Slow Sequential Read, but Write is fine. System pauses

[jkurzner]

Please help diagnose a problem with my computer. The computer was acting strangely getting very slow and pausing for apparently no reason at times. I downloaded some performance utilities and found that the system memory, etc. seemed to be in line with comparables. the one area that definitely showed a problem was the hard Drives' sequential read performance. It was about 10% of what it should be. Write was fine, but read was bad. Do you think this is a hard drive issue or a controller one? I was wondering if I should try to put the hard drive on another IDE channel or try an internal IDE controller or opt to try a new hard drive and waste a day ghosting the drive to a new one? Any advice or method to troubleshoot would be appreciated.

 

[Kofy]

what type of hard drive? Make/Model etc? What are you doing when the drives slows? what operating system? server? desktop? etc? answering these questions can help us help you and increases our knowledge at the same time.

 

[jkurzner]

Sorry for the lack of information previously.

AMD based ~1460 Mhz
MSI K7T Turbo 2 Motherboard (MS-6330)
512 MB RAM
Windows 2000 Professional SP3
HardDrive 40GB Maxtor 54098H8

I'm not really doing anything specific when the system slows. It can be moving between open appilcations, starting up a new application, anything that apparently requires a disk read or swap of virtual memory I believe.

 

[Kofy]

Have you tried running the maxtor maxblast software? its a free download available from Maxtor. It will run tests on your hard drive and give tell you if your drive is failing or not along with error codes of the problem. if it passes those test's and you have defragged your hard drive I would guess you may have a controller problem. You can get the Maxtor software at the following link:

http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/index.htm

Just select from the drop down menu's and then download, install and run. Please post your results as it helps us increase our knowledge

 

[jkurzner]

I did download the maxblast software, but there weren't any utilities for testing or diagnosig the drive. The only options I did not try had to do with setting up the drive as a new disk and I cannot risk my existing data at this point.

 

[ceh4702]

This may have nothing to do with the hard drive. Windows often has things running in the background. Windows is horrible about this. Windows does not like to give any program priority. Other than going through each running program etc, it is hard to tell what is slowing you down. It could be something simple like an autosave function built into the operating sytem that can be turned off. I often see this when playing games. If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[jkurzner]

You may be right that it could be a windows process, but I've check processor activity and different threads, etc. They are seem to be within normal limits. The thing that is definitely out of sync is the sequential disk read. It was so slow that it was literally 10% of what it should be.

 

[Kofy]

the utility you need to download is called Powermax. it is avail from Maxtor by following the link below. if you cannot get it from them for some reason contact me at Akofyholic_@hotmail.com and I can email it to you. its under 800k download so as not to take long. Here's the link for Powermax:

http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/powermax.htm

letting us know the outcome of your trouble increases our knowledge.

 

[jkurzner]

Silly me, I did figure that out and downloaded it prior to getting your update. Thanks anyway. I installed it and it died in the middle of SmartCheck (90 second quick test). I let it run for at least 20 minutes despite its supposed to take only 90 seconds. There is definitely something wrong, but I still don't know if it's the drive or the controller. Any other ideas short of buying a new drive?

 

[Kofy]

I would try and see if it does the same in another PC prior to buying new hardware. yes,, it means you would have to set up the drivers on a new system BUT you can do so by making a new hardware profile and then installing into different box and changing the drivers to work with the one the drive is in. Another thing you can do is try to download and run SiSoft Sandra. Great tell all utility for any system. you can download the free version from :

http://www.sisoftware.net/

or you can look on Kazaa for other version if you choose. excellent program to have no matter what..

letting us know the outcome of your trouble increases our knowledge

 

[jkurzner]

Here's the results of Sandra's analysis. The free version did not allow me to investigate the IDE interface. Any insights?

Test Status
SMP Test : No
Total Test Threads : 1
SMT Test : No
Dynamic MP/MT Load Balance : No
Processor Affinity : No
Windows Disk Cache Used : No
Use Overlapped I/O : Yes
IO Queue Depth : 8 request(s)
Test File Size : 511MB
File Server Optimised : No

Benchmark Breakdown
Buffered Read : 3778 kB/s
Sequential Read : 1350 kB/s
Random Read : 441 kB/s
Buffered Write : 26 MB/s
Sequential Write : 16 MB/s
Random Write : 4 MB/s
Average Access Time : 98 ms (estimated)

Drive
Drive Type : Hard Disk
Total Size : 38.2GB
Free Space : 8.9GB, 23%

Performance Tips
Notice 5008 : To change benchmarks, click Options.
Notice 5004 : Synthetic benchmark. May not tally with 'real-life' performance.
Notice 5006 : Only compare the results with ones obtained using the same version!
Tip 5202 : Use cache on to measure Windows performance.
Warning 5206 : Low Disk index. Check DMA bus-mastering is enabled.

 

[lemsion]

jkurzner
I presume it had nothing to do with the hdd but it should have something to do but with your system.Please remove the hdd and try it in another Pc.If the problem doesn't occur then try to upgrade your PC.Well do identify my error or tell me the right thing so that I can also learn.lemsion14@thuglove.com

 

[Sarpedon]

I've had several Maxtor drives fail in this way this year, perhaps many out there are. One was a 30gig DiamondMax Plus 40 model 53073U6 (Warranty ends Nov 03) and an older 20gig 7200rpm Maxtor, both IDE.

Both drives would eventually pass all the PowerMax tests as well as a low level format. The version of PowerMax didn't matter - newest 2003 or 2001 version - it's just that due to the slow read it would take a long time to pass the tests.

Maxtor replaced the 20 gig. I obtained an RMA by calling and talking to a tech a few months back. When I called about the 30gig today the tech wanted to wait for the drive to fail enough to give a PowerMax code.

The fact that I can get a Maxtor tech on the line who admits the drive isn't working (based on the fact that to whichever computer the drive goes the 90-second quick test isn't finishing five minutes out and counting) and who wants to get it back to Maxtor but cannot give me an RMA number until the PowerMax utility gives a code because that's the policy (and who is even hinting I should just make it have a code somehow), has me asking what the heck is going on at Maxtor?

I'm wondering just how many of these slow-read drives are out there working well enough to keep them going until the warranty ends while the end-user is wondering what the heck is making their system so darn slow they can hardly use it.

I had personally used the 20gig in a W2K server and I fought the slowing down all the way using all the speed-up software I could find plus adding more SDRAM, I ended up using it for six months as a PCAnywhere terminal I'd use to log onto another computer that wasn't do darn slow. I only discovered it was the drive slow-reading when I upgraded and went to reformat the 20gig drive to use it elsewhere. The experience was useful though as this month when I had a client complain about a sudden slow down (the 30gig) I checked the drive first and sure enough it was a slow-read Maxtor slowing things down.

My two-cents is to go ahead and trust what your tests are telling you.

Rob

 

[Sarpedon]

P.S. - During my follow up call to a different tech at Maxtor today, after explaining that the drive passes all the PowerMax tests with no code and will low level format etc. - but is simply too slow to use since for example it has now been about 24 hours since I started the FAT32 format and it's just 33% done, plus it took all night to copy the 4gigs of data off of it - I did get an RMA number for it.

Rob

 

[jkurzner]

Wish I was as lucky. As it turned out the drive eventually failed during my backup and had to be sent to a clean room for recovery. $400 to recover some invoicing that wasn't backed up. Damn that Maxtor drive. Plus the wonderful RMA drive they sent me was a refurb that had been opened and who's knows how good that is?