Large dips a normal hdtune result for a high capacity system drive?

Hi,
I just installed a 2.5" Hitachi 5K750 640GB Drive in my Inspiron 1545. I previously had a Samsung HM250HI (250GB) installed. The HDTune graph from that drive was always perfectly smooth with no major peaks and valleys, even if windows started doing some other low priority tasks during the test. The Hitachi has multiple, severe dips, even if windows is completely idle otherwise. I swear the system seems noticeably slower, although the hitachi has a higher maximum, and nearly identical average transfer rates.

I ran an offline speed test from a boot CD and the Hitachi did not exhibit any of these dips. It has to be something in windows doing it. The weird part is, that I did a windows system image backup of my samsung, restored it to the larger hitachi with a recovery cd, then expanded the volume to 640GB in disk management. This drive is identical in every configuration compared to the Samsung. I had disabled windows search (Indexing), and several other services that are known to be disk hogs, on the Samsung drive long before I backed it up.

 

It's even worse now. I just don't get it. I ran a hdtune test from hiren's boot cd in mini windows xp, and the graph was perfect. No dips and normal curve in the graph. Just ran it again in windows, after letting it sit idle for about 10 minutes. The drive was completely idle before testing. I even ran the test a few different times, stopping at the first dip, to see if there was still disk activity (something running in the background). There wasn't.

If I put the Samsung drive back in, I get a normal graph again, with maybe one or two dips that don't drop below the overall minimum transfer rate. I doubt it's something physically wrong with the drive. But, what could cause such a terrible graph on one drive and not on another. It definitely seems more sluggish in windows, despite having a higher maximum transfer rate.

 

If you cloned your Samsung drive and you are seeing these results, then it is possible that some of the 'tweaks' you did while using the Samsung drive is adversely affecting the performance of the Hitachi.

If you did not clone it; all bets are off (high chance that this is not the same install).

Another point to consider is that if you're using the full capacity of the Hitachi for the O/S, then of course it will be slower: you need to shrink the partition of C: drive to be as small as possible and create a 'Data' partition to move your data onto. One reason for this is that the higher density platters of the Hitachi need more time to 'settle' into the proper tracks during seeks and also need more error correction compared to the 'huge' data tracks the low density Samsung drive sports. By shrinking the partition you not only make huge swings of the heads unnecessary in normal usage, but you are also limiting the O/S files to the fastest part of the platters too.

Hope some of this helps.

 

Thank you for your reply.

I only have 3GB of RAM. The only major things I really changed on the samsung were:
disabled Windows Search (Indexing)
disabled the service that searches for media player file updates (forget the name)
performed the ahci registry tweak, so that I could use AHCI mode on a drive that was installed in ATA mode.

Also, Just FYI, I did try a fresh install first, and it was doing the same thing. I also use smart defrag which not only defrags, but will also optimize based on how frequently files are accessed. It is supposed to prioritize system files first. There is a 14.65GB System partition according to disk management, but it only seems to be using 120MB or so. I don't believe the Samsung had a partition of the same size.

I don't want to have to re-install from scratch and manually restore everything. I will try using the hitachi align tool (as this is a 4k drive), as a last resort. If that does not help, it's probably going back to the egg.

 

Running in AHCI vs. IDE mode would probably/easily give you those kind of results. IDE does not take into consideration the NCQ (native command queuing) that AHCI mode can take advantage of.

The 14.65GB System partition - is it at the front of the drive? Or at the end. This will also make the drive nominally slower (if at the front).

I would say that something went wrong with your install - a re-install is not just a suggestion; I would say it is a requirement (with a huge system partition that is barely filled).

If I were in your shoes: I would go into Win7 setup and delete all partitons possible on the drive so that there is only a single partition. Then, I would install Windows (it will create the partitions it needs 'properly').

Good luck.

 

I have tried both AHCI, and ATA mode. ATA seemed to make the graph even worse. AHCI seems best. After running the Hitachi Align tool, I thought I'd solved my problem. Ran a test in HDTune, and HDTach, and got a decent result for a change. The tool actually said the drive was not aligned.

I have no idea whether its at the front or the rear. I can only assume that, for some reason, windows created that partition when I ran the system image restore.

I did try a fresh install first. I deleted any and all existing partitions, through the windows installer, and let windows create what it needed. This still resulted in a nearly identical graph. I realize a large system drive will probably be slower than a smaller drive, but I think this is something else. Maybe the drive is not using it's cache properly, or it's some result of the power saving features of the drive, which cannot be changed with any AAM/APM tools. Its like the drive decides to fall on it's face when more than one app (even a background app) tries to access it at the same time.

I think I'm just going to try a different brand drive locally. Clone it the same way. If it performs better, then I know it's a problem with the Hitachi. Thanks for replying, and trying to help me out. I will let you know what happens.