Very Slow SATA Drive speed

[west72]

Hi hope someone can help with this problem.

I have just build a new system with a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 200 gig SATA drive.
The problem is that the system boots so slow and when reading from the disk is seems to take an age.

I ran Sandra on the drive and also on my 80 gig IDE drive set to slave and the results seem to come out strange.

The SATA drives results were :-

Benchmark Results

Drive Index : 46MB/s
Performance Test Status

Run ID : ************ on 20 December 2004 at 21:20:37

SMP Test : No
Total Test Threads : 1
SMT Test : No
Dynamic MP/MT Load Balance : No
Processor Affinity : No
Operating System Disk Cache Used : No
Use Overlapped I/O : Yes
IO Queue Depth : 4 request(s)
Test File Size : 1023MB
File Server Optimised : No

Benchmark Breakdown

Buffered Read : 38 MB/s
Sequential Read : 56 MB/s
Random Read : 32 MB/s
Buffered Write : 121 MB/s
Sequential Write : 57 MB/s
Random Write : 39 MB/s
Average Access Time : 13 ms (estimated)

Drive
Drive Type : Hard Disk
Total Size : 190GB
Free Space : 150GB, 100%

And the IDE's were :-

Benchmark Results

Drive Index : 35MB/s

Performance Test Status

Run ID : ************** on 20 December 2004 at 20:30:27

SMP Test : No
Total Test Threads : 1
SMT Test : No
Dynamic MP/MT Load Balance : No
Processor Affinity : No
Operating System Disk Cache Used : No
Use Overlapped I/O : Yes
IO Queue Depth : 4 request(s)
Test File Size : 1023MB
File Server Optimised : No

Benchmark Breakdown

Buffered Read : 93 MB/s
Sequential Read : 40 MB/s
Random Read : 30 MB/s
Buffered Write : 41 MB/s
Sequential Write : 40 MB/s
Random Write : 24 MB/s
Average Access Time : 9 ms (estimated)

Drive

Drive Type : Hard Disk
Total Size : 77GB
Free Space : 36GB, 100%


Looking at some reviews online the buffered read speed has been about 100 ms. My system is a AMD 64 3500+, 1 gig ram and a A8V deluxe.

Windows found the drive as a SCSI drive on the install.

Anyone have any ideas, is this normal for this drive or has anyone else had the same problems. I thought the Buffered read speed should be around the same as the Buffered write speed.

Hope someone can help. Sorry for all the info but thought it may help.

[curtybob]

Read and write speeds are completely seperate from each other, especially with Maxtor drives. They have a write check function that reads everything after it is written for the 1st ten system boots. Sometimes this can happen for more than 10 power cycles, but it should be in that vicinity. Also, try using HDTach for benchmarking drives, I've never like Sandra's filesystem BM tool.

[danjwalker]

its true that Maxtors take time to run in. it says this in the paperwork that comes with the drive, I know it sounds like rubbish but it said that in my paperwork for my maxtor sata, which later was faulty after 6 months and my supplier recommended that they are getting a high failure rate on maxtors so i went to seagate. never looked back!!!

[s7p9a2m4]

I understand Seagate has a 5 year warranty on their drives. I've recently bought a Samsung sata drive and thought I was doing good at getting 3 years.
I am running western digital, maxtor, and the samsung with no complaints. The wd and maxtor are 4 years old.
Here is an interesting read on warranties.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20154

[harry12]

Originally Posted by s7p9a2m4

I understand Seagate has a 5 year warranty on their drives. I've recently bought a Samsung sata drive and thought I was doing good at getting 3 years.
I am running western digital, maxtor, and the samsung with no complaints. The wd and maxtor are 4 years old.
Here is an interesting read on warranties.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20154

Hi there!
I have only used IDE-drives and wonder if this SATA-issue is due to the manufacture rather than the electronics?
Also the life of a drive is affected greatly by the handling - any knocks can shorten the life, more-so if it's spinning at the time.
I find the "running-in" idea curious - unless they are trying to bed the bearings in, before going for full-speed. It is possible that if a drive is left idle the oil will settle in one place resuling in some wear in one place( and spillage elsewhere )- does anyone know what reasoning is behind this "running-in" - [Is it true? ], or is it just Maxtor trying to overcome a reliability problem.
I must say I haven't heard of this before and accept that it's so, perhaps someone else with Maxtor can advise?

My last IDE was 120G Hitachi Deskstar - I understand these were bought from IBM several years ago. I've used Samsung and they appear to be reliable, indeed my Win3.1 PC is still spinning a Samsung has to be 15 yrs old - - - but some of the "Reliability" is down to the history ..of reaching you - if yr supplier is careless, then maybe halve the life.....

Will we get better reliability with Solid-State drives?
Yes from handling, esp laptops, video-cameras etc..
But I wonder whether the write-cycles won't be an issue ( like it is said to be for Flash-drives ) - yet curiously no Manufacturer mentions it.....Solid-state drives use the same technology I understand with some having a fast buffer of conventional RAM to speed things up. When you switch off the RAM is lost, but writing to memory should only take a millisecond of so. Here in the UK we have heard of 32G drives, but I've never seen one....what will they be called Solid-State Disc Drives? = SDD's so they mimic/follow HDD's . . . anyone know?