My Hitachi 7K500 does not feel fast

Well, I just replaced my stock Toshiba MK5055GSX 500GB 5400RPM drive with the Hitachi 7K500. Unfortunately, I have not seen any noticeable speed improvements. I have noticed a slight clicking sound every once in a while that I've never noticed with the Toshiba. Therefore, I am hesitant to purchase the XT in fear of seeing no performance gains and many reviews have mentioned more vibration and noise than most 7200 rpm drives.

When using my Toshiba drive, my laptop would pause/freeze for a few seconds every once in a while. I was hoping the Hitachi would fix that problem but sadly, it has not.

Any other ideas or suggestions?

 

Have you done a clean install?

At what moments do you experience pauses?

 

No, I have not done a clean install yet. I teach computer courses and I run a TON of software which takes a few days to rebuild. I was hoping to avoid doing a clean install.

The pauses happen seemingly sporadically but usually involves the mouse like when I am about to double click an application or just moving it around during normal operation.

 

sjamie,

If you're running Vista or Win 7, shrink the partition that Windows is installed on to the smallest possible size (allowing 20-30GB free space too).

Also, download PerfectDisk 11 and defrag the HD both online and offline at least twice (to totally defrag all the files).

These two 'tweaks' will make your computer much more responsive.

If the pauses continue, then a clean install is highly recommended - there are some old/unused drivers/programs/registry entries that are interfering with your current software.

Good luck.

 

Currently, I am not running windows in a separate partition from my files. What advantages do I gain from doing so?

My drives are continually defragged by Diskeeper 2010 and I manually defragged my HD to ensure total defragmentation. What advantages would using PerfectDisk 11 give me?

Thanks for the help!

 

sjamie,

even if you didn't separate your data from the O/S, if you could shrink your drive so that you are using the smallest capacity possible, you will see immediate advantages as the HD heads do not have to cover the disk's platters from edge to edge.

I have tried Diskeeper a few times and always go back to PerfectDisk. Why? Because no other product can defrag the drive fully like PD can (no matter what they claim - they simply don't show you what is left fragmented).

The latest PD version (11), allows you to place the different types of files in the order you prefer. For my uses, the best 'layout' I have found so far is by setting up PD to defrag with the following settings:

Combined with PD's 'Stealth Mode', the following settings allow the fastest part of the HD to be used for new and frequently updated files. While minimizing re-fragmentation as the drive is being used.

See:

 

Ok, I will take a closer look at PerfectDisk. Thank you!

 

I'll be interested to know what you conclude after trying PD for a few days.

 

... and so far, I'm not too impressed with my new 7K500. Either my stock Toshiba MK5055GSX 500GB drive is an amazingly fast 5400 rpm drive or my system is not optimized in a way to take advantage of the 7K500's performance enhancements.

 

The biggest problem here is if you use a fairly filled drive with the files spread out you are heavily relying on seek times. This really can squash the difference between a 5400 and 7200 RPM drive. The 7200 may have a slight advantage in seeks rotational but head seeks kill you every time.

This is where the XT shines, it can lower those seeks significantly. So the worse the data is laid out on the platter it can kill the HDD section but the SSD cache could care less. This is one of the reasons I've set the auto defrag to two months on my systems with the XT.

I am another vote for PD11 too. Since I've been using it, since version 8, I haven't wandered so I can't tout it being better than others but will say it works great.

 

That's just it... my drive is only 40% full.

 

sjamie, can you run HDTune Pro, the random access benchmark, so we can see if your 7K500 performs like it should.

PS. all off topic posts have been removed from the Seagate 7200.5 750GB thread. For next time: create your own thread please.

 

@sjamia,
I don’t know how hard it is to swap out your HDD, but when you have the time you might want to install the new HDD and install Windows and your software. That way you can use your old drive for work until you finish installing all you need on your new HDD.
That worked real well with my old M1710. I had two HDD caddies and all you had to do was slid one out and the slid the other in.

 

ur real problem is that u did't do a clean install.. it would allow u to get best performance possible.. if u also partion it properly , ur performance should increase.

 

Sorry about that, I did not intend to thread jack.

 

Well, I'm trying to compare my new Hitachi 7K500 to my stock Toshiba drive. Wouldn't cloning a drive allow you to compare apples to apples? If I did a fresh install of Windows 7 on the Hitachi and there is an increase in performance, how would I know if the drive is making the difference or the fresh install?

From what I've been reading, partitioning a single drive today does not make as much of a difference as it used to years ago. It would be better to use a small SSD for the OS and another drive for my files but since my laptop only has one drive bay, that is not an option. If I am wrong, I am very willing to be corrected.

 

Because what's the best layout for things on your Toshiba drive may not be the best layout for things on your Hitachi. As a very rough analogy, let's say you bought a new house or moved into a new apartment. Now, try to put everything in your new place in exactly the same places as it was in the old place. Unless your new place is exactly the same as your old place (in layout, orientation, and a bunch of other things), chances are good that putting things the way they were in the old place won't necessarily work out as well as rearranging things so they fit in the new space more appropriately. HDDs aren't quite the same, I know, but there may be things carried over from the cloning that just don't work quite the same or as well on the new drive because it's different.

As for partitioning, I don't know what sort of difference it made years ago, but a relatively small starting partition of a large drive (for example, say, 100 GB of a 500 GB drive) means that that starting partition is located entirely on the outer rim of the drive platter, which means data transfer times will be faster. If you look at the HDTune graphs of HDDs that get posted in here, you'll notice that most of them start out high, and then curve down to some lower value. This shows how the transfer speed drops as you move in from the rim of the platter towards the center, due to the fun physics facts of the rim of a spinning disc moving more quickly than the center. By making a small initial partition (commonly called "short-stroking"), you make a partition that is contained within the high part of that curve, and would thus be faster. You can also see how for a SSD this wouldn't matter; an SSD's HDTune graph is typically flat across, because there's no speed difference in data transfer from any portion of its memory.

Oh, and I'm not certain that the pauses/freezes you've been having are because of your hard drive. If they happen before you double-click an application, or while you're just moving your mouse around, you're not doing anything that should be involving disk access, and thus the freezing is unlikely to be related (unless there's some background process that's accessing the disk just then). How much memory do you have? What may be happening, if your HDD is being accessed right when those pauses/freezes happen, is that you're running out of RAM and Windows is trying to pagefile things.

 

Judicator, I really appreciate your analogies and explanations. You've convinced me to partition my drive! What partition strategy and software do you recommend I use? This is brand new territory for me!

I have 4 gigs of ram and I typically use only 60% - 75% so I don't think I'm running out of ram during those pauses.

 

tilleroftheearth posted a (large!) guide about half a year ago as to how he partitioned his 7K500 at the time ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...-hitachi-7k500-benchmark-setup-specifics.html) which is worth reading, even if your workflow will probably not match his. Without knowing exactly how you use your computer, it's a little difficult to do much but help you generally. For a "simple" short-stroke partioning strategy, I'd probably just make 2 partitions (not counting the hidden one Windows 7 makes), a 100 GB one to hold your OS and commonly used applications, and you can put your less accessed media and data files in the remaining portion.

As for the memory thing, that's unfortunate; it would have been nice if we could have found a simple solution like that. I'm still less convinced those issues are due directly to your HDD, I'd argue that a process or running program (maybe an AV?) are more likely culprits. Another suggestion I'd have to try is to leave your Windows Task Manager running, to have a graph of CPU performance and usage. See if there are any spikes in CPU use when those pauses/freezes happen.

 

tilleroftheearth's partitioning guide is AWESOME! Thanks for posting it.

I have a few questions:
1. I only have the recovery disks I created from the OS and I do not own a retail copy of Windows 7. Would I still be able to "short stroke" the drive? If so, how so?

2. Once I set up the OS partition (c:drive), if I ever need to re-install Windows, I'd also have to reinstall ALL of my applications, right? If so, what is the real advantage of doing so?

 

Thanks!

1) Search these forums for 'legal win 7 download links', download the exact version of Win7 that is installed on your computer and simply use the serial Key on the bottom of your notebook to register/activate your 'clean' windows copy.

2) Yes, you do have to reinstall everything (including drivers). But the advantages is that Win7 will be as lean and mean as possible with the latest versions of every driver and only the software you want installed on the system. With the registry so much 'cleaner' (and no - do not use a registry cleaner! lol...), the computer will stay useable for a much longer time before another re-install is necessary.

 

OUCH, I forgot about reinstalling all drivers!

If I do install a clean version of Win7, what is the best way to locate and install all of my drivers?

 

What is your exact make and model of your notebook?

 

go to ur notebook site and dowload drivers.. if u have a hp , i can garuntee u that in the hp sub-forum , u'll find all the drivers for each model..

 

Will Win7 install some default drivers so things will kinda work until I download the official drivers from my notebook's site?

 

Yes, it will install some/most default drivers - but if it doesn't install your wireless or ethernet drivers, then it would have been wise to download those first (to a usb key).

Good luck.

 

Very wise advise, thanks!

 

Get an SSD, that will feel fast

 

While having great sequential speeds the 7K500 and 7200.4 feel incredibly slow because of the terrible access times, I've experienced them. A Scorpio Black makes for a much better traditional hd boot drive imo, and the Momentus XT is obviously much quicker than that.

 

Agreed if they came in bigger sizes or if I could run 2 internal drives on my notebook which I can't.