Terrible HDD Performance in Windows 7, help

[Davst]

Windows 7 Disk performance is Horrible.

My system:
Windows: Windows 7 Professional x64 (6.1 Build 7600) (Obtained from Microsoft MSDN Academic Alliance)
Processor: Core 2 Duo e7400
Ram: 4GB DDR2
Mobo: Gigabyte P31-DS3L
Graphics: Asus 9800GT 512 MB

Prior to installing i moved all my files around on my Sata disk (averaging about 40-50 mb/sec in XP according to windows copy) After the install of Windows 7 I copied files back to their locations on my system drive (Average was 15 mb/sec according to windows, what the hell?)

Also I'm having issues that while copying i wasn't able to stream video via my smb share without it being choppy, and also if uysing any web browser while doing disc intensive actions the browser would go into "Not responding" mode.

This is further illustrated by that when I work in Adobe After Effects, if i move the timeline slider to fast (disc access intensive) the program will instantly go into Not responding mode and I'll have to restart it.

I've tried to fix this with several methods, among them turning off write cache buffer flushing on the drives (did bring the resource drain down a bit, but didn't help for speed or non responsiveness)

This is really a shame since I've been looking forward to using Windows 7 since the RC ran very well. unfortunately since Windows 7 is unable to run disk intensive applications such as video editing it looks like I'm going to be forced to move back to Windows XP =(

Anyone know a sollution?

 

[zigzag3143]

davest

what size is your pagefile and is it set or managed by system?

Ken

 

[Davst]

Hi it's currently at 4096 mb which matches my RAM ammount, and Windows manages it.

 

[Antman]

Check your chipset driver for an udate.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there

What's the HDD spec.

If its IDE 5200 with a very small / non existent cache move your OS off this immediately. Just use this for backups / archives.

Get a decent SATA disk with tha largest cache you can afford -- minimum 7200 RPM. (If you can affford it SCSI or SSD is usually the best for performance but these rae more expensive).

Set your Bios to use SATA as well (enable AHCI) instead of IDE. - You'll need to "repair" or re-install Windows if you change this setting BTW.

A lot of Bioses have IDE set as default. Yours probably will as well if you upgraded from Windows XP as a normal Windows XP installation doesn't have SATA drivers included. You have to "Slipstream" these into a windows XP install disk.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Davst]

I'm using the 1016 Drivers from Intel, downloaded 3 days ago so they are up to date.


The Disks are:

System: Western Digital Green 1 TB (3 Months old) 16 MB Cache SATA2
Extra: Western Digital Blue 500GB (8 Days old) 16 MB Cache SATA2

P31-DS3L Uses the Intel ICH7 SB and thus does not have ACHI so I'm using the Enhanced mode as has been suggested.


In Linux and OSX which i have installed on the computer there are no multitasking problems and the disk transfer speeds are much higher. So I'd say that this is a windows problem more than a hardware problem.

 

[Saltgrass]

I just built a new system with 7100RC--Asus p7p55d Pro, i7 860, 8 gigs, 260GTX and a WD 500 Sata 3G Caviar Black, 32m cache.

I have tried both x86 and x64, basic Win 7 chipset drivers and Intel chipset drivers, used IDE and ACHI and the highest this drive will get is 5.9. The rest of the system shows 7.3. to 7.5

I am not running a RAID, so as the original poster, was wondering why the performance showed as so bad. What is everyone else getting for their hard drives?

It seems I had an older drive connected for a while (not in this current install) which was 1.5 GB/s and it also showed 5.9

Is there a chance something in Windows 7 is looking at something different? The system does seem to operate normally, I see no performance problems except the assessment score.

 

[Antman]

5.9 is the maximum WEI score for a non-SSD drive.

It is just a predictor of component performance within Windows 7, not a measure of performance.