Show us your hard drive performance

[ciphernemo]

What block size are you guys using when you test your drives. My tests have all been with 64k blocks...which is the default I believe.

I run 64KB Strip Size for my RAID 0 array of two drives, but by block size, I assume you're talking about when you partition a drive with NTFS? If so, just leave it default. The block size won't affect performance too much unless you go with extreme values here. Typically, 128KB to 64KB block/strip size is fine and default.

I took the HD out of the Intel SATA controllers and plugged into the JMicron Gigabyte SATA controllers and tested and got same results. I then loaded the Gigabyte SATA 2 driver for Vista 64 for that controller and tested and still got 25ms-30ms access times on this drive with HDTune.

I'll put Vista on the computer tomorrow and load up the tools and see what happens. The real question is "if" performance is better under Vista....would I stick with Vista...or go with slower access times and use Windows 7 instead. My gut tells me Win7...as I have never been particularly fond of Vista.

Oh well, no more time to play tonight. This has got to wait.

That's interesting that you noticed normal access/seek times on another PC. It's telling that the drivers aren't quite right on your Windows 7 install.

I'd still try to push those Vista 64-bit drivers through if possible. Run the setup for it as Administrator, use the driver update option in Device Manger, of force the drivers by right clicking on the inf files that are part of the installer and choosing "install". It's Gigabyte's fault that they haven't updated their drivers for Windows 7. They shouldn't complain since Windows 7 is supposed to show itself as kernel 6.1 (to be compatible with software looking for a Vista kernel). But perhaps the Gigabyte driver installer is verifying the O/S incorrectly by a hard-coded, sloppy detection method?

 

[pparks1]

I actually was having some trouble sleeping, so I am in the process of installing Vista right now on the box and will benchmark soon. I've got a system image of the Windows 7 install...so I can get back to that pretty quickly.

 

[ciphernemo]

I actually was having some trouble sleeping, so I am in the process of installing Vista right now on the box and will benchmark soon. I've got a system image of the Windows 7 install...so I can get back to that pretty quickly.

Good luck on it! I hope you're able to narrow down this problem. If it's reasonable access times in Vista, then it's an issues with the Windows 7 drivers you're running. If it's still too high in Vista, then it's an issue with your motherboard.

 

[pparks1]

Good luck on it! I hope you're able to narrow down this problem. If it's reasonable access times in Vista, then it's an issues with the Windows 7 drivers you're running. If it's still too high in Vista, then it's an issue with your motherboard.

Yes, that was pretty much exactly what I told my wife. 1 thing that I have noticed right off the bat, when I installed the Intel Chipset utility under Vista...it loaded close to a dozen different things. However, under Windows 7 it only loaded about 2 things. And one of those items it installed was the Southbridge drivers for the Intel controller. I'll be posting back here shortly.

 

[pparks1]

Well, I'm afraid to report that moving to Vista did NOT rectify the problem that I was having with high access times. The Intel chipset drivers did install, but when I tried the install the SATA RAID drivers I got the same result that my computer did not meet the requirements....so I am starting to wonder if you have to be running in RAID/AHCI mode to actually use that driver.

Edit: Upon closer inspection of the readme...you do have to be in RAID or AHCI mode...which I am presently not using. Guess I could test under that.

I guess I will go dig around a bit in my BIOS and see if I come across anything...but I've spent a fair amount of time there...so I don't anticipate seeing much.

Guess it's time to get in touch with Gigabyte and see if they have any suggestions. I went to their website and filled out a support request. Time will tell.

 

[ciphernemo]

Edit: Upon closer inspection of the readme...you do have to be in RAID or AHCI mode...which I am presently not using. Guess I could test under that.

I guess I will go dig around a bit in my BIOS and see if I come across anything...but I've spent a fair amount of time there...so I don't anticipate seeing much.

I think you've identified the problem.

If you're getting these high access times in IDE/Compatibility mode, chances are your Windows driver for the SATA controller chip is running in PIO mode or a low-level DMA mode instead of SATA bus speeds.

If you change your drive to AHCI mode, you'll be better off. But this might require a new install of Windows. Sometimes switching forth from IDE to AHCI mode (or vice versa) will cause an install of Windows to complain and fail to load/bluescreen, even though the data is still fine.

Try to change this in the BIOS to AHCI then do a clean install of Windows 7 and benchmark the drive's speed before installing any other chipset drivers.

 

[Phenom]

My results.

1.Vista 32 bit
2.W7RC 64 bit
3.XP 32 bit

I think i need to install W7 on the Vista drive
Although the W7 drive is mu newest.

Any recommendation on SATA2 Drives that would perform even better ?

 

[pparks1]

ciphernemo,

I have tried the AHCI mode....both with the Intel controller as well as the Gigabyte controller. I did reinstall Windows both times and my results are the same.

When running non-AHCI, I was seeing in HDTune that my drive supported UDMA Mode 6, but was running in UDMA mode 5. From what I have read, there isn't much difference between 5 and 6 and as long as you were running 1 of the other you would be fine.

Today, I'm benchmarking a Dell workstation at my office with Win7 64-bit installed. Once I get the HDTune numbers, I'm going to take out the drive and take it home with me. I'll place that into my box and load Win7 to the drive. I'll then benchmark this drive and see what happens. This will help narrow this down to the hard drive or to the controller on the mobo itself.

I suspect at this point that either my hard drive has a small issue or my mobo itself does. The 7200.12 Seagate drive has been made to be very quiet and thus this results in slower seek times (A few articles on the web have covered this)...but usually I'm reading that it's in the ballpark of 15-20ms. Not the 25-40ms that I have been seeing.

If it's the drive itself, I'll just buy an WD Caviar Black or something and relegate this drive to an external enclosure and make it a USB drive...or use it as my hard drive for my "hackintosh" experiment.

 

[nate42nd]

Here's my Patriot 128GB Torqx drive with the new v1571 firmware on it. I can't wait for RAID 0 in a couple of months.

And with the firmware that came on it. Pretty close...this one has no OS installed.

And here's what I had last (and am still using sometimes)

 

[Muad Dib]

My results.

1.Vista 32 bit
2.W7RC 64 bit
3.XP 32 bit

I think i need to install W7 on the Vista drive
Although the W7 drive is mu newest.

Any recommendation on SATA2 Drives that would perform even better ?

I would like to know HOW you go those results on W7 64 Bit WDC 500GB AAKS...

Here are mine:

​

 

[Phenom]

Only thing i can think off is maybe firmware then

 

[Muad Dib]

Only thing i can think off is maybe firmware then

Hmmm.... HD Tune show my firmware version is 12.0. Would you mind checking your version please?

Thanks!

 

[pparks1]

Well, I've identified the problem as some type of incompatibility between my Seagate 7200.12 and my motherboard.

I got a Seagate 7200.10 160GB from work and put that into my computer and ran HDTune. My average access time was identical to what it tested out at work...16.1ms. Which for an older drive is perfectly acceptable.

I put my Seagate 7200.12 back into my machine as a secondary drive (not running the OS) and ran HDtune again and here are the results. As you can see, I've still got slower access times than what I should be seeing.

So, since I need a second hard drive for another project where speed isn't near as critical, I'm going to use this Seagate for that instead and just pick up a WD Caviar Black for Windows 7.

 

[pparks1]

Alright, I picked up a Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black from the local store and installed on the machine. My speeds are just fine by me (about 90MB/s), but my access times are down to 13.7ms That certainly is better then 30ms.

 

[Phenom]

Hmmm.... HD Tune show my firmware version is 12.0. Would you mind checking your version please?

Thanks!

Sorry for the slow reply.
This is my info page about the WD.
Hope it helps.

- Phenom

 

[ussj4brolli]

Mine.
U think these are ok?
2x 1tb barracuda 7200.12 raid1

 

[Tyderion]

here is mine ...
its a 10k rpm WD raptor drive (74 GB)
The access time is good as well as the maximum read speed (on online reviews of this HD I've seen similar speeds) but my minimum read speed is just ... horrifying :S
The drive is newly formatted (with win7 build 7600 installation) so it can't be fragmentation or something like this...

Anybody got an idea why this could be like this?

 

[ciphernemo]

Alright, I picked up a Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black from the local store and installed on the machine. My speeds are just fine by me (about 90MB/s), but my access times are down to 13.7ms That certainly is better then 30ms.

I'm glad you were able to isolate it. If that Seagate drive is still under warranty, I'd RMA it. The Western Digital Black 1TB is an excellent drive.

 

[bloke]

here is mine ...
its a 10k rpm WD raptor drive (74 GB)
The access time is good as well as the maximum read speed (on online reviews of this HD I've seen similar speeds) but my minimum read speed is just ... horrifying :S
The drive is newly formatted (with win7 build 7600 installation) so it can't be fragmentation or something like this...

Anybody got an idea why this could be like this?

dont worry about your min speeds, that is simply the hdd being accessed by the o/s. you need to look at the average min speeds, in your case it is around 35-40mbps. you cant help the fluctuant droops unless you boot from another physical drive then test the other drive not in use in hd tune.

even if you disable most background services, disable pagefile and what ever else, you will still get droops from the o/s access.

 

[pparks1]

I'm glad you were able to isolate it. If that Seagate drive is still under warranty, I'd RMA it. The Western Digital Black 1TB is an excellent drive.

I got the Seagate drive less than 2 weeks ago from NewEgg when I built the machine. However, since the drive technically works in my other machine at home and a test machine at work properly, NewEgg isn't going to accept it without charging me a 15% restocking fee.

The drive works just fine as far as I am concerned. It just doesn't work properly with my gigabyte mobo for some reason. So, I plan to put it into my primary Linux box which is running an Asus board and a 320GB WD drive currently. Then, I'm going to put that 320GB WD into my new box as the hard drive for my OSX install that I plan to do on my box.