Are these speeds a bit slow (HDD)

I have noticed my vaio is running quite slowly at the moment, especially when installing things or doing updates and it takes quite a while to boot and shutdown. I have only have it for a year or so and i havent installed too much on it apart from some programs I need for university and the odd game like left 4 dead 2.

I did a benchmark using crystal disk and here are the results:



My friend did the same benchmark on his acer aspire one netbook and was getting roughly double the speeds.

My HDD is a Toshiba MK5055GSX

 

Yes that looks very slow. Please post CrystalDiskInfo shot.

 

Is this what you want?

 

Just a guess:

Norton or McAfee 'protection suite' installed?

Single partition (not counting hidden restore partition...)?

No regular maintenance like a defrag once a month using PD12 Pro?

Default install as shipped by Sony?


First: remove any and all anti-virus products (completely...) and install MSE instead.

Second: Shrink the O/S partition to 100GB or less (you'll probably need something like PD12 Pro to be able to shrink it that small from 456GB size it is now - you can use the trial version to see how effective PerfectDisk 12 is).

Third: Move your user folder's to a second partition you'll create with the space you gain from shrinking the c: drive.


Note that it is not so much how fragmented your files are: it's how fragmented the files AND the free space is on your HDD. That is where PD12 Pro really makes a difference.

Good luck.

 

Yes. So it's not in IDE mode...

You could try scanning for errors and bad sectors. And defrag.

As valid as your advice is, would any of those things slice his sequential speeds in half?

 

Well i do have Mcafee and it is the original sony installation. I am going to get rid of Mcafee at some point (already have on my desktop) but still this cant be causing this much of a speed drop, my desktop has far more crap on it and runs significantly faster. Ill have a look at scanning errors and i have a copy of windows 7 professional x64 which i got free from uni which i might consider installing.

My friend is upgrading to the WD black 750gb at the moment, if that turns out to be a good drive i may consider upgrading althouhg im not sure on whether this would affect my sony warranty which has another 2 years left.

Edit: any recommendations for good ways of scanning for errors

 

Just go to Computer and right click on your C drive, then Tools.

 

It seems like I hit 3 of the 4 'guesses' spot on.

Yes, in my experience, all of those things make a Sony run like a 1995 Windows computer. Don't know how the CDM score would look like (but I don't care: it's too slow is all I know).


A clean Win7x64 install, with only the needed drivers for the hardware you have and none of the junk Sony software would make your system fly.

However, if you were to go to all that trouble, I would definitely upgrade the HDD.

The benefits of getting a new HDD are:

1) You can take two or more days to properly setup the new drive and still be able to put in the original HDD to get work done when your spare time is up. (Then, switch them again and continue installing the O/S, drivers and software/programs on the new drive).

2) You can properly partition the new drive without worrying about 'killing' the recovery partition on the original HDD.

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...-hitachi-7k500-benchmark-setup-specifics.html


3) With a clean Win7 install - you will finally realize the full performance of your system - to do this on your existing HDD you may 'never' be able to go back to the Sony shipped state (if you remove/overwrite the HDD sectors that point to the hidden recovery partition).

4) You can perform the install (changing the install order...) several times to see which combination is most stable (drivers need a certain install order...).


Finally, the Scorpio Black 750GB HDD installed with the partitioning scheme in the link above will be a huge upgrade for you. Highly recommended.

Good luck.

 

Right it's running disk check now I'll post back when it's done (although that could be a while).

 

The hdd upgrade would be worth it although I'll have to find out whether it will have any effect on warranty because I payed extra for accidental damage (the laptop gets carried around a lot) so I don't want to go voiding it

 

You can safely (without voiding warranty) replace/upgrade the RAM, the HDD and the battery (given that it's an OEM version).

To be 100% sure: simply keep the parts you're upgrading - if you need to return/present the computer for any warranty work.

 

+ 1 for clean install and a fast hard drive.

If you value fast application launching and booting I recommend the Seagate XT. It's the drive I currently use.

 

I did a disk check and I left it idling for a few hours hoping porgrmas would stop using all of the resources and have just re run the test are there results better?



or is it still running a bit slow the HDD access light seems to be on lot let now. if these results are more normal i guess a clean install will give me a much faster system and hopefully i can sort a better hard drive in thenext month or so

 

Can you run HDTune please? that's easier to tell.

 

There you go:

 

Aha. That looks like a normal 5400rpm drive. Nothing wrong there.

 

So it looks like my problem is bloatware running for the rist hour or so after ive switched it on so i guess a clean install would solve any problems. I agree with the above that the clean install would be easier on a new drive so i can leave my old drive with the original OS and programs just in case.