Will installing Win XP fix slow HD problem?

[ugh]

Hi all,

I'm using Win2k Pro SP2 and I'm experiencing really slow hard disk access when I benched it using SiSoft Sandra 2001. I'm using a Maxtor 20G (ATA100) with Epox 8KHA+. Installed the 4.37 4-in-1 and I'm getting scores of around 5000. Normal scores should be 2x more than that.

Any advice?

TIA.

 

[mee987]

I am getting similar issues with a maxtor 30gig 7200rpm ata100 drive under xp. With some fiddling I was able to get my score up from abotu 4000 to about 9000, but that still sucks.

Go to maxtor.com and download the acoustic management utility, theres a good chance your drive is set to "quiet" mode (which I call "slow" mode). Use this utility to either set it to "fast" or just disable acoustic management altoghether (this is the fastest).

I have tried all kinds of things to try to get my performance up more, but I have found nothing. When my Atlas 10K II drive comes in, im probably gonna try to RMA this maxtor, but I'm not sure if they will give me an RMA if I just say "it's not as fast as I would like it to be."

 

[mee987]

Oh, I forgot to add -- I too am using an 8KHA+ board, but when I tried the drive in a friend's p3 system he got identical results.

 

[ugh]

At least the hard disk performs equally poor on a PIII system. Thought it was the darn VIA chipset Would it be ok for you to update me on the speed of the Atlas once you get it? TIA.

 

[mee987]

I'll try to fill you in on what I have found over the past few weeks:

Download HDtach here -- it tests random access time, sustained read, and buffered read. My results:
Avg seek: about 19ms.
Burst speed: about 72MB/s.
Sequential read: avg 22000MB/s. (900KB/s min, 30400 max)

2 disturbing results:

First of all, the seek time is higher than it should be (not insanely high, since access time=seek time+rotational latency... maxtor shows <9ms avg seek, add about 4ms rotational latency to that and you should get a score of about 13-14ms on a healthy drive).

Secondly, the graph of the sequential read speed doesnt just look like a downward hill with a few bumps. It looks like the bottom of a spiked pit of death. There are spikes everywhere, it will jump from almost 30MB/s down to 1MB/s then back up about 50 times throughout the test. A healthy drive should not have any spikes.

I am using my quantum 6.4GB drive as my "healthy" drive. It gets avg access times of between 14 and 15 ms, and this is a 5400 rpm drive! There is not a single spike in the read graph.


1 positive result:

The burst read speed is over 70MB/s, and this means that it is not an interface issue, the drive IS running at its full ATA100. (so dont blame it on the via chipset or via drivers)

 

[mee987]

note: to use HDtach under xp/2k, you will need a registered copy which costs $49. If you have already legally purchased HDtach and have misplaced your reg key, you can legally find a replacement key here