T61 disk transfer rate only 2.5!!!!!!!!

I received my t61 last week. I'm a little bit disappointed with the performance. The boot up takes really long. And the disk is working the whole time although I don't do anything. I checked the Windows Experience Index and the Disk Transfer rate is only 2.5!!!!! Why is it that low?

here my configuration:
t61, vista business, 2.2 GHz, 2 GB memory, Intel turbo memory, 100GB 7200 hard disk,...

 

Get a second opinion on the HDD from HD Tune. Capture the result and post it here.

Also check the IDE channels advanced settings and make sure that one of them is shown as UDMA mode 5. Another is usually UDMA mode 2 (for the optical drive).

John

 

You said you have disk activity all the time.

Have you checked task manager to see which process is causing that to occur (if any)?

 

My T61p has the 100 gig 7200 rpm drive and it's getting a 5.0 on the hard drive score. My base score is 4.2 w/the lowest subscore being graphics.

Since you mention constant disk activity, use http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/Utilities/processmonitor.mspx to figure who is hitting the disk. You might want to turn off some of the default filters under Filter > Filter such as System, IRP_MJ_ and FASTIO_.

 

Check to make sure it has the correct driver, and that you are running in AHCI mode. I have that same drive and the WEI for disk is 4.9.

 

that just cant be right. I have a 120gb 5400RPM drive and i score 4.3

 

AHCI mode? where can I check whether I am in this mode or not? and where can I change it?
thanks for your support

 

Go in the device manager and look under IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers and tell us what you see when you expand that.

 

here you can see it

 

Your first 3 entries under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers looks just like my T61p.

 

panteedropper:with X3100 you could get a score of 4.3?

 

OK the HEM/HBM thing means that you are not running in compatibility mode.

You seem to have a good driver. My experience was when I had compatibility mode (and therefore an automatically installed incorrect driver). You don't have the problem that I knew about.

 

Yeah that is a good question. I don't even get that with the nVidia 140.

 

how can I change that? It's really a pain in my neck!

 

I think he's talking about his disk score, not his graphics score. I have the 128 meg Quadro 570M video and my graphics score is 4.2 which also is my base score.

 

If you want to go fast you do not want to be in compatibility mode.

If for some reason you are forced to use compatibility mode, you would change that in the BIOS. I do not think you want to do that - it's a last resort you would only do if you can't even boot without a BSOD, etc. Changing to compatibility mode will cause Vista to decide that you need a new activation too. Plus, compatibility mode is the slow way to use your disk, which is what you say you do not want.

So I think you should NOT change what you have there. Stay out of compatibility mode. I thought your problem was that somehow you got accidentally in compatibility mode and that was making your drive slow - I actually had to do that once on purpose (because I was getting BSODs preventing bootup).

I do not know why your disk is slow.

 

Definitely something wrong. My 160 5400 gets 4.9

 

I just got a 6460-66U T61 last week for my girlfriend, it came with Vista Business. I too noticed there was plenty of hard drive activity all the time. The Diskeeper defrag software was running on every boot up, there is a Diskeeper icon on the tool tray. In services I set the Diskeeper service from automatic to manual instead and the hard drive activity is way down now.

 

how can I change it to manual. I didn't find it yet.
thx

 

start button, run, type the following command in: services.msc
or start button, settings, control panel, administrative tools, services.

Scroll down until you can see the diskeeper service, double click on it. It should open a property box for it. Change startup type from automatic to manual in the drop down box. Reboot and see if things change for the better.

If you don't find that it is making a difference you can repeat the same process over again and set it back to automatic again.

 

Have you tried updating your BIOS? I noticed a today that one of the older updates (BIOS 1.14/ECP 1.06) has a fix for "system performance may become very low if the hard drive mode (Serial ATA controller mode) is set to AHCI".