WD 1.5TB Caviar Green averaging 9.5MB/s writes. WTH?!

[mnorris12706]

Ya, it's bad. I installed this bad boy (made sure no jumpers were left on from the factory) and formatted it in NTFS. So far I've spent the last 40 minutes copying 20GB of data -- wth?! It's average 8-15MB/s being written to. I read a review by SilentPC Review (http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1004-page7.html) and the average times for this drive out of the box were between 70-110MB/s for writes and reads. What the hell is up here?

Anyone know how to give these things a kick in the pants?

[Sneaky]

from the end users with WD green drives that I've seen and heard from, they suck. if you want a fast, reliable drive, get a WD Black.

[BossBorot]

do you have the EADS or the EARS 1.5tb green?

what operating system is this being run on?

[mnorris12706]

do you have the EADS or the EARS 1.5tb green?

what operating system is this being run on?

EARS on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

[mnorris12706]

do you have the EADS or the EARS 1.5tb green?

what operating system is this being run on?

The only reason I got it was cause it was cheap storage -- $84 shipped.

[mnorris12706]

81634

Why so slow on writes?

[mnorris12706]

Just used the WD Align tool for the hell of it and it quite -- told me me everything was hunky dory

[mnorris12706]

anyone?

[psionic98]

its slow cause its a 5400rpm eco drive.. its meant for power savings and not speed

Taken from the article you linked to:

If you need a quiet, efficient, big, but not terribly fast drive, for say an enclosure, NAS device, or server, the WD15EADS fits the bill

[Badbonji]

No, I get much higher reads and writes, not too far off my 150GB raptor... just a bit slower on access times. If I get time I will throw up a crystaldisk of one of my disks later...

[mnorris12706]

its slow cause its a 5400rpm eco drive.. its meant for power savings and not speed

Taken from the article you linked to:

I completely understand it'll be a tad slower 'cause of the slower rotational speed, but even my POS flash drive from 5 years ago has faster write times than this POS.

NO hard drive should be averaging 9.5MB/s writes full/empty/half filled etc.

[mnorris12706]

No, I get much higher reads and writes, not too far off my 150GB raptor... just a bit slower on access times. If I get time I will throw up a crystaldisk of one of my disks later...

That would be fantastic. In the meantime, I went ahead and am reformatting (2nd time). I'll let you know how it goes when it finishes...a day later.

[thideras]

NO hard drive should be averaging 9.5MB/s writes full/empty/half filled etc.Exactly, I can't believe people are seeing 9.5MB/sec as "normal". I don't know why that is having issues, but it should be doing at leave 60MB/sec peak. Here is what I would do:

1) Test the drive in a different SATA port
2) Test the drive with a different SATA cable (shouldn't matter IMO)
3) Do 1/2 at the same time
4) Try the drive in another computer with a different cable
5) Wipe the drive with a slow format; test in first and second computer
6) If that fails, RMA it

EDIT: Saw your post. I'd skip 1/2/3 and go directly to a different computer with a different cable since you've formatted it.

[mnorris12706]

Exactly, I can't believe people are seeing 9.5MB/sec as "normal". I don't know why that is having issues, but it should be doing at leave 60MB/sec peak. Here is what I would do:

1) Test the drive in a different SATA port
2) Test the drive with a different SATA cable (shouldn't matter IMO)
3) Do 1/2 at the same time
4) Try the drive in another computer with a different cable
5) Wipe the drive with a slow format; test in first and second computer
6) If that fails, RMA it

EDIT: Saw your post. I'd skip 1/2/3 and go directly to a different computer with a different cable since you've formatted it.

I'm about 84% finished with a full reformat. I wanted to give it a shot cause the first time I just did a quick format. I've never had an issue with quick formatting new hard drives in a solid decade, but, there's always room for a first, right?

[ChanceCoats123]

Question here, you said you spent 40 min copying data. Was it from another drive or was it a copy of itself to the same drive? Different here, but with my 7200rpm 1tb seagate, I get around 70mb/s on the write, but file transfers normally average around 40mb/s. The transfer between the two is doing two things at the same time and is slower. It might have been a totally normal time and the app you're using to test might be wrong. :shrug:

[MReprogle]

Did anyone actually figure out what was going on here? I just got two 2TB Caviar Greens and I'm having identical problems and results in CrystalDisk. I currently have it doing a Full Format, which looks like it's going to take over 24 hrs to complete. I had this drive running in a Windows 7 64bit software RAID 0 (striped), and noticed the transfer/write speeds going from 100+ MB to >9.5 MB per second. I recently deleted and formated both partitions, and the second drive is doing great with 100+MB read / 100+ MB write. Any clues??

[BruceUSA]

I got the same WD green drive 1.5tb. I copied 162gb of HD video from drive C:\ 7200rpm to the green drive, take 28 minutes to complete. I am very happy with speed I got. I am running i7 920 6gb DDR3. I don't why your so slow.

[MReprogle]

Well, I bought both of the same type of drive so I could RAID them, only to find out that they are terrible for a RAID setup. I stopped trying to RAID them through my mobo and tried to software RAID them through Windows 7. I can do this successfully, but the transfer speeds are terrible.

I ran a few tests on the drives individually after reformatting them into two drives again. One drive seems to be working perfectly fine at 125 MB read and 120 MB write. On the other hand, the other drive is getting about 110 MB read and 8.9 MB write. I've replaced all of my cables and still no luck. I'm guessing that this drive is DOA and I'll have to start the return process since there aren't any other logical answers..