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    Odd HD Tune graph -- throughput capped at 65-66MB/s??

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by swarmer, Sep 5, 2008.

  1. swarmer

    swarmer beep beep

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    I just got a Hitachi 7K320 160gb drive and put it in my Dell Latitude D630 today.

    Once I put the drive in, I freshly installed Vista Business SP1 64-bit.

    Here are the bizarre results from HDTune. (See attached image.)

    It's like the bandwidth is being capped around 65-66 MB/s for some reason. And the burst rate is lower than the regular read rate... ***?

    Anyone know why?

    My BIOS's "ATA Mode" is set to "AHCI". That's right, isn't it?

    In any case, the drive is nice and quiet... and even with this limitation it's still significantly faster than my last drive... but can anyone help me get the higher transfer rates that it looks like I should be getting for the beginning half of the drive?
     

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    swarmer, Sep 5, 2008
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  2. Andy

    Andy Notebook Prophet

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    Can you upload a screenshot of the Info page as well ? :)
     
    Andy, Sep 5, 2008
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  3. miro_gt

    miro_gt Notebook Deity

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    but that's pretty good though
     
    miro_gt, Sep 5, 2008
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  4. swarmer

    swarmer beep beep

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    Sure... Here you go.

    I do see that it's not using the highest supported mode there... do you know how to change that? Also, does this mean it's not using SATA?
     

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    swarmer, Sep 5, 2008
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  5. K-TRON

    K-TRON Hi, I'm Jimmy Diesel ^_^

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    What is also strange is that the two partitions dont add up to 149Gb.
    I have no idea why your drive is limited like that. It may be an interface issue with your laptop not being able to make use of more than 66Mb/sec.
    I would have said maybe the Sata was running in ATA 66 mode, but aparently its running in ata 100 mode.
    Strange, but still a good result.

    K-TRON
     
    K-TRON, Sep 5, 2008
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  6. swarmer

    swarmer beep beep

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    btw, the Health page looks good as far as I can tell...
     

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    swarmer, Sep 5, 2008
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  7. Andy

    Andy Notebook Prophet

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    You can try and disable AHCI. (It is a tedious process)
    The drive should give a burst rate of about 70-80MB/s....
    And you've probably got about 70GB of unallocated space.
     
    Andy, Sep 5, 2008
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  8. swarmer

    swarmer beep beep

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    I can explain that part... I'm planning more partitions, so I saved some room for them... so my current partitions just aren't using the whole space yet. I did that on purpose.
     
    swarmer, Sep 5, 2008
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  9. Phil

    Phil Retired

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    15% CPU utilization is strangely high. maybe background processes.

    Acces time should be about 1.0ms lower.
     
    Phil, Sep 6, 2008
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  10. swarmer

    swarmer beep beep

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    ok... I installed Intel Matrix Storage Manager. This seems to have fixed the problem. See the attached image for the new graph.

    Transfer rates for the beginning of the drive are now up to about 73 MB/s, which gives a more normal-looking curve. Transfer rates for the latter half of the drive look about the same. CPU usage is cut in half. Access times are still about the same.

    Oddly, this seems to have broken HDTune's Health tab, which now displays absolutely nothing. But... who cares?
     

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    swarmer, Sep 6, 2008
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  11. Andy

    Andy Notebook Prophet

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    The Peak Interface Speed is pretty low when compared to this, but it really doesn't affect performance much.
     
    Andy, Sep 6, 2008
    #11