Western Digital Cavier Black 500GB has got bad access time and spiking

[hunter45]

Hi all,

I have a WD cavier black 500gb (WD5002AALX) which has got bad access time and bad spiking (sometimes) when i benchmark it with HD Tune.

The drive works perfectly fine and has been since i got it about 3 months ago (no clicking sounds, or noises at all just the bad peformance).

I have the latest BIOS for my motherboard, the drive is plugged into SATA 3 port, AHCI enabled and latest Intel Drivers and rapid storage technology installed.

System SPec: CPU-Core i7 2600K@Stock , Mobo- Gigabyte P67A-UD3R-B3, RAM- 4GB 1.6GHZ, HDD - AS ABOVE, Liteon SATA DVD writer, GPU-Gigabyte GTX 460 1GB OC , Corsair AX650 PSU ,Case-Antec 100, COOLING- 3X Noctua S12B FLX, 1X Noctua P12

Any ideas whats wrong??? , i have a screenshot attached. note: on the screenshot attached, it didnt spike, normally it does spike up to 3 times:\
Thanks in advance.

 

[BFG10K]

Are you running an OS or any services/programs off it? To get clean HD Tune scores you need to run it when the drive is unpartitioned.

 

[Dadofamunky]

Try another SATA connector.

 

[Coup27]

Backup all of the data onto a second device and then run WD "Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for DOS". There are Windows based versions if you prefer, I just prefer doing diagnostics outside of Windows.

It would be good to format it before running the tests so anything which may be causing problems now regarding partitions or file system is started again.

 

[murphyc]

The diagnostics don't care about anything on the disk. Most of this testing is done by SMART features in firmware, which knows nothing about on-disk formatting or partitioning.

Downloading and burning (or making a USB stick) of something like Fedora LiveCD, and running 'smartctl -a /dev/sda' will immediately get you a snapshot of what the disk thinks of its own performance without needing to do extended testing. The extended testing may tell you more. But if the drive has a high number of ECC errors or sector related errors or high read/write errors — just stop and get the drive replaced under warranty.

From the LiveCD you can even take a screen shot of this.

 

[hunter45]

Are you running an OS or any services/programs off it? To get clean HD Tune scores you need to run it when the drive is unpartitioned.

The drive is an OS drive. Everything in my PC is installed on that and run of that.

 

[hunter45]

Try another SATA connector.

Already tryed that, get the same results.

 

[hunter45]

Backup all of the data onto a second device and then run WD "Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for DOS". There are Windows based versions if you prefer, I just prefer doing diagnostics outside of Windows.

It would be good to format it before running the tests so anything which may be causing problems now regarding partitions or file system is started again.

i tryed running the Windows based version of that, the drive came out clean with nothing wrong with it.

 

[hunter45]

The diagnostics don't care about anything on the disk. Most of this testing is done by SMART features in firmware, which knows nothing about on-disk formatting or partitioning.

Downloading and burning (or making a USB stick) of something like Fedora LiveCD, and running 'smartctl -a /dev/sda' will immediately get you a snapshot of what the disk thinks of its own performance without needing to do extended testing. The extended testing may tell you more. But if the drive has a high number of ECC errors or sector related errors or high read/write errors — just stop and get the drive replaced under warranty.

From the LiveCD you can even take a screen shot of this.

I'll have a go at that. thanks for all the help!!

 

[BFG10K]

The drive is an OS drive. Everything in my PC is installed on that and run of that.

Then you just answered your own question as to why your scores are low. Running other things off the drive while running HD Tune will worsen its scores, including making spiked dips.

 

[hunter45]

Then you just answered your own question as to why your scores are low. Running other things off the drive while running HD Tune will worsen its scores, including making spiked dips.

I see, thanks for this valuable information. It has cleared this doubt up for me.

 

[DominionSeraph]

Then you just answered your own question as to why your scores are low. Running other things off the drive while running HD Tune will worsen its scores, including making spiked dips.

It will do that, but it won't give him horrible access times like that. My Caviar Blue is an OS drive and it'll pull 13.7ms.

OP, find something that will modify your acoustic management (AAM). That graph really looks like you have it set to min noise instead of max performance.
Try HDDScan. I just tried it and it worked on mine.

 

[VirtualLarry]

My AALX 500GB WD SATA HDs had a similar access-time issue. I got mine from Newegg, last Memorial Day sale. I tried using WinAAM to change the access time, or switch the drive from "quiet" to "performance" mode, and IIRC, it wouldn't change it.

I'm guessing, WD did this on purpose, like the 320GB AAKS drives. You have to buy the highest-capacity models to get the faster drives.

Edit: I missed that your drive is a Black drive. I don't know what to say, then. Mine must have been a different model number, it was a 500GB recent Blue drive. Maybe AAKX then.

 

[DominionSeraph]

My AALX 500GB WD SATA HDs had a similar access-time issue. I got mine from Newegg, last Memorial Day sale. I tried using WinAAM to change the access time, or switch the drive from "quiet" to "performance" mode, and IIRC, it wouldn't change it.

I don't think their new ones have AAM.