Two identical HDDs, newone is slow

[Teknic]

Hi,

I have two HDDs installed in my desktop computer, and both are the exact same model (Western Digital 1 TB Caviar Black). The one acting as C: drive I've had for about two years, and is running just fine. No problems. However, the second drive I bought seemed to be running really slow, so I downloaded a quick test (CrystalDiskMark).

I didn't bother running all the tests available in the program, but based on 50MB sequential tests, there is a pretty big difference between the drives.

Benchmark:
C Drive (old drive): 129.3 MB/s read, 96.04 MB/s Write
E Drive (new drive): 0.903 MB/s read, 67.24 MB/s Write

The slow performance is not a matter of capacity either -- right now the C: drive is 24% full and the E: drive is 9% full.

When I first installed the HDD, I think it was running normal, but I didn't run any tests. After a few days, there was some error on boot, but I believe it was fixed. I ran windows error checking later, it found an error and fixed it. I also downloaded the Western Digital Diagnostic software, and it determined both of my drives were working fine.

There's got to be some kind of setting I can change to make it run like the other drive. After all, they are identical. I've checked everything I know, and as far as I know all settings are the same. Any ideas?

Thanks, this is driving me nuts.

 

[Elixer]

Any warnings/errors in event viewer?
Post a crystaldiskinfo pic for the drive that is slow.

 

[Teknic]

Okay, I am not great at event viewer, but this is what I found

"The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run the chkdsk utility on the volume Personal Media."

- A day or two ago I ran the error checking utility that comes from right clicking the drive -->tools-->error checking. It found a file system error and corrected that. I'm running it again right now, but it is checking very..very..slowly. At this rate it might take hours.

"The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort4."

- bunch of errors here.

I'm not sure how to post an image, so I'll just write what Crystal DiskMark says. Just ran it again.

5 / 50MB / e: 9% (86/932GB)

Seq: 0.574 (Read MB/s) 29.27 (Write MB/s)
512k: 0.421 (read (MB/s) 10.60 (Write MB/s)

Didn't run the other tests.

 

[FAUguy]

Open a command prompt (start, run, cmd) and type in CHKDSK E: /F
That will run the disk check on the E drive and attempt to fix the errors.
If that doesn't solve it, return and replace the drive.

 

[Teknic]

Any alternatives?

I ran CHKDSK through Windows (Property-->tools-->error checking) which I think is the same thing. I began first thing in the morning. Now, 11 hours later it is approximately 1/10 done. That is slow!

Any other ideas on how to fix it or is the drive just bad?

 

[Emulex]

bad drive or cable. check SMART. amazon sent me a poorly wrapped drive, it was throwing millions of ECC errors . swapped cables, nada.

rma'd it and bought locally same model/rev and it was all good.

 

[Teknic]

Okay, an update. After a few hours of searching I came across some people who mentioned that switching their WD drive to another SATA port solved the issue.

Well, I switched the SATA port from #4 to #3 and everything works fine now! All testing is normal, no errors on checkdisk. All I did was move the connector to a different spot.

Does this mean that I have a bad SATA port? Or is this a software driver issue?

 

[Diogenes2]

Which motherboard ?

Are ports 3 & 4 same controller chip ?

Did you try switching back? May have been a flaky connection ..

 

[Teknic]

-ASRock x58 Extreme.
-I'm not sure if they are the same controller chip or not, but they are next to each other.
-No, didn't try switching back. Maybe it was a flaky connection, but it seemed solid to me.