Xtremely SLOOOOWWW Drive Problem

Iceman · Post by **Iceman** » Mon Jan 31, 2005 11:20 am

I have this Dell Dimension XPS pizza crap at work that is exhibiting a really weird disk performance problem that I have been unable to diagnose.

It has 2 disk drives in removable bays and the performance specs from HDTach are as follows:

1) C,E : Maxtor Maxtor_6Y160P0_YAR41BW0 160 Gb
Sequential Read : 30 MB/s
Burst Speed : 32.2 MB/s

2) H: WD-1200JB 120 Gb
Sequential Read : 2.3 MB/s
Burst Speed : 2.4 MB/s

These are comparable disk drives. The WD/120 I take home and to my other office and plug in to the respective PCs and see no problem whatsoever ... that is ... the WD runs around 29 MB/sec on two other PCs.

Any ideas as to what would cause such a problem? I have run Sandra Pro on several items and posted the results below ...

Thanks in adv,
Ice

C Drive (Maxtor) Sandra Results

H Drive (WD) Sandra Results

CPU-Bios Sandra Results

MainBoard Sandra Results

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Mon Jan 31, 2005 12:17 pm

Defrag?

Also check to make sure they aren't using "real mdoe" drivers which are basically DOS drivers. Do thisn in the control panel/system/hardware/device manager.

Make sure jumpers are set correctly and that BIOS sees them as what they are.

Iceman · Post by **Iceman** » Mon Jan 31, 2005 2:31 pm

Defrag - Not the problem ... Disk works fine on other computers. Even still, fragmentation wouldn't account for a 10x reduction in performance.

Real Mode Driver - Don't think so, ...->Disk Drives->WDC WDJ1200JB->Properties shows exactly the same information as ...->Disk Drives->Maxtor 6Y160P0->Properties (see fig below)

Jumpers - Checking ...

Bios - Checking ...

Mr. Perfect · Post by **Mr. Perfect** » Mon Jan 31, 2005 2:44 pm

Open up Device Manager and check to see if the ATA channel the drives are on is set to use DMA.

Iceman · Post by **Iceman** » Mon Jan 31, 2005 2:54 pm

Nope, that's not it ...

Primary ...

Secondary ...

STRESSTEST · Post by **STRESSTEST** » Mon Jan 31, 2005 3:11 pm

thinkin you are using 40-wire cables. You should be using 80 wire cables. (both have the standard 40pin connectors)

Your hard drives should be DMA 5 (6 for the maxtor) period. So either you have old ATA33 cables (40 wire) or your removable's are not ATA66+ compatible. Check both

DMA 2 is ata33 BTW, the fastest the old standard can go

Iceman · Post by **Iceman** » Mon Jan 31, 2005 3:44 pm

Ok, Ok, Ok, the BIOS config is all fakked up. In fact, the [edit]primary slave[/edit] is turned off. I changed it to auto and re-ran the tests and came up with the following:

1) C,E : Maxtor Maxtor_6Y160P0_YAR41BW0 160 Gb
Sequential Read : 48.9 MB/s
Burst Speed : 89.4 MB/s

2) H: WD-1200JB 120 Gb
Sequential Read : 41.7 MB/s
Burst Speed : 75.8 MB/s

Now device manager shows Primary at Ultra DMA Mode 5.

BTW: I am surprised that the Maxtor blows the WD away. I may consider dumping the WD's in the future.

Thx, You guys rock ...

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Mon Jan 31, 2005 4:13 pm

More like a 160 GB drive almost always blows away a 120 GB drive, the data density is higher and because of that so are the read speeds, just like my 250 GB drives would probably make quick work of your drives.

If you think your problem is tough to figure out, try cracking this one:

STRESSTEST · Post by **STRESSTEST** » Mon Jan 31, 2005 4:27 pm

true krom. that being said, getting rid of your WD drives still isn't a bad idea

Iceman · Post by **Iceman** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 8:22 am

Waz rong wid WD drivz?

WarAdvocat · Post by **WarAdvocat** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 9:16 am

dem bwoken, dats w0t

MD-2389 · Post by **MD-2389** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 8:24 pm

Iceman wrote:Waz rong wid WD drivz?

Years ago they had high failure rates. Most of them died via head crashes and the like. (ie: click of death syndrome) I'm not sure about how they are now though, so I'll reserve judgement.

STRESSTEST · Post by **STRESSTEST** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 9:27 pm

YMMV first off.

In my expieriance WD drives currently are as bad as my success with the IBM deathstarts of they 2000 era.

They did have some big problems and they cleaned them up, but over the last 12 months or so I've been witness to more WD failures (clickin) regardless of model, tho most were the JB 8 meg models, then I ever did in the same timeframe using the IBM drives.

However, let me also say that hard drives fail. I have had the best luck with Maxtor and Seagate for IDE drives. Again WMMV. But since all brands/models fail isn't it smart to use the commonly more reliable drives with the best warranty if you consider in your purchase that at some time or another the drive you are buying will fail?

My buying decisions are solely Maxtor and Seagate now, and I prefer seagate due to the 5 year warranty they offer on thier drives.

Matrix · Post by **Matrix** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 9:57 pm

Iâ??ve also had bad luck with WD lately, this one WD I had for 6 month, head crashed. The one I got back from the RMA of that one died with in 1 month, data corruption over the entire drive.

But currently my main comp is running 2 WD JB drives, 120GB and 250GB. I buy them because there cheap and my data is not important. Got the 250GB for 80bux on black Friday.

I use Maxtor and WD the most, and have 1 Seagate, but still prefer Maxtor over everything else.
My old server that I just took out of service has 2 6GB WD drives from 98 that I had running 24/7 for the last 2 years. And they still work, so u never know

I put Maxtor in all the comps I build for people, I recently built my sister a system with a Maxtor 160GB SATA RAID1 setup for her photo work.

Vander · Post by **Vander** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 10:17 pm

What timing. I had a 20gb WD drive die last night. Click of death.

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Wed Feb 02, 2005 9:19 am

Interesting. When I look at my Current Transfer Mode
"Not Applicable" is in the box.
(West.Dig 120g)
Hows doo eyes change that to Ultra mode 5?

Iceman · Post by **Iceman** » Wed Feb 02, 2005 12:15 pm

Ok, I talked my boss into buying one of these for me ...

Maxtor / 300Gb / Ultra ATA/133 / 16Mb Cache
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp ... pe=product

It will be interesting to run the benchmark on this drive ... will do so and post ehre later.

Iceman · Post by **Iceman** » Wed Feb 02, 2005 3:45 pm

H : Maxtor Maxtor_6B300R0 300 Gb
Sequential Read : 54 MB/s
Burst Speed : 92 MB/s

Not bad ... not bad at all ...

Tyranny · Post by **Tyranny** » Thu Feb 03, 2005 1:10 am

Maybe you guys just abuse the hell out of them with pr0n and music files

My WD is still running strong after two years. Houses all my pr0n and music files

Watch, I'll wake up and it'll die on me tomorrow

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Thu Feb 03, 2005 1:36 am

Correct, the lifespan of your hard drives is inversely proportional to how much you brag about it.

STRESSTEST · Post by **STRESSTEST** » Thu Feb 03, 2005 7:51 am

Krom wrote:Correct, the lifespan of your hard drives is inversely proportional to how much you brag about it.

heh x2

Iceman · Post by **Iceman** » Thu Feb 03, 2005 8:51 am

My new Maxtor 300 sucks.

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Thu Feb 03, 2005 8:53 pm

Iceman wrote:My new Maxtor 300 sucks.

Maybe if you paid it more than 5 dollars it would really f#*k you?