# HDD is working slow



## Saidrex (Mar 1, 2011)

Bought HDD month ago, Seagate Barracuda *ST3500418AS*. Splited it into 2 partitions with Acronis*Disk Director Suite. Installed Win XP, hdd was working great. 2 weeks ago splitted it into 4 partitions and installed Win 7 on one of the partitions and again hdd was working great. 3 days ago it started to work slower, longer copy data, loading games and etc. At first hdd was working slowly only on win7 and today it started work slow on win xp too.

Tested it with Crystal Disk Mark 3. There's results:

* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read :    20.656 MB/s
Sequential Write :   120.540 MB/s
Random Read 512KB :     0.000 MB/s
Random Write 512KB :     0.000 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) :     0.000 MB/s [     0.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) :     0.000 MB/s [     0.0 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) :     0.000 MB/s [     0.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) :     0.000 MB/s [     0.0 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [D: 27.0% (20.2/75.0 GB)] (x1)
Date : 2011/03/01 16:13:21
OS : Windows XP Professional SP3 [5.1 Build 2600] (x86)


I did check for errors on all partitions using win7 built in check for errors. Nothing.
HDD is regullary defragmented and checked for viruses so this is not what causing problem.
I did one big stupid mistake, i did not do slow formating after buying hard drive and was using fast formating, maybe this is what causing problem?

More info on hdd:

Manufacturer	Seagate
Hard Disk Name	Barracuda 7200.12 500418
Form Factor	3.5"
Formatted Capacity       500 GB
Disks	1
Recording Surfaces	2
Physical Dimensions         146.99 x 101.6 x 19.98 mm
Max. Weight	415 g
Average Rotational Latency	4.16 ms
Rotational Speed	7200 RPM
Max. Internal Data Rate	1695 Mbit/s
Average Seek	8.5 ms
Track-To-Track Seek	1 ms
Interface	SATA-II
Buffer-to-Host Data Rate	300 MB/s
Buffer Size	16 MB
Spin-Up Time	8.5 sec







Sorry for my english.


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## qubit (Mar 1, 2011)

It might not be the HD at all, but your software.

To properly check the HD for hadware failure, download the Seagate disc test utility from their website and see if that flags up any errors. If it doesn't, then it's not the hard disc at fault.

And don't discount a virus: they're nasty buggers and can get in under the radar, even if you scan and check for them. However, the odds are that this is not a virus.


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## Saidrex (Mar 1, 2011)

qubit said:


> It might not be the HD at all, but your software.
> 
> To properly check the HD for hadware failure, download the Seagate disc test utility from their website and see if that flags up any errors. If it doesn't, then it's not the hard disc at fault.
> 
> And don't discount a virus: they're nasty buggers and can get in under the radar, even if you scan and check for them. However, the odds are that this is not a virus.



Ok. I will check with Seagate test utility and post results later.
My computer is virus clean, im am 99% sure.


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## qubit (Mar 1, 2011)

Only 99% huh? They'll get you with that 1% lol.

After you've run the Seagate check, you could also try installing Windows clean by creating another partition and seeing how it runs. I bet you it runs 100% ok, proving that your slowdowns are caused by software.

To be honest, there isn't enough info in your post to judge why you're seeing poor performance.


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## temp02 (Mar 1, 2011)

Isn't that one of those 500GB HDDs that requires a firmware update before it would turn into a brick? I'm really not sure since that issue occurred some time ago (maybe a year or so ?!?), I believe it had something to do with the LBA of the HDD and the way it was managed.
I still can't understand why would the write speeds be ok and the read ones be so off.


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## Saidrex (Mar 1, 2011)

qubit said:


> Only 99% huh? They'll get you with that 1% lol.
> 
> After you've run the Seagate check, you could also try installing Windows clean by creating another partition and seeing how it runs. I bet you it runs 100% ok, proving that your slowdowns are caused by software.
> 
> To be honest, there isn't enough info in your post to judge why you're seeing poor performance.



Tested with Seagate utility. All tests passed. 
Thing is it not always works slow, sometimes working as it should, sometimes very slow. I use all software that i used before it started to work slow, i didnt install any new programs or drivers. On win7 i dont have any software installed, only drivers and games, i use win7 only for playing games.
 I will try to connect it to another SATA3 port, there is a bug in Motherboard, bug in intel 6 series chipsets that causes sata2 ports to work with decreased performance, but HDD is connected to SATA3 and never been conected to sata2. And will do another virus check.


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## Saidrex (Mar 1, 2011)

Did full virus check with AVZ and Kaspersky Antivirus 2011. Did not find anything, looked for suspicious files and processes, nothing.
Now i am 100% sure.

Connected to another SATA3 port and used different cable, no changes, works slow.

Its starts to work normaly when defragment it even if it is already defragmented, disk analysis goes very slow and then hdd starts to work normaly for some time and then again starts to work slow.


Also when testing with Crystal Disk Mark 3

When select option 1000 MB result is Sequential Read : 20.656 MB/s
When select option 50 MB result is Sequential Read :   108.600 MB/s
Maybe thats is how it should be.

Did little diging in internet and find out that normal read speed for this hdd using any options is around 130 MB/s.


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## RejZoR (Mar 1, 2011)

What's strange here is that write is ok but read is all messed up (too low).
On the other hand i see you have Sandy Bridge... this could be related.


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## Saidrex (Mar 1, 2011)

RejZoR said:


> On the other hand i see you have Sandy Bridge... this could be related.



Why?

I think i messed up when splitted hdd into 4 partitions. Because its started to work slow around that time, im now taking long route, i deleted all partitions and doing slow format of hdd. I will test it again tomorrow on fresh os. 
Strange 2 hours and only 66% formated.

More than 3 hours and finaly 100%. Definetly something wrong with hdd. My old Samsung 500GB hdd completed slow formating in less than hour.


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## qubit (Mar 2, 2011)

You don't need to do a full format. The quickie format is all that is ever required.


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## DigitalUK (Mar 2, 2011)

you havent got PIO Mode set by any chance in bios or in windows that would make everything very slow.


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## SvB4EvA (Mar 2, 2011)

Like some one else said, check your firmware. It was a bad problem with the Barracuda 7200.12 series. If you still have problems after updating or its currently up to date already, read on...

I wanna help out, but im going to have to bombard you with questions 

You say you have the drive split into 4 partitions.
 1. What sizes are they?
 2. What sizes are the XP and Win7 partitions in particular?
 3. How close are they to full?

We'll start with that and then go from there, let me know!


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## Saidrex (Mar 2, 2011)

SvB4EvA said:


> You say you have the drive split into 4 partitions.
> 1. What sizes are they?
> 2. What sizes are the XP and Win7 partitions in particular?
> 3. How close are they to full?



1. C: 50, D: 75, E: 50, G: 280
2. WinXP - 50GB. Win7 - 75GB
3, C, D, E - 50% full  G, - 30% full.




DigitalUK said:


> you havent got PIO Mode set by any chance in bios or in windows that would make everything very slow.



cant find it in bios, i think this bios doesnt have it. About windows dont know, maybe. Im installing now fresh windows.


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## SvB4EvA (Mar 2, 2011)

Have you made any changes to other hardware or software right before the problem started happening? If so, try to remember what you did and change it back to see if the problem stops.

Also do this:

1. Go to Device Manager.
2. Double-click "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers".
3. Right click on "ATA Channel 0" and select Properties.
4. Click on the "Advanced Settings" tab.
5. Look under "Current Mode". What is listed there? (If there is no information listed there see 5a. below.)

5a. If you don't see anything in the "Advanced Settings" tab, check all the "ATA Channels" listed in Device Manager until you find the one that has information listed under the "Advanced Settings" tab. (It is possible you may not find any info listed under any of the ATA channels "Advanced Settings" tabs. This has to do with certain motherboards and 3rd party SATA 6Gb/s controllers. I say this because you said your drive is connected to a SATA 6Gb/s port.)

After you do this, tell me what is listed for the "Current Mode". Then we can go from there, I have plenty more things to look at.


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## Saidrex (Mar 2, 2011)

SvB4EvA said:


> 5. Look under "Current Mode". What is listed there? (If there is no information listed there see 5a. below.)



all 4, primary and secondary IDE channels have ''DMA, if available'' selected. One of the secondary IDE channels have "Ultra DMA: 5".


Fresh OS, started to work great, around read speed 110 mb\s. Installed drivers and software, reading speed is down to 60 mb\s.


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## SvB4EvA (Mar 2, 2011)

Saidrex said:


> Fresh OS, started to work great, around read speed 110 mb\s. Installed drivers and software, reading speed is down to 60 mb\s.



Interesting... Maybe try a fresh install again and just install one thing at a time and test.


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## Saidrex (Mar 2, 2011)

SvB4EvA said:


> Interesting... Maybe try a fresh install again and just install one thing at a time and test.



I now think problem is in mobo draivers, i will try to install diferent drivers and see how it goes.

Nope, its not drivers. Tried nevest version, older versions even without drivers and nothing.


Tried to connect to sata2, update firmware and nothing.

Partition with windows works maximum Sequential Read: 65 mb/s
Other partitions  Sequential Read: 15-25 mb/s

Maybe thats how it should be? maybe this is normal speed?


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## Saidrex (Mar 2, 2011)

Connected to another computer, installed fresh os, nothings changed. Works very slow. Tested with program called "Victoria". In the beginning theres is fast sectors and read speed is around 110 mb/s. Completed 5% and then started slow sectors, read speed around 60 mb/s. After 13% very slow sectors, read speed around 25 mb/s and furter is worse, even more slow sectors and speed is falling. Didnt tested it past 20%, there is no point to continue. Its bad hdd. Need to find warranty, tomorrow i'll bring it back to store. At first its worked fine because i didnt use other partitions where slow sectors were and only after installing win7 i started to use them.

Thank you all for taking your time to help. Big thanks.


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