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    is something wrong with my HD? HDTune SS inside

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by theorist, Oct 19, 2007.

  1. theorist

    theorist Notebook Consultant

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    hi. the reason i checked was because it literally takes me close to 15 - 30 seconds to do anything in adobe cs3 (especially photoshop). i can't pinpoint what the problem is but attached is a screenshot of my hdtune for my hard drive.

    is that graph normal? thanks.
     

    Attached Files:

    theorist, Oct 19, 2007
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  2. TheCartographer

    TheCartographer Newbie

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    Looks like the lower limit is really low. Also, way too much fluctuation between the peaks and valleys in the graph. Might want to replace that hard drive soon...Just so you have something to compare the SATA-300 Seagate Momentus to, the external Seagate Feeagent I use is getting about 30mBps average, 21.1mBps on the lower limit and 32mBps on the upper. (I am not a big fan of Seagate hard drives...they seem to fail quicker than Western Digital ones in my experience(s).)
     
    TheCartographer, Oct 19, 2007
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  3. theorist

    theorist Notebook Consultant

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    i JUST got this laptop. darn. this is weird.
     
    theorist, Oct 19, 2007
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  4. TheCartographer

    TheCartographer Newbie

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    If you had background programs running while running that HDtune benchmark utility, the readings in HDtune might be skewed a bit. Try running HDTach instead when nothing is running in the background (such as Steam or Auto-backup software etc.)
     
    TheCartographer, Oct 19, 2007
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  5. allan_huang

    allan_huang Notebook Deity

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    I'd say that your HDTune results was from your background processes, not a bad HDD
     
    allan_huang, Oct 19, 2007
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  6. theorist

    theorist Notebook Consultant

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    hi. hdtach doesn't run for vista :(
     
    theorist, Oct 19, 2007
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  7. theorist

    theorist Notebook Consultant

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    i'm not sure what else could be an issue. i tweaked vista so indexing is off and all that stuff. i don't have any clients or anything running except AIM, bluetooth, in the background.
     
    theorist, Oct 19, 2007
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  8. ViciousXUSMC

    ViciousXUSMC Master Viking NBR Reviewer

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    Its fine!!! to get proper results you have to test it as a secondary drive, if its currently in use the results will be all "out of whack"

    Pretty much you ignore any of the dips if you test it as a primary drive and just look at the top of the waves.
     
    ViciousXUSMC, Oct 19, 2007
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  9. theorist

    theorist Notebook Consultant

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    vicious, thanks for the insight. :)
     
    theorist, Oct 19, 2007
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  10. K-TRON

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

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    Wow, 59C that is quite hot for a hardrive that is like 140F.

    Its the background processes which are causing the fluctuations
    If you go to MSCONFIG, you can shut off processes, in order to make your laptop faster.

    K-TRON
     
    K-TRON, Oct 19, 2007
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  11. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    I wonder if the performance lag is due to swap file activity. Another 1GB of RAM could make a useful difference. What RAM usage are you seeing in Task Manager?

    Also, if your swap file (paging file) is fragmented then performance will be further impaired and made even worse if the fragments are at the slow end of the HDD. You should fix the size of virtual memory (I suggest 3GB) and use pagedefrag to get it into one piece.

    John
     
    John Ratsey, Oct 20, 2007
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