Is this Maxtor failing?

[AstroGuardian]

Hi guys,

The 300Gb Maxtor sata-2 drive which i use for virtual machines slowed down all of a sudden. I noticed a severe performance degradation on my VMs ans soon discovered that the drive is writing really slow. I reformated it (quick) but it's still slow. It's slow as this:


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It seems like it's reading just fine (60mb/s average).

So what do you think?
Can i just change firmware or something or is it just failing?

 

[AstroGuardian]

Update. I took the Maxtor out and put it in USB enclosure. It writes at constant 26,5 mbps.
Put it back inside the case and attach it to SATA and the same crappy performance as shown in the screenshot above.
Changed the power cable and the sata cable. No effect. Changed the sata port, still no effect. Put it back in the USB enclosure, runs (writes) fine. Put another older Hitachi 80Gb with the same sata and power cable, same sata port as the Maxtor, runs fine...

What the heck?

 

[Doggiedog]

Why risk it? Why not just get a newer bigger one. They are so cheap these days anyway.

 

[AstroGuardian]

Why should i purchase a brand new drive just for running Virtual Machines on it? I was planning to work the crap out of this drive... Why shouldn't i if it's still good.

Anyone familiar with this kind of symptoms?

 

[C1]

Id run SeaTools Long Test on the Maxtor to make sure there's not some bad spot on it the OS doesnt like. Even if that checks out OK (ie, remap not needed), then WIPE THE DRIVE (cleans off any obscure trash - this is very important) then reformat it then give it a try.

PS: I love those old 300GB Diamond Maxtors (they are enterprise level, run forever and should be near bullet proof).

 

[Doggiedog]

Why? Well, for me it's not worth the time to dissect and diagnose a problem especially if it is guaranteed to be fixed for $40 or less. With regards to data, I would much rather be early in dealing with a problem than late. But if you aren't storing any important information on the drive, I suppose it's up to you.

 

[AstroGuardian]

Why? Well, for me it's not worth the time to dissect and diagnose a problem especially if it is guaranteed to be fixed for $40 or less. With regards to data, I would much rather be early in dealing with a problem than late. But if you aren't storing any important information on the drive, I suppose it's up to you.

As i have said, i used it for Virtual machines. That data is not important. It's for testing purposes only.

 

[JAG87]

If the drive writes fine inside an enclosure then it's not a mechanical problem.

It's most likely the HDD controller. It's not being able to keep up with sata writing speed that the chipset is requesting, and down grading it's speed to a crawl.

You can most likely temporarily fix this with a firmware flash (before the firmware decides once again that the controller is not up to par) but honestly if I were you I'd just find another old HDD to beat up with your VMs.