I recently attached a WD Caviar SE16 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0GB/s hard drive to the SATA1 connector controlled by VT8237 on my MS-6702 K8T Neo Series MB. The drive is performing well but is slow compared to two Raptors previously installed on the SERIAL connectors on the same board, until one drive went bad. When the new drive was initially installed I set a jumper across the 5-6 posts to enable "Second Generation serial ATA hard drives to revert to a 150MB/s transfer rate limitation." This did not work, so I removed the jumper and the drive is OK but, as said, slow. Any suggestions for improved performance with this single SATA drive? Thanks.
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New SATA drive performance 1
- Thread starter Jeep7955
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Well, the Raptors are high-end 10,000 RPM beasts! Maybe there isn't a problem, and you're just used to extremely fast...
Out of curiosity, did you run any benchmarks like HDTACH on the drive? What are you using the drive for that makes it seem slow?
~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Einstein
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Out of curiosity, did you run any benchmarks like HDTACH on the drive? What are you using the drive for that makes it seem slow?
~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Einstein
[tab][navy]For posting policies, click [/navy]here.
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The drive mentioned is the only one being written to at this time. It takes a few minutes to boot up and a brief wait in response to commands. My OS, Programs, and Data are contained on a partition of 100GB, occupying about 35GB, with the remainder of the drive being Unallocated space. I use InDesign for a newsletter, GoLive for a Web site, MS-Office, WordPerfect, Adobe PhotoShop, and other stuff to a lesser extent.
I just ran HDTACH on the drive and obtained the following results:
Random access: 16.4 ms
Average read: 86.6 MB/s
Burst speed: 119.1 MB/s
Would appreciate your interpretation of these results. If the numbers are satisfactory, guess I should be thinking about restoring another RAID setup. Again, although the SATA drive is 3.0GB/s the MB is 1.5GB/s. Don't know whether there is a BIOS update that would increase the 1.5 to 3.0 but intend to explore that route.
Would appreciate your further comment. Thanks.
I just ran HDTACH on the drive and obtained the following results:
Random access: 16.4 ms
Average read: 86.6 MB/s
Burst speed: 119.1 MB/s
Would appreciate your interpretation of these results. If the numbers are satisfactory, guess I should be thinking about restoring another RAID setup. Again, although the SATA drive is 3.0GB/s the MB is 1.5GB/s. Don't know whether there is a BIOS update that would increase the 1.5 to 3.0 but intend to explore that route.
Would appreciate your further comment. Thanks.
If you're striping in RAID 0 then it won't really matter that the drives are different, the speed is determined by the SATA controller on the mainboard...although best practice is exact same drive for RAID setups. The point is that it's moving so much data at even 1.5 GB/s that I'd bet you're not getting near SATA bus saturation, even in RAID 0.
I agree with cdogg that any drive seems slow compared to a Raptor![[smile]](/data/assets/smilies/smile.gif "[smile] [smile]")
...they're beasts and I love them!
Tony
Users helping Users...
I agree with cdogg that any drive seems slow compared to a Raptor
...they're beasts and I love them!Tony
Users helping Users...
Yes, even at the SATA 1.5 setting, it has plenty of bandwidth to accomodate a single drive. For example, the burst speed in your test was 119.1 MB/s (which is very good by the way). That means the fastest recorded time was still 30 MB/s slower than what SATA 1.5 has room for at 150 MB/s.
Burst speed is also not an important benchmark in the sense that very few transfers on your drive will ever reach that mark. Average read and average write are the ones that matter. A good drive will average over 60MB/s on writes and 70MB/s on reads.
If you're thinking RAID, keep in mind that a RAID 0 array will speed up read access but do very little if anything for write speed. You have to ask yourself if the drive is slowing down when you are saving something to disk (write issue) or is it stalling when you are opening an existing file/program (read issue). Write's are going to be considerably slower on this WD drive as opposed to the Raptor you had before.
The bottom line is that you shouldn't be seeing an awful lot of difference here. Sure, Raptors are fast but you're talking about a 15% or so improvement over a standard drive. You shouldn't notice that in most day-to-day operations...
~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Einstein
[tab][navy]For posting policies, click [/navy]here.
Burst speed is also not an important benchmark in the sense that very few transfers on your drive will ever reach that mark. Average read and average write are the ones that matter. A good drive will average over 60MB/s on writes and 70MB/s on reads.
If you're thinking RAID, keep in mind that a RAID 0 array will speed up read access but do very little if anything for write speed. You have to ask yourself if the drive is slowing down when you are saving something to disk (write issue) or is it stalling when you are opening an existing file/program (read issue). Write's are going to be considerably slower on this WD drive as opposed to the Raptor you had before.
The bottom line is that you shouldn't be seeing an awful lot of difference here. Sure, Raptors are fast but you're talking about a 15% or so improvement over a standard drive. You shouldn't notice that in most day-to-day operations...
~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Einstein
[tab][navy]For posting policies, click [/navy]here.
I just thought of something for you to try...
Get your hands on a basic hard drive. It doesn't have to be new or top-of-the-line, or even have that much space. Take out your WD drive, and load a fresh copy of Windows on this spare.
If things seem to be a lot faster, then you may have a software issue in Windows as opposed to something being wrong with the drive.
Get your hands on a basic hard drive. It doesn't have to be new or top-of-the-line, or even have that much space. Take out your WD drive, and load a fresh copy of Windows on this spare.
If things seem to be a lot faster, then you may have a software issue in Windows as opposed to something being wrong with the drive.
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cdogg: Many thanks for the evaluation and suggestions. When I say SLOW, I'm referring to the brief wait in opening a file/program so, as you explain, that's apparently a READ issue. And that's the area where I had become accustomed to the faster Raid 0 setup, I guess. Many thanks for your help.
Yes, the RAID 0 you had before was like putting the Raptor on steroids! That configuration could have easily been 20% faster or more on read access times as opposed to what you have now.
If you installed Windows clean on the WD drive, then I'd say you're just noticing the difference. However, if you restored Windows from backup on the WD drive, then it could be coincidence that something in Windows is causing the problem around the same time you installed the new drive - hence my suggestion to reinstall Windows on a spare drive as a test. If it is noticeably faster, then the problem probably isn't the WD drive.
If you installed Windows clean on the WD drive, then I'd say you're just noticing the difference. However, if you restored Windows from backup on the WD drive, then it could be coincidence that something in Windows is causing the problem around the same time you installed the new drive - hence my suggestion to reinstall Windows on a spare drive as a test. If it is noticeably faster, then the problem probably isn't the WD drive.
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