Slow harddrive?

This is a problem I've been having for a while that I think is limiting my computer a lot.. it seems there is some kind of problem with my harddrive being a lot slower than it should be. I have a 160gb samsung hybrid drive at 5400.

Extracting a 6,7gb file took over 15 (!) minutes. This simply can't be correct? I'm running vista on a 3415w machine.. Winrar never even used over 30% proccessor power either. The really weird thing is that at random intervalls it will speed up a lot, extracting files more than three times faster, but then it will revert to being slow a moment later. This seems extremly weird to me...

And yes, DMA is activated, Ultra DMA mode 6.

Any help greatly appreciated.

 

Hello nexs,

Did you install Vista recently?
it could be that its indexing files and perhaps thats why its working slower.

You can read more about it here



Windows Vista works in the background to automatically index all the files in the Start Menu, user profile folders and files setup for offline access by default. If you have many files in these locations and the files change often, the indexing service may slow down your system's performance.

 

I've had Vista installed for a couple of weeks so I don't think it's the indexing. Also, I have a regular schedule for defragging, but I just checked right now to be sure and Vista says it's not fragmented.

 

check out hd tune and test the speed of your hardrive... post a screenshot perhaps cas then you can see from sudden drops if other programs are interfering with the hard drive.

 

There has been a Microsoft update related to slow transfer with big files. Is it installed?

 

All updates from windows update are installed.

Here is what happened in HD tune, though I don't know what it means:



The very low speed at the start was when I was extracting a 180mb file. The 2 later shortburst drops were when i tried to extract using 7-zip (for some reason they cancelled themselves instantly)

 

All needed updates arnt included in Win Update, you need to fetch them from microsoft.com. This is cos the updates arnt important enough, but they will be included in the SP1

 

yer your hdd is up to speed @45MBPS maximum.. But when you run hd tune you just gotta press start and try to get rid of any background programs.. Its a benchmarking tool to see what the maximum speed of the hdd is..

But in your case what im guessing is that your extraction tool ran faster than the hdd could cope with in excsess of your average write speed.. therefore it didnt go at full speed to save your machine power on unneeded speed... Thats the only thing i can think of

 

Ok, I ran the test with as little running as possible and got an average of 34MB/s with the max around 45.

The thing is, if it takes 15 minutes to extract 6700mb, that is 6700/(15*60)= around 7,4 mb/s. Meaning it's not coming close to running as fast as it should. Could it possibly be a winrar error? Since if it was a vista bug, it shouldn't only affect some programs, or?

 

There can be a compatibility problem with Vista and WinRar wich the update fixes

 

That drop in speed over the first part of the HDD looked familiar to me because it was a feature of the HM250JI as discussed in this thread. However, that problem occurred with the Intel 945 chipset. You have the 965 chipset.

Samsung have now issued a patch for that problem and I wonder whether it is worthwhile seeing whether that patch (or another) will work with the HM16HJI (which is a variant of the HM160JI to which that patch applies).

I suspect that the files you are copying are on the part of the HDD where performance is slow.

John

 

I dunno.. But it will take me < a minunite to extract a 2gb file.. so there may be some sorta power saving function on your system ... I have no idea really.. I just know your hdd is not faulting you and seems up to speed.

 

well, I would want to install that HDD fix, cos my hdd sometimes hangs up at the BIOS splash screen, but you need to have a floppy to get it installed??? I mean, what comuter having a 2,5" hdd has a floppy station today?

oh and we both have the exacly same hdd

 

Sprint, you can burn the ISO file to a CD and boot from that.

 

I always carry around a rewriteable CD for this purpose (such as the Zepto BIOS updates).

John

 

Thanks a lot for everyones help. Unfortunatly nothing has worked yet :/ I tried applying the patch but was told that it was not made for my model. Also, the problems described there don't really fit mine, since I don't get this drop at the start in HD tune. Also, the OS doesn't take so long to boot. From what I can tell however, it would SEEM that this problem only occurs while extracting files. If this is the case, I will simply have to live with it. I've also been searching for a windows fix to the problem but been unable to find anything.

One thing to note is that I tried using normal diskdrivers (making windows think I only have a normal drive and not a hybrid) and this had no effect either.

 

We've excluded the hardware. Now let's look at the software side. Assuming you are running Vista, read this.

I've got a feeling that Microsoft may have covered this in one of their recent patches. There's several performance and reliability updates which are not part of the windows update process because they aren't considered critical. Look through the collection here.

John

 

Got all updates I could find, still no results. It's still switching from sometimes extracting at 25-35mb/s to sometimes at only 5mb/s (usually the later unfortunatly). I get the same speed with winrar as with 7zip as well.