Show your HD Tune bench!

With all of the new versions of notebook drives coming out, I thought it would be interesting to compare the performance you are getting (whether it be a new drive or old). You can download HD Tune here http://www.hdtune.com/

Edit: As an alternate, there is HD Tach as well. Get it here http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach


I'll start with my newest one:

Seagate 7200.2 120GB (running in SATA 1.5 mode)
HP DV6400
Windows Vista Home Premium x86

Notice that the cpu utilization seems a bit high, and the Seagate's temp sensor is not recognized...........

 

I ran this on my old D400, with a 40GB IBM-CASCADE running in Ultra ATA 5 mode.

 

hdtune on my sony tz90 with toshiba 5400rpm 160g

 

This is scary, 3MB burst!

 

Heres my HD tune results of the laptop in my sig. Its a 20gb toshiba mk2018gap(ATA-5 4200rpm)

 

Hey is it a problem if i did hdtune and the laptop in my sig gives a 2.8mbps max and a .02mbps minimum? Also, it has a 76ms access time and a 97.5%cpu usage? thx

 

My HD tune results from my FZ190 CTO with Seagate Momentus 7200.2 160 gb.

min: 30.4 mb/sec
max: 59.9 mb/sec
avg: 46.8 mb/sec
access time: 14.2 ms
burst rate: 84.0 mb/sec
cpu usage: 2.4%

 

2.5" 5400RPM Western Digital Scorpio 250gb



Also dont be upset about cpu usage, If I am not mistaken it only gives you your current total system cpu usage.

See 5% on mine and I was testing on Vista Ultimate x64, I redid the test later while playing a movie in the background and reactivated my motion background and had like 20%, no way is the hdd suddenly going to use up 15% more cpu power.

Also even if it did just register only hdd cpu usage, one persons results really contain no usefull info because they may be running a P4 for all you know, vs your 2ghz C2D so there 10% may be .8% to you.

 

HD Tune: Hitachi HTS541616J9S Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 1.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 47.2 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 34.2 MB/sec
Access Time : 17.8 ms
Burst Rate : 86.1 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 11.9%

 

sry to quote myself, but can somebody please help. Is there something wrong with my comp?

 

Here's a few more - exact model numbers are in the attachments:

Hitachi 100GB 5400rpm

Fujitsu 120GB 5400rpm

Hitachi 160GB 5400rpm

Samsung 160GB 5400rpm

Samsung 250GB 5400rpm

Downward spikes are not a problem with the HDD - they are caused by another application using the HDD during the benchmarking.

I could also add the WD 250GB, but my result is very similar to the one already posted.

John

 

That seems absurdly low. Unless you have noticed horrible performance from your hard drive, I would assume the bench results are messed up. Run the bench again and try HD Tach as well (to see if the reported numbers jive).

Anyway, here is another bench of mine:

Samsung 120GB 5400 PATA
Compaq V5201US
Windows XP Home

 

That is a very low result. Can you post the HD Tune test result and also a copy of the HD Tune info page? Is the HDD interface in PIO mode? (Look in Device Manager, IDE ATA/ATAPI Devices, Primary IDE channel, properties).

John

 

I am having the same problem here is pic.. It is in PIO mode.

No idea what to do.

 

PIO mode is painfully slow.

If you have a standard notebook without any RAID hardware, go into Device Manager, IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, uninstall the Primary IDE channel, then reboot and let Windows redetect it. This normally resets the interface to UDMA.

Or you can follow the instructions here or there.

John

 

Now we're talking, thanks John.

However my primary channel driver will not reinstall, but I will work that out.

 

Maybe that Sager has a non-standard IDE controller which needs its own driver but your computer must feel it is turbo-charged after getting out of PIO mode.

John

 

yea i'l try that stuff it seems like on my comp nothing works anymore lol. it takes about 5 minutes to open firefox alone i'll try what you said john and get back to everyone

 

yea i'll retest the old thing and post apic for you if my computer can do it without freezing

oh heres my results from this morning. There a little better. My comp is at warp speed now haha

 

I followed your links and read. I had Alcohol 120 installed and it was interfering with the driver install. I uninstalled Alcohol 120 and everything went without a hitch.

Sure is snappier. Motivated me to ordered another 512MB ram for total of 1GB to see if I can put off the new C2D purchase for a few months. It is getting harder to wait, let me tell you.

Thanks again, I searched a lot and couldn't find anything. You had the magic info.

 

The 88% CPU usage suggests that it is still in PIO mode.

Your "warp speed" is 5MB/s while some of us are getting up to 50MB/s with the latest 2.5" HDDs.

John

 

yea thats before your test ill post the one after the fix as soon as its uploaded. it looks betterish. the cpu usage is down, but i think i still have a s*&$ hard drive lol

 

ok so heres my results after uninstalling and rebooting




it is a 4200 rpm hard drive btw. I really need to get one of those new dells lol
btw the warp speed thing was a joke

 

Toshiba MK-1234GSX
120GB
8MB

 

Fujitsu 80GB 5400rpm.

 

Hitachi HTS541612J9S
(120GB 5400RPM SATA)

 

Are you running this drive in SATA 1.5 or 3.0 mode? I never removed the jumper from mine because I was not sure whether the GeForce 6150/430 chipset would support 3.0 mode........

 

Hmm.. I'm not sure.. how would I determine which sata speed it is running at?

 

Open up your sata controller properties in device manager and it will tell you the interface/transfer rate.

Here is a pic of mine:

 

I don't have the option of viewing the sata speed info in the sata controller section of device manager.

 

Here's the bench from my Hitachi 7k200 200GB version.

 

Strange, the Intel SATA controller must display info differently than my nVidia one. Aside from removing the drive and physically looking to see if the jumper is present, I don't know if there is a program that shows the current interface speed (accurately).

Anyhow, I ran the bench from HD Tach (which can be downloaded at http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach ) and got a bit different results for the burst rate (107.9MBs vs 76.8MBs).

Note: With Vista, HD Tach needs to be run in XP SP2 Compatibility Mode or it won't start.

 

Here are some of my HDtach results, all measured in my Samsung X60 plus. The 120GB Fujitsu HDD which came in the notebook has a very low interface speed.

John

 

I notice that your last 3 drives have a pretty high burst rate. Is this due to the density of the drives? In other words, does the size of the drive usually equate to higher burst speeds moreso than spindle speed?

 

here is mine on a 100gb 7200 rpm hdd

 

Ahh, good to see another generation 1 Seagate 7200! Your burst rate is nearly identical to mine on the gen 2 Seagate (using HD Tune)......

 

The data density shouldn't affect the burst rate because it is a measure of data transfer to/from the cache.

The specs for that Fujitsu HDD say that it has SATA 150 interface but maybe it didn't perform well. Either that or some software patch in the computer has improved HDD transfer performance. I would need to get the Fujitsu HDD out of the drawer, put it back into the computer and redo the test (which was done when the computer was new).

John

 

WD2500BEVS - nothing fancy...

 

Do any of you know why HD Tune doesn't display the temperature and why my burst test only goes up to 63% (I tested several times)?

 

Concerning the missing temp, perhaps your drive is too new for HD Tune to recognize it's sensor? (Mine is not recognized either, and the latest HD Tune revision is from January).

As for the burst test not completing, is the drive showing errors when you run the "Error Scan"?

 

Hopefully it's because the HD is too new--none of the other software can read the temperature either. I just ran error scan, and all blocks were OK.

 

Can someone comment on the interface speed and how it relates to real world performance, maybe a link or two?

 

If by interface you mean SATA vs. PATA, there is no real world difference when comparing notebook drives. The SATA interface has a higher throughput ceiling, but conventional 2.5 drives have not even exceeded the maximum throughput offered by the older PATA standard.

 

The faster speed of SATA should mean that any data in the HDD's cache gets to the CPU a bit faster but, once that few MB has gone, then the data flow will be constrained by the speed at which it can be read off the disk (a maximum speed of about 60MB/s for the latest 2.5" HDDs).

John

 

So when HDTune shows a faster speed it is somehow showing the "interface" capability and not real world performance. We can conclude that there is no real world performance advantage between PATA, SATA1, and SATA2. Is that true? Except for the cache advantage mentioned by John Ratsey.

Thanks for the comments.

 

I just bought a used Hitachi HTS721010G9SA00 7200 rpm 100gb HD off ebay for my compal IFL90. When I installed the drive, I was able to install vista without any issues, but I noticed some serious performance issues loading programs and running games. My suspisions that the HD was the root of the problem were confirmed when I ran HD Tune. As you can see in the attached HD tune screen shot, something is very wrong with my HD. I'm just curious if this problem is driver related, or if I purchased a faulty drive. If anybody knows what the problem could be, please let me know.

Thanks!

 

DrHi2u you win the most interesting HDTune award.

You might try uninstalling the IDE driver in device manager and let Windows reinstall upon restart. That worked for me but our issues were different. Can't hurt to try.

 

Should I uninstall the IDE driver or the SATA driver (I forgot to mention that this is a SATA HD)?

EDIT: I just went through and deleted a bunch of hard drive related drivers (IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers and Storage Controllers) restarted my computer, and re-installed HDtune. When I ran HDtune, however, I got nearly identical results. Could my problem be a result of a faulty drive?

 

Something is wrong indeed.

What antivirus do you have and how much RAM?

Make sure the drive is in DMA mode:
Start, Right-click Computer, Properties, Device Manager
Expand IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers
I'm not using my computer right now but if I remember correctly, right-click your IDE channels and make sure the devices attached to them are in DMA mode. Go into properties when you right-click.

 

Ok, I just checked my IDE channel 0 (the channel associated with my HD), and it is in Ultra DMA mode 5. Anything else that could be going wrong?

Forgot to mention, I have 2gb of kingston RAM, c2d t7300, no anti-virus programs installed, and am running vista 64 bit edition (although I had the same problem when I installed 32 bit edition).