Severe disk-reading performance problem

[TorreyBob]

I have a severe problem where reading a large file is fine for a short while, then it stalls, and takes forever to finish. This means things like Media Center and Media Player are intolerable.

I've described all the details, including perfmon.exe graphs, in the file attached to this posting.

Anyone who can shed some light on this will have my immense thanks.

Bob

 

[Petey7]

Do you have defrag set to run automatically or ran it yourself in a while? Might speed things up a bit. Which of your two drives are the files on and what us the speed of those drives?

 

[Mellon Head]

I had this happen a few weeks ago with a bad SATA cable. I thought the drive was bricked. Check your cables and make sure they're plugged in right and haven't come loose.

 

[TorreyBob]

Do you have defrag set to run automatically or ran it yourself in a while? Might speed things up a bit. Which of your two drives are the files on and what us the speed of those drives?

Defrag runs automatically and there is virtually no fragmentation. Besides, even if it were fragmented, that wouldn't explain how the reading goes essentially to zero for a period of time.

Also, as I said in the problem statement, I replicated the problem on different drives. I.e., drive A-->A fails, B-->B fails, and A-->B fails.

Regarding drive speeds, they're medium speed drives, but when the transfers start, they're copying from source to destination on the same drive at about 23-25 MBps. After it stalls, it's down to 0 MBps for seconds or even minutes, so that's certainly not an issue with the speed of the drives.

 

[Petey7]

Sounds like the power cable or the SATA cables are either not connected properly or going bad.

 

[TorreyBob]

Thanks to those who offered their ideas.

It wasn't a cable problem, but turns out to have been the SATA drive, and I'm pretty sure it's the drive electronics and not the heads or platters. (There is absolutely no problem writing to the drive, but if the drive has been idle for a while, then starting to read a file is fine for a few seconds, then rapidly slows and stalls entirely.)

 

[Mellon Head]

Well, it's too bad about the drive, but I'm glad you were able to figure it out.