HDTune: burst transfer rate lower than maximum transfer rate

Is there a way to fix this?

 

Run it again
Something is using your HDD while you are running HDTune, thats why the blue line goes up and down.
The burst rate varies for me too.
Look at my 2 pics
(I have a really slow drive. >:<]

 

I was going to sugest the same. if you run things such as sidebar with the clock or any number of things to include the internet, it will create the plunges which are an unreral depiction of the drive

 

That was actually run at startup. I ran it again after waiting around 3 minutes after startup and got roughly the same results as far as transfer rates go. Shouldn't the burst transfer rate always be faster than the maximum transfer rate?

edit: Ok I ran it again after waiting 5 minutes after startup instead of 3. I was also disconnected from the internet this time.



The transfer rates went up, but the burst transfer rate is still lower than the maximum transfer rate.

 

Are you running Vista?

I attach 3 plots I have just made for my HDD:

(i) HDTune running under Vista
(ii) HDTune running under XP
(iii) HD Tach running under XP

These are all on the same computer (Zepto 6024W, Intel 965 chipset) with the same HDD.

You will see that XP is giving a faster burst rate than Vista and HD Tach has a respectable interface burst rate. Unfortunately HD Tach doesn't work with Vista.

My conclusion is that your HDD is OK and the anguish is being caused by HD Tune + Vista.

John

 

Yes, I'm running Vista. I just thought that the burst rate should always be higher than the maximum rate. If this is a normal HDTune result using Vista, then I guess there's no problem.

 

my harddrive does the same. I cannot get the burst rate above the maximum transfer rate. But I have a hybrid drive, and always assumed it was simply because HDtune could not properly measure hybrid drives.

 

I've just run HDtune with an identical WD2500BEVS but in an external enclosure through eSATA. The burst rate is the same as I got with HDtune and internal HDD under XP. So there's something about Vista + HD Tune + internal HDDs which is reducing the (reported) burst speed.

Anyway, it's not an issue I will lose sleep over. The burst speed only applies to whatever is in the cache, provided it is faster than the HDD transfer rate. And if the poor HDD is having to simultaneously service reads and writes then the performance will drop massively.

John