GeneO]

GeneO

The reallocated sector count raw value is 45 and the threshold limit is 36.. which mean its 9 more than the available reserved spare space for allocation.... This could very well be scattered anywhere on the disk... and not necessary all together..

try running a file transfer on a drive with Bad sector..you will see a considerable decrease in the speed of the transfer... thats because the drive head is forced to seek the reserved area..

This drive maybe able to run for years or maybe days with these bad sectors... we cant be sure.. when it would fail...This is just an indication of an impending drive failure...

That doesn't make sense. The SMART threshold does not equal what the drive has reserved - obviously since the drive has reallocated more than the threshold. The reallocated sectors will not slow the drive down but if the drive comes across new ones it will. So if it still transfers slowly and the reallocated sector count does not increase, then the speed has nothing to do with this.

The transfer speed behavior is not abnormal IME. Transfer speed calculation often starts out optimistic as it si filling buffer space etc. then decreases. If the files are not very big, the overhead of processing each file can be significant. The data gets moved from the source to memory then from memory to the destination. It is not uncommon for copying data to see around 1/2 the maximum transfer speed of the disk in my experience.

 

[centaur78]

GeneO

If you have a better solution to the user's problem... please feel free to reopen the thread by informing imeem about it...

 

[imeem]

You can go to Seagate and get seatools to run a long drive test, but but you should back up the data first.

K running seatools now. Give me a few hours.

EDIT: Long test said it passed.

 

[GeneO]

Has your reallocated sector count increased?

You might try your disk read rate with HDTune (free version). It will test the rate from one end of the platter to the other.

Cheers