Sluggish ATA 100 7200 RPM hard drive??

[metroplex]

My IBM 75GXP (75GB, ATA100, 7200 RPM) has a burst read speed of 67.5 MB/s and a burst write speed of 75 MB/s. Random access time is 8-16 ms, and sequential read speed is roughly 30 MB/s.
What's the deal?

My IBM Travelstar 30GB 4200 RPM ATA100 laptop hard drive has a burst read speed of 83 MB/s!

Why is my 75GXP so sluggish? What can I do to improve its performance? I thought when it was first released it was top of the line in performance?

 

[bacillus]

what program are you using for your benchmarks?

 

[metroplex]

HD Tach and Sisoft Sandra 2002

 

[Woodchuck2000]

Check that DMA is enabled on that drive both in the bios and in windows.
Make sure that it is a lone Master and that you're using an 80pin IDE cable.

 

[metroplex]

Windows 2000 Pro reports it is in "Ultra DMA Mode"

Sandra 02 reports that its max DMA mode is UDMA 5, and that the active mode is UDMA5.

BIOS reports it is LBA, ATA100 (Large Block, ATA-100)

It's the only drive on the IDE0 port with an 80-pin cable.

 

[Accord99]

Burst speeds have very little to do with the actual performance of the hard drive and only need to be higher than the maximum physical transfer rates capable on the drive. The performance measures that are important are the sustained transfer rates and the read access times from HD Tach.

 

[metroplex]

Sustained is roughly 27-30 MB/s and random access times are about 16ms (HD Tach)

Is this normal?

 

[Accord99]

<< Sustained is roughly 27-30 MB/s and random access times are about 16ms (HD Tach)

Is this normal? >>



Compared to Storagereview's review of the 75GB GXP, it would seem that this model should range from 37MB/s transfer rate at the beginning of the drive to 20MB/s at the end, with an overall read access time in the mid 13ms range. It seems yours is somewhat underperforming, you might want to check IBM utilities to see if certain features that sacrifice speed for reduced noise had been enabled.

 

[bacillus]

<< you might want to check IBM utilities to see if certain features that sacrifice speed for reduced noise had been enabled. >>


IBM utilities

 

[metroplex]

I've disabled the power management and acoustic management.

I've enabled write cache and read ahead cache.

Did storagereview give any details on THEIR settings? Thanks

 

[metroplex]

I just ran Winbench 99 and it appears I got the same results as Storagereview,

about 38MB/s start, 13 ms access, etc...

Only thing is storagereview listed the 75GXP as ATA66 - does this mean their resulst were for the drive in ATA66 mode?

 

[oldfart]

I think @ one time, SR used Promise ATA66 card for their standard bench.

 

[metroplex]

So what does this mean? My drive is running at ATA66?? My mobo is a KG7-RAID, I have the drive connected to IDE0.

Is there a difference between ATA66 and ATA100 cables that would affect my transfer rate?

 

[oldfart]

Hmm VIA 686B. Not known for stellar IDE performance. Do you have VIA drivers installed?

 

[metroplex]

Yes, I'm using VIA 4-in-1 version 4.38

nevermind regarding the transfer rates - on IBM's site it said it has a sustained rate of 37 MB/s. I guess Sandra isn't accurate or something.

Thanks everyone!