80GB IDE Maxtor suddenly running *EXTREMELY* slow.

[CZroe]

I bought an 80GB Maxtor HDD from a forum member here to use in a Playstation 2. I connected it to a PC and quick formatted it with the utility for doing so (WinHIIP is the most popular tool for formatting PS2 drives and copying files to/from on a Windows PC). It happened fast and gave no errors. For a drive I don't know the history of, I always do a full format, but I wanted to test something first and went ahead and installed a game image to it. It went nice and fast but gave an error about half-way. After that, I did a full format and it completed successfully, but took several hours. I did a full format on my 400GB IDE drive and it finished in a small fraction of that time. When it came time to copy a game to it again, I saw why: Instead of the ~45mbps reported by the application, I was getting 5mbps (yes, megaBITS). Nothing I could do would change that.

The drive works perfectly fine for absolutely everything (even as a PC drive) except that it's ridiculously slow. SOMETHING changed, but it causes no errors: just an extreme slow-down. To top it off, many games that run fine from the other HDDs (400GB was overkill) either don't run at all or have trouble due to the drive being even slower than the DVD they were originally designed to run and load from.

What could cause this? If there's something seriously wrong with the drive, why would it just slow down and not present any other errors? Is there a proprietary Maxtor utility that can tell us what this drive is up to?

 

[Absolution75]

Plug it into a PC, check SMART - look for relocation errors. A high number of relocations means that the drive is starting to use the extra space on the platters because the current ones are damaged/unusable.

Sounds like the HD is dieing.

 

[CZroe]

Plug it into a PC, check SMART - look for relocation errors. A high number of relocations means that the drive is starting to use the extra space on the platters because the current ones are damaged/unusable.

Sounds like the HD is dieing.

Wouldn't I hear the tell-tale seek-clicking and head-thrashing as it moves to the spare sectors? As it stands the drive appears normal but with a ridiculously low transfer speed. If that's the case, it's strange that it worked well for only about 5 minutes before suddenly dying. Bad luck I guess. I can't remember what utilities I've used to check SMART status in the past. Any recommendations? Can they check it through a USB adapter?

 

[pjkenned]

I hope this doesn't sound too stupid but anything short of 15k SAS that is 80GB involving platters these days is going to be really slow. Maxtor has been dead for several years now. Maybe it is a sign to upgrade?

 

[RebateMonger]

40-conductor or 80-conductor IDE cable?

 

[CZroe]

I hope this doesn't sound too stupid but anything short of 15k SAS that is 80GB involving platters these days is going to be really slow. Maxtor has been dead for several years now. Maybe it is a sign to upgrade?

It was just purcahsed and IT IS AN UPGRADE. This is not for a PC. Also, like I said, it was gettting ~45mbps for a few minutes before suddenly dropping to sub-5mbps and never getting any higher ever again, so 5mbps is confirmed "abnormal for this drive." Any 80GB drive is supposed to be fast enough for a PS2 and HD loader, yet this one suddenly isn't. Maxtor made thinner drives that remained cooler in the 3.5" drive bay, hence, the reason Sony's official 40GB PS2 HDD was actually a rebadged Maxtor. Also, not all brands will fit the HDD adapter due to power connector spacing (Western Digital, for example). Maxtor was a calculated decision.

40-conductor or 80-conductor IDE cable?

What an upgrade! Especially considering that, though they interface with IDE drives, neither the PS2 HDD and Network Adapter nor the USB aadapter I am using even have IDE cables (just 40-pin connectors directly to the PCBs and conversion electronics).

 

[Old Hippie]

Have you checked in the Device Manager to make sure it's not running in PIO mode?

 

[CZroe]

Have you checked in the Device Manager to make sure it's not running in PIO mode?

Thanks, but it's a USB Mass Storage disk when connected to my little netbook. You can only do that for UDMA/IDE controllers. Also, it has the same problem in the PS2, which has no "Device Manager" for me to check and probably would not have set the mode independently.

 

[Old Hippie]

Thanks, but it's a USB Mass Storage disc when connected to my little netbook.

Woops, missed that USB tidbit.

 

[CZroe]

Woops, missed that USB tidbit.

Oops. And I spelled "disk" wrong.

'probably should've said "drive" anyway, considering the varied application of USBMASS.

 

[Absolution75]

Wouldn't I hear the tell-tale seek-clicking and head-thrashing as it moves to the spare sectors? As it stands the drive appears normal but with a ridiculously low transfer speed. If that's the case, it's strange that it worked well for only about 5 minutes before suddenly dying. Bad luck I guess. I can't remember what utilities I've used to check SMART status in the past. Any recommendations? Can they check it through a USB adapter?

Try HDTune - and run a benchmark while you're at it. Also, try installing the intel INF update if you're on an intel based chipset.

 

[DominionSeraph]

I hope this doesn't sound too stupid but anything short of 15k SAS that is 80GB involving platters these days is going to be really slow.

My WD800JB gets 62MB/s outer zone 52MB average, and those initially came out in 2002.
Hard drive speeds quintupled from ~99-02, but in the eight years since, they've barely managed to double.

 

[CZroe]

Try HDTune - and run a benchmark while you're at it. Also, try installing the intel INF update if you're on an intel based chipset.

Will do. Also, the INF update isn't going to do anything for a Playstation 2 (or USB drives, right?).

Thanks.

My WD800JB gets 62MB/s outer zone 52MB average, and those initially came out in 2002.
Hard drive speeds quintupled from ~99-02, but in the eight years since, they've barely managed to double.

Mine died a year later. I have a history of bad luck with HDDs.

 

[Gunbuster]

If you really mean megabits (not bytes) even the "good" speed is horrible. 45mbps = ~5 MegaBytes per second.

Thats like gen1 SCSI speed. Something is wrong with that drive or your USB adapter.


P.S. that fastest you will ever see on a USB 2.0 HDD adapter is around 30MB/s

 

[RebateMonger]

O.P.

You are leaving WAY too much necessary information out of your post. Nowhere in your original post did you mention USB. And it's not clear if your "bad" test results are when connected to a PC or to the PS2. And if your measured speeds are in MegaBITS per second or MegaBYTES per second.

Folks keep making wrong assumptions about how you are connecting to that disk and they aren't going to find an answer for you.

 

[CZroe]

Thanks for all the responses guys. I still wonder what I can do with an 80GB drive that is otherwise working perfectly. I'd just hate to throw it away "because it's slow."

If you really mean megabits (not bytes) even the "good" speed is horrible. 45mbps = ~5 MegaBytes per second.

Thats like gen1 SCSI speed. Something is wrong with that drive or your USB adapter.


P.S. that fastest you will ever see on a USB 2.0 HDD adapter is around 30MB/s

Not really. Firstly, it's not just a disk-to-disk file-copy when it installs an image onto a PS2-formatted drive. Secondly, being on a netbook with an 8GB SSD, I'm installing the games from another USB 2.0 ODD from original game discs*. Even if I had the HDD space, I am not a pirate; the PS2's disc drive simply doesn't work (like most "fat" PS2s that have an HDD bay). Also, I have tried copying smaller titles from ISO files (ICO is only a few hundred MBs) and it still copied at 5mbps. The 400GB drive was formatting at about 45mbps when I walked away but I'm sure it sped up or it would not have finished as dramatically faster as I described. The Maxtor was pretty consistently under 5mbps... believe me, it took so ridiculously long that I had plenty of opportunities throughout the format process to check!

*even when sourced from the original disc they are still "imaged" as they are installed and the ISO-format images can be extracted so, yes, I was "installing game images" even without having image files.

O.P.

You are leaving WAY too much necessary information out of your post. Nowhere in your original post did you mention USB.

It was mentioned before any response that required it... my second post. Also, its irrelevant because there would have to be a shared problem triggering the PIO mode if both systems did this and the underlying problem would be what we are looking. The problem I'm looking for is the one that answers this question: What would cause a drive that works perfectly for storing and retrieving files to be so abnormally slow in both systems without causing any errors, strange noises, or other problems (only those understandably related to the slow speed)?

Checking the UDMA/PIO mode would not tell me why the PS2 would be reading it too slowly also, it would only tell me that the PC is accessing it slowly and without DMA, so it doesn't really answer that question.

And it's not clear if your "bad" test results are when connected to a PC or to the PS2. And if your measured speeds are in MegaBITS per second or MegaBYTES per second.

I said that "the drive works perfectly fine for absolutely everything (even as a PC drive) except that it's ridiculously slow." What other than a PC was there to try it in? The PS2. Though I mention that the games do not work, I describe exactly why (transfer speed). The files themselves are fine. There was no way to confuse it with Windows "games" (I wouldn't differentiate those from "software" in the first place) when I said the trouble was "due to the drive being even slower than the DVD they were originally designed to run and load from" and described the utility I used to install them.

And I don't know how much clearer I could have been about mb/MB: "Instead of the ~45mbps [previously] reported by the application, I was [now] getting 5mbps (yes, megaBITS)." Does that help imply the sudden change?

Folks keep making wrong assumptions about how you are connecting to that disk and they aren't going to find an answer for you.

I dunno... like I said, it does the same thing on a PS2, which can only be connected with the PS2s well-documented HDD Broadband Adapter, which makes the PC side of things irrelevant.

Also, it's silly to assume that I'm connecting to a PC's native IDE controller and need to upgrade just because a 10yo game console uses and requires IDE.

I thought you were joking with the 40/80 conductor thing and responded as if you were. I can't even be sure that the PS2 supports UDMA66. Even being limited to 33MBps on a 40-condutor cable would have been blazingly fast compared to the speeds I reported.