Is my hard drive going as fast as it should?

**Bizkitkid2001** · March 20th, 2004, 11:49 PM

I did a Sandra file system test on my hard drive, and it reported back a speed of 15,489K/s. I am wondering if this is right for a 40gig 7200rpm Westerndigital hardrive.

Also, how can I tell what ata my hard drive is running at?

Thanks,
-Biz

**JohnE.** · March 21st, 2004, 12:15 AM

If your OS is Win 2K or XP you can check the UDMA Mode in Device Manager> IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers> Primary (and Secondary) IDE Channel> Advanced Settings. Make sure "Transfer Mode:" is set to "DMA if available". Under "Current Transfer Mode" it should say "Ultra DMA Mode 5" for UDMA 100 and ""Ultra DMA Mode 6" for UDMA 133.

Sorry, I currently don't have any benchmarking utilities installed so I can't report what my hdd transfer rate is.

**Bizkitkid2001** · March 21st, 2004, 12:28 AM

My 60gig wich is ata 133 get a tranfser speed of around 31,000k/s MY 40gig above is set at ata100 under device manager.

**VHockey86** · March 21st, 2004, 12:37 AM

is that the transfer speed or copy speed?
If its the copy speed I'd say its inline, otherwise seems kind of slow.

**Bizkitkid2001** · March 21st, 2004, 12:40 AM

made an edit above, i said multimedia instead of file system test. I don't know what speed sandra gives you for, if its tranfser or copy.

**jmichna** · March 22nd, 2004, 09:44 AM

Biz...
If you read enough reviews, most seem to discount Sandra's HD benchmarks. They seem to give odd/spurious results. You might be better running something like HD Tach, or the like. Also, check out http://storagereview.com/comparison.html

**Bizkitkid2001** · March 22nd, 2004, 05:28 PM

Thanks jmichna, i'll check that out.

**Epyon9283** · March 22nd, 2004, 05:51 PM

raptor root # hdparm -tT /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 1260 MB in 2.01 seconds = 627.90 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 170 MB in 3.01 seconds = 56.49 MB/sec

That was on my maxtor 160gb ata133 drive.

raptor root # hdparm -tT /dev/hdb

/dev/hdb:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 1264 MB in 2.00 seconds = 630.52 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 58 MB in 3.04 seconds = 19.05 MB/sec

That's from my maxtor 20gb ata66 drive.

Both drives are 7200rpm. The 160gb has 8mb cache while the 20gb has 2mb.

**nunyadam** · March 22nd, 2004, 07:12 PM

Originally posted by JohnE.
If your OS is Win 2K or XP you can check the UDMA Mode in Device Manager> IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers> Primary (and Secondary) IDE Channel> Advanced Settings. Make sure "Transfer Mode:" is set to "DMA if available". Under "Current Transfer Mode" it should say "Ultra DMA Mode 5" for UDMA 100 and ""Ultra DMA Mode 6" for UDMA 133.

Sorry, I currently don't have any benchmarking utilities installed so I can't report what my hdd transfer rate is.

Somebody tell me why.
in bios my drives are ultra dma 5.

if I go to the device mangler and look at the properties of my primary and secondary drives it shows.

if looking at the primary drive it says that the primary and secondary are both running at dma2, but if you look at the properties of the secondary drive they are runing at ultra dma 5 ?

WinXp

**sm8000** · March 22nd, 2004, 09:43 PM

The BIOS doesn't tell you what it's set at, but what to run at. Device Manager show's you what they're actually running. You can try to find updated IDE or DMA drivers for your chipset, but sometimes Windows will slow a drive down if it detects too many errors at higher speeds.

**S.D.Willie** · March 23rd, 2004, 11:57 AM

not to steal this thread but i have a question that i dont know is totally related. i have a secondary 80G drive and it seems that after not using XP for an hour or 2 i will go to access that drive in explorer and i will hear it kind of click, then spin up. at times it has locked the machine up completely forcing a hard power-off.

i have no kind of spin down set in power management nor do i think in bios(will check that later on)

i checked in device manager and noticed that on the secondary ide channel under "device 1" it was set to PIO only, so i switched it to DMA if available. could this be the reason it would lock up?

just for further info, about a week ago this particular drive started clicking and spinning up, clicking then spinning up at about 3am. the drive is fairly new (Western digital) and was thinking abour RMA'ing it.

i ran data lifeguard tools and ran the extended tests. i then ran the extended disk tests in windows with ontrack data recovery and neither found a problem. thats why i was wondering about this PIO setting in Win XP. TIA

epox 8rda+
athlon XP 2600