Hard Drive Benchmarking Tool

[ahsia]

Where can I find some hard drive benchmarking tools besides Sisoft? Also, what kind of scores should I expect with my 60GXP 20gb?

 

[John]

Here ya go

 

[ahsia]

Thanks for the link, but HD Tach is $50 to run benchmarks. Don't know if it is worth $50 to me.....

 

[BlitzRommel]

Your 60GXP is amongst the best performer out there. Expect high marks if you have a good controller.

 

[ahsia]

I am somewhat concerned because I feel something is wrong with my drive. It's not making any noises or anything like that, but I get a lot of hangs. I first thought it was Windows XP, but I formatted the drive, and reinstalled 2k. Same thing. I try to run Drive Fitness Test, and it would hang before it finishes. I ran it like 4 times, hangs every time at "Measuring Read/Write Elements". System boots up just fine, but I am concerned.

Sisoft File System Benchmark gives a score of 17379, way off from the 24000 score for ATA100 30gb. Am I facing a bad 60GXP on the horizon?

 

[Bovinicus]

Make sure that DMA is enabled. Go into the device manager and enable it in the properties of your IDE controller.

 

[ahsia]

DMA is already enabled....

 

[Electronics4Life]

Which mode is your hard drive currently running in...ultra dma mode...mode 5 ?

 

[ahsia]

In Windows 2000 Device Manager, the Primary IDE Channel says my drive is transferring at Ultra DMA Mode. So I am assuming that is mode 5, no?

 

[Electronics4Life]

No, that is the LOWEST mode. I had the same problem with my comp recently. I uninstalled my controllers. Found the newest via 4 in 1's and the miniport (I think that's what it was called) patch...Now i have ultra dma mode 5. Are you using a via chipset motherboard?

 

[ahsia]

Not VIA, I am using SiS645 based, Gigabyte 8SRX. So how do I enable DMA mode 5?

 

[Electronics4Life]

Hmm..i was hoping it was a via board for an easy fix. The only thing I suggest you do is delete your ide controllers let windows reinstall them. Set dma to auto detect and see if it gets set to ultra dma mode 5. If it does then you know there are other problems causing your computer to down grade the mode after a while.

 

[Electronics4Life]

I forgot to ask...do you have any optical devices on the same channel as that hard drive?

 

[ahsia]

Here is my setup:

Gigabyte 8SRX

Primary IDE
IBM 60GXP 20gb (Master)

Secondary IDE
Plextor PlexWriter 8/4/32 (Master)
Sony 52x CD-ROM (Slave)


Under Primary IDE Channel Properties, it shows the Current Transfer Mode for my IBM drive as Ultra DMA Mode. Does Windows 2000 tell you exactly what mode you are running in?

 

[Electronics4Life]

I'm 99 percent sure Win2k tells you the exact mode. Hard for me to say though, since I applied the via miniport driver which uses a separate utility to display my dma mode . I was reading a post the other day that said when win2k just says "ultra dma mode" that that is the lowest mode..the highest is mode 5 and there are variations inbetween. Did you delete and reinstall your ide controllers?

Edited for bad grammer.

 

[ahsia]

Went through with that already. Everything still the same. It still says Ultra DMA Mode, no numbers.

 

[Electronics4Life]

Well...I'm all out of ideas. Hopefully someone else will chime in.

 

[MrGrim]

Windows doesn't tell you the exact DMA mode. Just look at your boot up screen; just before the floppy seek the DMA mode of all the IDE devices is displayed.

 

[CocaCola5]

Yep, windows doesn't tell the exact udma mode. Theres a tweak for w2k called IoPageLockLimit in the registry under >HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management<, set this to 32MB(1024*1024*32). I, got 500-1000 points increase from this tweak, on a 7200 rpm (40g)ide drive.

 

[RalfHutter]

HDtach will test Win98 boxes for free. You could setup Win98 and test your HDD that way.

I think HDTach is worth it, it's helped me figure out some DMA/WinXP-2000 issues several times.

 

[ahsia]

<< Windows doesn't tell you the exact DMA mode. Just look at your boot up screen; just before the floppy seek the DMA mode of all the IDE devices is displayed. >>



Okay, looking at that, my HD is running at UDMA ATA100, which is Mode 5, right?

I still have hang ups. Like this morning, I was using IE, and a page would load. Eventually IE just hangs, and I can't even end task. Or other times it will be like this when I try to open my computer, and anything in the task bar area. This was happening XP, and now after formatting my HD and install 2k, it still happens.

This has nothing to do with my cable modem, because I have another machine, Duron 750 running 2k Server, that runs just fine.

 

[ObiDon]

Give DiskSpeed 32 a try. It's probably not as comprehensive as HDTach but it's free and gets the job done. I've used it on NTFS and FAT32 file systems. I used it to help verify (and subsequently fix) my crappy 60GXP raid-0 performance.
It also appears to work on Linux, FreeBSD, and even unformatted drives!

 

[MrGrim]

It sounds to me like your HD is about to die (same symptoms as my, now dead, 60GB 60GXP).

 

[ahsia]

I sure hope not. I will try to get my hands on another drive, and see if I experience the same problems....

 

[ahsia]

Well, just for the heck of it, I installed Windows 98 for the sake of running HD Tach. Well, it gives a "Read or write error, test halted" message. Is this a bad sign?