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does comp speed affect harddisk performance?

W

Werty

Senior member
does a weak computer affects the harddisk performance? im asking this coz my computer, a Celeron 1.1gig with 256MB PC133 running WinXP SP1, with harddisk 28Gig Baraccuda 7200RPM (ATA66) has only a max transfer rate of 3MB/second, around 1.8-2.2 sustain average while copying a 700MB mpeg file on one partition or the other. im wondering is it the harddisk dying out, or is it that ATA66 are just merely technology bluffs....
 
yup it is.. btw, theres actually nothing loaded in the background while th copy is being made... ive made multiple copy with files larger than 700mb but that is what i observed. is it really slow?
 
Originally posted by: FishTankX
Is DMA enabled?
Click to expand...

I'll second that question - 3MB/sec is way too slow, unless perhaps the hard drive is fragmented to all hell or something. Even with my old 566MHz machine with some Samsung 3gb hard drive, it could push more than 10mb/sec easily. However, if I understand the OP correctly, are you copying the file between two partitions on the same drive? That could easily cause performance degradation, especially on older hard drives, though I'd think not quite as much as you're describing. I've never heard of a hard drive getting slower with age either, barring the aforementioned fragmentation problems.

Edit: I just saw your last message, so then it sounds most like a fragmentation thing to me. But at the same time, if you really are transferring to a different place on the same physical hard drive, that will always be much slower than the drive's max transfer rate.
 
You're getting about the right speed with that HDD. You're reading and writing on the same hdd so the speed will be cut to almost half. Not to mention the hdd is old and has smaller platter density which can affect performance. But the answer to the original question if a weak system can affect hdd performance, the answer is yes. But what is considered weak is somewhere below 700 mhz CPU.
 
Besides making sure that DMA is set properly and that you have the latest versions of your mobo drivers (including IDE drivers), try the following:
. Are you copying from one logical drive to another on the same physical drive? That is always one of the slowest moves. First the data has to be read and moved into the main memory (you can increase the size of the Hard Disk Cache by: right clicking on "My Computer" > click on Properties > click on the Performance tab > change the system type to "Network Server" and set the Read Ahead buffer to max), then written back to the drive for as many iterations as it takes based on the size of the HD cache - it can be pretty quick if the file(s) can fit entirely in the cache. Of course that comes at the expense of some program memory.
. There is another way to increase the HD cache even more by adjusting a parameter in either one of the .INI files or perhaps the registry, but I've forgotten which one. Try googling on- Hard Disk Cache Windows xx- (where xx is whichever ver. of Win you have) and see what pops up.
.bh.

:moon:
 
hmm coz i was wondering why my system goes into a crawl while the harddisk is doin stuffs... like if its copying files, its almost as if i cant do anything else...
 
are the 2 HDD's on the same IDE channel?

speeds will likely improve if you run the 2 hard drives on different IDE channels. (primary and secondary)
 
Werty, download and install HDTach 2.61, and do a read-test and benchmark your drive. Is the entire graph a fairly-even line, around 3.3MB/sec? If so, then even if Device Manager says that you have DMA enabled, it's wrong, you are running in PIO mode 0. This can happen if Windows' detects too many errors on the disk, it will ratchet the speed down to PIO mode. I somehow suspect that this might be happening.

If, however, the graph starts at a higher number, say around 10-15MB/s, and then gently sort of slopes down to some lower number, say 3-6MB/s, them perhaps the drive is just somewhat slow, especially when copying a file between two spots on the HD.

I've seen Celeron 1Ghz+ machines, running WinXP with a 20GB WD ATA-66 or ATA-100 HD, with much higher disk performance than that, which is why I suspect something is going on there.

Are you using the proper cable (40-pin 80-wire ATA-66/100/133 cable)? Do you have any other drives attached to the same IDE cable/port?
 
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