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Slow Hard Drive Speeds


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#16
Troy

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I would post pics like you did, but mine are all WAY over 100kb, which is the upload limit... How did you do that?

Anyway, here's my latest results:

Forced UDMA6 (Just for the fun of it):

HD Tune: SAMSUNG HD300LJ Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 0.9 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 3.5 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 3.3 MB/sec
Access Time : 14.8 ms
Burst Rate : 3.3 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 49.4%


Forced UDMA5 (as happyrck requested):

HD Tune: SAMSUNG HD300LJ Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 0.6 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 3.5 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 3.3 MB/sec
Access Time : 14.8 ms
Burst Rate : 3.4 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 49.1%


EDIT: So clearly changing options in the BIOS isn't translating into anything different in XP. Once again, how do I double check what mode the disk is in using XP? Is there a way I can force the drive to run at a speed I want it to using XP? Is it worth looking for a SATA 3.0GB/s PCI controller?

Edited by ruthandtroy, 12 July 2007 - 12:40 AM.

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#17
Troy

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one last thought before I call it a nite ...try downloading your chipset drivers and reinstall them...

But it's only quarter to 5, not quite dinner time yet... :whistling:

EDIT: Sorry, but yes I'll work through the chipset drivers again. I've been meaning to update my video drivers so I'll have a driver update night tonight...

Oh and that picture of yours is funny, like it starts high and slopes down low all the way along. Mine starts low and stays low (with little up and down jumps), and then finishes about the same. You can see the difference between the Max and Average speeds... So it's like there's something holding mine down...

Edited by ruthandtroy, 12 July 2007 - 12:44 AM.

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#18
happyrock

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try this...

To enable DMA mode using the Device Manager in XP

Open Device Manager.

Double-click IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers to display the list of controllers and channels.

Right-click the icon for the channel to which the device is connected, select Properties...and then click the Advanced ..Settings tab.

In the Current Transfer Mode drop-down box, select DMA if Available if the current setting is “PIO Only.”
If the drop-down box already shows “DMA if Available” but the current transfer mode is PIO, then the user must toggle the settings...

That is...
Change the selection from “DMA if available” to PIO only, and click OK.

Then repeat the steps above to change the selection back to DMA if Available...

if after doing this it works for awhile then resets itself to PIO speeds...( you can look in the event viewer for timeout errors)...then I would suspect the drive or its firmware and contact the manufactures support see if they could help or possibly get the drive RMA'ed if it can't be corrected....

But it's only quarter to 5, not quite dinner time yet... laughing.gif


I'm in San Diego California...it was quarter to 11 PM my time...and I'm up and going by 5 AM my time and I get cranky if I don't get enough sleep...its not pretty... :blink:

I would post pics like you did, but mine are all WAY over 100kb, which is the upload limit... How did you do that?

I'm using fscapture...get it here...its free just download it..use the dotted box to get just the part of the screen you want...

about this...

I'll do this as soon as my wife has finished emailing, I'm using the "OLD BEAST"


you really shouldn't call her that while your having her do your e-mails... :whistling:
remember... Confucius say...man who fights with wife all day ..gets no peace at nite...

just for grins I benchmarked my usb flash drive...you may want this if you need to rma the drive..

Edited by happyrck, 12 July 2007 - 10:05 AM.

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#19
The Skeptic

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This topic is very interesting and I hope you don't mind me jumping in. Lets look at the facts:

1: The Hd passed Samsung's utility test which showed it to be good. I don't think the utility checks the buffer, which is very inportant for performance. I never had to check it so I am not sure how this is done.

2: You mentioned that bootup is slow but we don't know if there are any speed problems after all start-up programs are loaded. If it runs well then we have to take an entirely different approach and work solely on improving startup and I am not sure we are doing this at the moment.

3: Regarding the results of HD-Tune. I am not sure what their meaning is. For example, I have an ATA 133 disk in my computer which means that it can transfer up to 133 MB/s. In the test it shows only about 37 MB/s. What can I conclude from this test? The computer works great.

4: I doubt if there is any problem in the BIOS. I suggest that you set it to optinal values (usually there is such an Item in the BIOS menu) and see if it makes any difference. In many cases the BIOS will set itself to Auto mode and will adjust to the available hardware.

Please advise about point 2 and tell us if the computer runs well after bootup.
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#20
Troy

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you really shouldn't call her that while your having her do your e-mails...
remember... Confucius say...man who fights with wife all day ..gets no peace at nite...

The "OLD BEAST" is my parents computer, which actually is running pretty quick still, I would never call my wife that...

Anyway I'm just checking out the PIO mode now, thanks because I couldn't find that before. As it's a SATA hard drive, I don't know which one it actually is because in the BIOS it's called Fourth Master (and Third is the other empty SATA slot) but I've only got Primary and Secondary pairs under device manager... But one there was in PIO mode, so I'll reboot now.

The Skeptic: Yes the buffer is important, unfortunately this one only has an 8MB cache, I would have liked a 16MB cache, but not sure if that's the issue at hand... Yes it does run well, sorry I haven't actually mentioned that. I initially started by trying to slash my boot time, but now I'm just trying to understand the HD Tune results. As for your ATA133 disk working great at 37MB/s, maybe it's like wireless (or wired for that matter) networking, where you never can reach the "theoretical" peak. And as for the BIOS, After changing a few things there and seeing no difference, I've ruled that out in my head also. I will simply reset it to AUTO and leave it at that.

I'll post soon to see if the PIO mode thingie has gone away.
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#21
Troy

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Okay I'm pretty sure the one I'm looking at is my hard drive, under BIOS it says it is Fourth IDE Master, but under my device manager in XP it says it is the bottom of two Secondary IDE Controller... It is set in PIO mode and I have not seen it change, even though I have done as happyrck suggested by changing back and forth, I also rebooted and tried again with no difference. Then I went to Event Viewer (I'd never seen this before) and found three recent, relevant events, I will paste them here:

Error 1:

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Disk
Event Category: None
Event ID: 51
Date: 12/07/2007
Time: 10:20:37 PM
User: N/A
Computer: HTSDESKTOP
Description:
An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk1\D during a paging operation.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft....link/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 03 00 68 00 01 00 b6 00 ..h...¶.
0008: 00 00 00 00 33 00 04 80 ....3..?
0010: 2d 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 -.......
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 4e 77 0c 00 00 00 00 .Nw.....
0028: 30 e6 14 00 00 00 00 00 0ę......
0030: ff ff ff ff 03 00 00 00 ˙˙˙˙....
0038: 40 00 00 82 02 00 00 00 @..?....
0040: 00 20 0a 12 40 03 20 40 . ..@. @
0048: 00 00 00 00 0a 00 00 00 ........
0050: 00 80 71 86 e8 f6 67 86 .?q?čög?
0058: 00 00 00 00 58 a3 64 85 ....X£d?
0060: 00 00 00 00 a7 3b 06 00 ....§;..
0068: 28 00 00 06 3b a7 00 00 (...;§..
0070: 58 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 X.......
0078: f0 00 0b 00 00 00 00 0b š.......
0080: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0088: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........


Error 2:

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: atapi
Event Category: None
Event ID: 26
Date: 12/07/2007
Time: 10:27:55 PM
User: N/A
Computer: HTSDESKTOP
Description:
The driver has detected that device \Device\Ide\IdePort3 has old or out-of-date firmware. Reduced performance may result.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft....link/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 0f 00 10 00 01 00 64 00 ......d.
0008: 00 00 00 00 1a 00 04 80 .......?
0010: 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0018: c5 58 0c 00 00 00 00 00 ÅX......
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0028: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0030: 00 00 00 00 09 00 00 00 ........


Error 3:

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Disk
Event Category: None
Event ID: 51
Date: 12/07/2007
Time: 10:27:55 PM
User: N/A
Computer: HTSDESKTOP
Description:
An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk1\D during a paging operation.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft....link/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 03 00 68 00 01 00 b6 00 ..h...¶.
0008: 00 00 00 00 33 00 04 80 ....3..?
0010: 2d 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 -.......
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 96 6f 7c 1c 00 00 00 .?o|....
0028: bd 53 15 00 00 00 00 00 ½S......
0030: ff ff ff ff 03 00 00 00 ˙˙˙˙....
0038: 40 00 00 82 02 00 00 00 @..?....
0040: 00 20 0a 12 40 03 20 40 . ..@. @
0048: 00 00 00 00 0a 00 00 00 ........
0050: 00 00 00 00 20 48 3e 86 .... H>?
0058: 00 00 00 00 08 20 62 85 ..... b?
0060: 00 00 00 00 cb 37 3e 0e ....Ė7>.
0068: 28 00 0e 3e 37 cb 00 00 (..>7Ė..
0070: 40 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 @.......
0078: f0 00 0b 00 00 00 00 0b š.......
0080: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0088: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........


So there's something wrong, and I'm not sure what. I was interested in the one that says "old or out-of-date firmware" because I remember reading on the Samsung website that it does not release firmwares for my series of hard drives. I will go back and have a look now, see what I can find. If I find anything I'll repost with a link.

And I agree The Skeptic, this is a really interesting thread... :whistling:
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#22
Troy

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This is the link to the quick install guide for my hard drive. You can see where it says "We don't release any firmwares". Interesting...

This is the link for my hard drive.

I can't find any information about transfer modes, so I might contact Samsung and ask them how I can get the best out of my hard drive.
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#23
The Skeptic

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1: My disk is an IDE drive set as primary master with 80 lead flat cable. Most ordinary. The results of the hd-tune don't mean much and I wouldn't worry about them. Truely, I don't see any significant problem with your computer.

2: Download PageDefrag from my signature and run it. It's a great little tool made by Microsoft to defrag pagefiles which are not defraged by "ordinary" defragging". Again, my opinion is that if you have sporadic error messages in the event viewer which are not related to visible computer performance at the time of occurence, to disregard them.

3: Download Sandra XI from my signature. Run a benchmark test of your hard disk. The results from your computer are compared to other disks so you get a better idea about your disk's condition.
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#24
Troy

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Sure, thanks for your reply, I have recently used PageDefrag but I can do it again if you like. (I have done many "maintenance" things to try and fix this). I will download Sandra XI now and give it a shot.

Here is a copy of the email I sent to Samsung, we'll see what they say.

Hi there, after calling the Samsung contact line I was told to email this address in relation to my hard drive query. If this is not the correct address can you please advise what I can do.

I have a Samsung HD300LJ Hard Drive and I have been having troubles with it. If you are interested, I am a member at an online forum and have been asking about it. You can view the forum thread at this address: http://www.geekstogo...ds-t163564.html

Basically I wanted to work out why my HD Tune (and therefore, hard drive speeds) results were so slow. If you believe this program is unreliable and you would like me to try something different that I haven’t already tried in that forum, please let me know and I will try it. I have ran the hutil.exe tool from the Samsung website and did the complete scan, it took about 3 hours 10 minutes and said there is no error with my hard drive. After working with the staff on the forum website we have determined that the problem is the hard drive is in PIO mode and it doesn’t change. If you have any information that I might be able to use to get the best out of my hard drive I would greatly appreciate it. I know that my current motherboard (ASUS P5S800-VM) only supports SATA 1.5GB/s, so I’m just looking to get the full potential in the correct DMA mode. Please can you reply with some information. The hard drive was purchased new about 6 months ago from my local computer shop, so it is still under warranty, but because the hutil.exe utility said no errors I am inclined to think I just need to set it up right. I am running Windows XP Home SP2 with the latest updates.

Many thanks in advance,


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#25
The Skeptic

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Good. let's see what the response is.
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#26
The Skeptic

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Look at this thread. I believe you will find it interesting. It deals exactly with the subject you brought up.
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#27
happyrock

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you mentioned that your mobo only supports 1.5 GB not the SATA II spec...did you put a jumper on the drive to force it into SATA I mode...see attachment...

I just got your mobo manual..give a bit to look thru it...EDIT went thru it and did not see anything for settings for SATA I or II

Edited by happyrck, 13 July 2007 - 08:27 AM.

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#28
Troy

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Yeah I read through all the information I had on it when I was installing the thing. I only have to put the jumper on IF the computer does not recognise the disk, I remember reading that. I'm still getting to that chipset reinstall... I just tried uninstalling my Samsung through device manager, so it will reinstall itself at startup, and boot time was so QUICK! But now that it's installed it, it's gone back to PIO mode. I'm about to reboot and see if it takes ages again... And I've run a benchmark with Sandra, but I'm not sure how to use that program, but the graph doesn't look good. Mine brings up a little flat line at the bottom, indicating similar results to the HD Tune test.

:whistling: Proof that it's just the Samsung HDD and not anything elso on my system! I changed my Western Digital 80GB external backup drive to eSATA, check this out:

HD Tune: WDC WD800AAJS-00PSA0 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 38.2 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 72.0 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 61.4 MB/sec
Access Time : 19.9 ms
Burst Rate : 85.2 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 3.8%


And of course, our reference for this thread, my Samsung:

HD Tune: SAMSUNG HD300LJ Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 2.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 3.5 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 3.4 MB/sec
Access Time : 14.7 ms
Burst Rate : 3.4 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 49.2%


So what now? Any ideas? Oh, apart from chipsets, I'll do that soon.
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#29
happyrock

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I would put that jumper on the drive and reboot..to force it to use the 1.5 spec...
because PIO mode is enabled by default in the following situations...

For repeated DMA errors. Windows XP will turn off DMA mode for a device after encountering certain errors during data transfer operations. If more that six DMA transfer timeouts occur and that would probably be during the boot phase (hence the slow booting)... Windows will turn off DMA and use only PIO mode on that device....
and your transfer speeds are consistent with PIO mode 0...
In this case, the user cannot turn on DMA for this device. The only option for the user who wants to enable DMA mode is to uninstall and reinstall the device....
now because its your boot drive I'm not sure you can do this and still boot up...but you want to try...make sure plug and play is enabled in the bios first...

ATAPI ATAPI modes supported by hard disks, CD-ROM drives etc.
PIO Mode 0 3.3
PIO Mode 1 5.2
PIO Mode 2 8.3
PIO Mode 3 11.1
PIO Mode 4 16.7
DMA Mode 0 4.2
DMA Mode 1 13.3
DMA Mode 2 16.7
UDMA Mode 0 16.7 Note Ultra DMA modes do not support overlapped seeks, bus bandwidth sharing, or command queuing/reordering because of their single-threaded nature.
UDMA Mode 1 25.0
UDMA Mode 2 33.3
UDMA Mode 3 44.4
UDMA Mode 4 66.7
UDMA Mode 5 100.0
UDMA Mode 6 133.0
Serial ATA 150.0 Note SATA modes support asynchronous operation through "tagged command queuing".
Serial ATA II 300.0
Serial ATA III 600.0

whats the word from samsung...

Edited by happyrck, 14 July 2007 - 08:08 AM.

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#30
The Skeptic

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I am looking back at the error reports that you quoted in a previous post and I see that two of them are related to page files.

What I would try to do is force page files to be deleted by canceling space for them and then create a new space .

Try the following: Advanced in System in control Panel. Settings in performance > Advanced > virtual memory > change. Choose no paging file > set > ok > ok.

After you chose No Paging File return to the same menu and chose Custom Size. Set the initial size to about 1.5 times the volume of your ram and set Maximum Size to double of the Initial Size. Click Set > ok >ok

Reboot after each step. Loading time after the first step may be long and the computer may slow up considerably.
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