Harddrives not performing, causing constant spikes of lag/slowdown on system

Hi,

I've bought a Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Xi 1554. It came with Vista, I formatted and installed XP Pro. I seem to have installed all the neccessary drivers, there are no more yellow exclamation marks in Device Manager.

Yet, my harddrives are not performing well at all. As soon as the workload on them gets even slightly high, they start causing slowdowns on my entire system. Sound slows down, mouse stops working (jumping all over the place instead of following smooth movements), and graphics stutter.

The notebook comes with two harddrives, but I am not running these in RAID.

The reason why I am sure my harddrives are the culprits, is because I hear a "clicking" sound when the harddrives set in, and that is when the slowdowns occur.


Any help in remedying my problem would be greatly appreciated. I'm very happy with the notebook otherwise.


Regards,
Zarunil

 

Can you tell us a bit more about your hard drive type, size, speed, model, interface, spindle speed, etc?

4200 rpm drives, common in many notebooks are sloooooow. 5400 rpm drives are much more pleasant to use, and 7200 rpm is even better.

It's quite normal for a hard drive to make little clicking noises while its being accessed. There are moving parts inside, it's not a solid-state device.

 

I'm not sure what make and model they are, it doesn't say so on the box or the spec sheet. They are stock harddrives, 2x160 GB running at 5400 RPM. In Device Manager they are named "WDC WD16 00BEVS-22RST0 SCSI Disk Device".

Here is a link to the hardware specifications of the notebook, if that might be of any help:
http://www.fujitsu-siemens.com/Resources/16/401576446.pdf

Edit: If there are any tools I can use to check if my harddrives are working properly, please let me know.

Regards,
Zarunil

 

Are you using the latest BIOS at Fujitsu-Siemens?

Can you go into Device Manager and check what is on the Primary and Secondary channels and the transfer modes on the IDE interface? I wonder whether there should be a driver for the RAID hardware even if you are not using RAID.

You can check the HDD performance using HD Tune or HDtach.

John

 

I updated the BIOS but the problem still persists. I've ran CHKDSK on all partitions. It ran fine on C: and D: (two partitions of the same drive), however it locked up on "Part 5" when attempting to check the free space on E: (my other drive). I've defragmented all partitions. E: seems to be my problem disk. I can access it fine and read/write files. Copying/moving files from E: to my other partitions is also working.

I'll try HD Tune and HDtach, thanks for your help so far John and lupin.

Edit:

Could you please elaborate on this? My knowledge of computers is limited.

Edit 2: While running HD Tune, I am getting a pop-up in the system tray saying "Critical hard disk temperature. WDC WD1600BEVS-22RST0 Temperature: 55 degrees celcius.". That can't be good. Could this be why I am getting stutterings? Perhaps the harddrive slows itself down when it overheats.

Regards,
Zarunil

 

From the looks of what it says in Device Manager, it doesn't have the driver or correct driver for the IDE controller. Double check to see if you've installed the non-RAID driver. Sometimes if you install the RAID driver it'll work but it'll default to the fail safe non-DMA access mode.

 

I checked the two Primary IDE Channels (I assume one is assigned for each partition of the same drive) and the Secondary IDE Channel. Their "Device Type" options are all set to "Auto Detection". "Transfer Mode" is set to "DMA if available".

Edit: As far as controllers go, this is what I found in Device Manager:

IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers
|
|-> Intel(R) 82810G (ICH7 Family) Ultra ATA Storage Controllers - 27DF
|-> Intel(R) 82810GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller - 27C4

SCSI and Raid Controllers
|
|-> VIA VT6421 RAID Controller


Regards,
Zarunil

 

I suspect that one or more of your HDDs is running in PIO mode which will drastically reduce system performance.

To check, go into Device Manager and open up the IDE ATA/ATAPI controller tree. Click on the Primary IDE channel, right click and select properties. Then click on the Advanced Settings tab. Tell us what is the Transfer mode and the Current transfer mode for each device not applicable means nothing connected). Repeat for the Secondary IDE channel.

As already noted, you have some RAID controller hardware, so you need to install the right driver. This thread could be relevant.

John

 

OK, you have seen the transfer model, but what is the Current transfer mode?

Also, I see that you have the RAID controller installed. I don't know my way around that, but maybe there is a configuration option or utility.

John

 

"Current Transfer Mode" is set to "Not Applicable" on all three channels, apart from Device 0 on the very first Primary IDE Channel.

Edit: On Device 0 it says "Ultra DMA Mode 2".


Regards,
Zarunil

 

Yes, I had the exact same problem when attempting to install Windows XP Pro in my notebook. My harddrives wouldn't be detected, so I had to slipstream drivers and use a bootable CD. Pretty much used the same method as instructed in the thread you linked to.


Regards,
Zarunil

 

That's most likely the DVD/CD Rom.

What do the other ones say? Are your drives SATA? Might want check the BIOS to make sure they are in AHCI mode if they are SATA, compatability mode usually defaults to DMA 2 or PIO and you can't see it in windows.

 

Optical drives normally run at UDMA 2, so that's I think is attached to that controller.

This would mean that the HDDs are attached to the VIA RAID controller. Look for configuration options or maybe a utility. Is there anything at VIA?

John

 

It looks like this in my Device Manager:

IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers
|
|-> Primary IDE Channel <- Device 0 = Ultra DMA Mode 2, Device 1 = Not Applicable
|-> Primary IDE Channel <- Device 0 = Not Applicable, Device 1 = Not Applicable
|-> Secondary IDE Channel <- Device 0 = Not Applicable, Device 1 = Not Applicable

Edit: After doing a thorough scan of both disks with HD Tune, my OS disk came clean but my other disk, which I suspect is the cause of my problem, looks like this:




Regards,
Zarunil

 

I had installed an older version of that utility, and older RAID drivers. The utility let's you set up harddrives in RAID. I updated but the problem is still there. Thanks for the link, though.

Edit: I ran "HD Tach", but it fails the "Sequential Read Test". on E:. Error message reads: "Warning: Error during test or test cancelled by user.". The test runs fine on C: and D: (both are partitions of the same physical harddrive), again pointing towards my E: harddrive to be the cause of my problem.

Edit 2: Surprisingly the lag has stopped. Not quite sure what I did to stop it. If it returns I'll look at it again. Thank you so much for your assistance so far, this forum and it's users are great.

Regards,
Zarunil