# Slow SATA HDD



## mc-dexter (Oct 23, 2008)

Well a new thread with a new problem, lol, basically, i've got my 74gig Maxtor, i've got a partition on it, first 1 is 20gig (C Drive) and the rest 54gig (D Drive) now everything worked fine untill i formatted the other week and ever since (with all software installed - although almost none start with windows) its running really slow, like a good 5 minutes to boot!!!


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## DaMulta (Oct 23, 2008)

http://www.ccleaner.com/

???


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## mc-dexter (Oct 23, 2008)

I already use that 

could it be that the partition is causing the problem itself?, i've had the partition for awhile now, maybe 6month.


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## DaMulta (Oct 23, 2008)

So you reinstalled or formated?

msconfig and turn everything off and see how it boots.

Maybe driver cleaner and reinstall those

Did you reinstall the chipset drivers?


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## mc-dexter (Oct 23, 2008)

Sorry, i Reinstalled windows (afew times now actually).

yes the chipset drivers are installed, the only thign that isnt is the ethernet driver, which i don't use anyway.


Formatted the C Drive and reinstalled windows there (like per usual, lol)


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## modder (Oct 23, 2008)

before reintall ,do you use another OS like linux or vista ?.


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## mc-dexter (Oct 23, 2008)

I did have Vista on at one point since the partition.


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## wiak (Oct 23, 2008)

its a old drive i asume
check with HD Tune how fast you get
update controller drivers or get a new controller and test with that


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## mc-dexter (Oct 23, 2008)

ok the HD Tune gave me transfer read rate (MB/s) 1.7 MAX

the drive itself is about a year and half old, so should be ok i assume.

Just to note, i did the same test on my Pata Drive, and well..... that reached upto 50MB/s


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## modder (Oct 23, 2008)

1.7 MAX ? did you mean 1.7MB/s ?


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## mc-dexter (Oct 23, 2008)

opps, yeah sorry, i forgot to add that on


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## modder (Oct 23, 2008)

if 1.7MB/s transfer read rate , your hard drive is dead.Check sata cable if is plugged correctly.


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## mc-dexter (Oct 23, 2008)

its plugged in as should be, i really dont think its dead, i think that its the partition in some way,  my friend had a similer problem awhile back. all he did was format the whole drive and re-partition it. but i cant afford to do that at the mo, hence why im asking to see if it could be anything else or if there is anythin i can do to help prevent the drive from failing before i get round to getting a new one


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## twicksisted (Oct 23, 2008)

maxtor.... yep... i reckon shes dead/dying/spluttering....
switch on SMART in the bios and then download and install speedfan...the last tab SMART has a dropdown.. select the hardrive and then select "indepth analysis"... it will open a web page that will list all the smart info of the drive (bad sectors etc...)

(I hate maxtors, have always had nothing but trouble with then in every build ive fixed)


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## modder (Oct 23, 2008)

first try to boot in safe mode (use F8 key and choose safe mode).if work in safe mode that mean you have a bad process loaded in normal boot (eg:virus or bad programing soft)


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## mc-dexter (Oct 23, 2008)

my Pata drive is another maxtor and that works great still to this day and that's about 10 year old, i've come accros afew bad maxtor drives, but not enough to ever put me off getting one - even more so on a cheaper budget, lol/


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## 95Viper (Oct 23, 2008)

I don't know if this will help or not, but here is the links to seatools and the pdf on the use.  Try that and if it says it is defective get an rma from the company and get it replaced, I belive it has a 5 year warr.

http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/SeaTools_for_Windows.pdf

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=SeaTools&vgnextoid=720bd20cacdec010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

Good Luck!


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## mc-dexter (Nov 1, 2008)

well i managed to get my HDD to my brothers and put all my data onto his pc while i formatted and put a new partition on the drive, ran HD Tune again, and getting better read rate's (60MB/s), can anyone tell me what the average roughly should be for my sata drive?


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## IggSter (Nov 1, 2008)

Western Digital Caviar... 640Gb @ 7200RPM. SATA2/3.0 Gb per Second. 

Lowest ==> 49.1 meg/sec

Highest ==> 111.0 meg/sec

Average ==> 88.8 Meg/sec

Burst ==> 137.5 Meg/sec

Access Time ==> 12.1ms


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## xu^ (Nov 1, 2008)

i get an average of about 70 mb/s on my slowest drive (WD 500gb)


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## Wile E (Nov 1, 2008)

mc-dexter said:


> well i managed to get my HDD to my brothers and put all my data onto his pc while i formatted and put a new partition on the drive, ran HD Tune again, and getting better read rate's (60MB/s), can anyone tell me what the average roughly should be for my sata drive?



For an 80GB drive, 60MB/s is just fine.


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## mc-dexter (Nov 1, 2008)

i hope so, but i still think it might be on its way out like someone said before , i get the lowest read score as follows, 19mb/s, but average at 60mb/s like i said, (barely hits any higher, so could say its the average and the top end of it), i find it strange though how a install of XP/VISTA could of caused this, or was it just the partition from the beginning?


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## panchoman (Nov 2, 2008)

hmm, what does the hdtach graph look like?


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## mc-dexter (Nov 2, 2008)

theres the recent graph, i'd say thats fine now, but i never knew about HDD's much at all till very recently... (learning).


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## panchoman (Nov 2, 2008)

ouch, you've got some preety big dips in there. the dips are where the drive is the slowest. im guessing that reformat probably put some of the critical files on the slower sectors.. which might be why you're getting the speed change. for ex.. if you've got some big windows files near sector 30(or whatever its counting by), you're gonna have a slow os. try diskkeeper and see if it'll make your drive more efficent.


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## mc-dexter (Nov 2, 2008)

> well i managed to get my HDD to my brothers and put all my data onto his pc while i formatted and put a new partition on the drive, ran HD Tune again, and getting better read rate's (60MB/s)



so since the deletion (if thats even a word, lol) of the partition (and a new one put in) those readings what you have just seen are better ones than what i had, by far, i was hitting 1.7mb/s before.


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## panchoman (Nov 2, 2008)

wow, how old is your drive?


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## mc-dexter (Nov 2, 2008)

umm, its about two year old now, well two year just!


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## panchoman (Nov 2, 2008)

oh i see, 

oh btw, check the graphic artists united thread


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## silkstone (Nov 2, 2008)

Check UDMA setting is correct in the device manager ( i had the same problem with my seagate) 
Device manager> IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers> Primary IDE Channel> Advanced settings> Transfer mode> DMA
It might be using PIO if you just formatted and re-installed windows

[Edit] ooops, just saw you found a fix. It was probabily just this little setting, windows can sometimes setup the controllers wrong so you need to give them a quick check if u think your HD is slow [/Edit]


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## mc-dexter (Nov 2, 2008)

no offence to some of people who replied to my thread but, if you read even most of it you will see that i don't really have a problem with my slow HDD, thread is still open, cause the problem is not totally gone i belive, duno why, just as feelin, lol, but yeh i'll give those settings another look over, although i didn't know sata used UDMA.


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## silkstone (Nov 2, 2008)

Uses DMA5 (or6 if you've got a good drive/controller) Also need to set this in the bios but the default is auto-detect.
btw my drive is 66Mb/s min - 89Mb/s max SATAII drive


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## mc-dexter (Nov 2, 2008)

im using DMA6 already


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## modder (Nov 3, 2008)

mc-dexter said:


> im using DMA6 already


hi mc-dexter,i had also this problem and it appear when HD are tired .
hard drive temp?
1- change sata cable and sata port (eg: sata0 to sata2 port )
2-enable HDD smart on bios and disable AHCI mode on bios
3-unplug all not needed drive like IDE,floppy ,..
4-you need to format in low level first ,you can use Darik's Boot And Nuke http://www.dban.org/ format only  10 % , more isn't necessary for you (after 10% of hard drive erased force the reboot).
5-after , install xp and check if your hard drive work.if no work, you need to use  Acoustic Drive Management  tool (it can reduce hard drive stress).luke


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## modder (Nov 4, 2008)

download Victoria for Windows 4.46b linked in this post http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=75434, i knew the DOS release but this one  it's very good (perhaps little complex).	you can check the speed of rotation also set AAM (automatic acoustic management) , etc...all under windows


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## ntdouglas (Nov 4, 2008)

DaMulta said:


> http://www.ccleaner.com/
> 
> ???



Damulta/guys,

Do you use this on a regular basis without any problems? I had a bad experience with a registry cleaner before.


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## twicksisted (Nov 4, 2008)

ntdouglas said:


> Damulta/guys,
> 
> Do you use this on a regular basis without any problems? I had a bad experience with a registry cleaner before.



ive used it without any issues personally... its a good lazy way of doing things... besides theres the "backup" feature so if you do have probs just restore the backup


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## mc-dexter (Nov 5, 2008)

modder said:


> hi mc-dexter,i had also this problem and it appear when HD are tired .
> hard drive temp?
> 1- change sata cable and sata port (eg: sata0 to sata2 port )
> 2-enable HDD smart on bios and disable AHCI mode on bios
> ...



HDD Temperature, average 34, but very low air getting to it at the moment, usually around 28 when set up normally.

1: Not changed Sata port, but it did used to be on the second port, so maybe i will try that just for the sake of it!
2: HDD SMART i have on usually.
3:Everything is already minimal.
4: Not tried low leveling yet, not something i really want to do just yet with it.

Doesn't anyone else apart from me think it's just cause of the partition(s) i've always had on the drive?


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