dont know if Sata is running at full speed?

i ran sandra 2004 last night since i wasnt too sure if my seagate sata 120gig ran at its full speed. and sandra gave me this tip.

Warning W3104 - Current transfer mode not optimal, i.e. not highest supported. This affects drive performance. If the controller is also capable of the highest supported transfer mode, there is no reason not to use it.
Fix: First check controller supported transfer modes. Then check the mode the driver for the controller/BIOS is set to use and modify; some default to a lower mode for compatibility. You may need to install newer drivers if the current drivers do not natively support the controller (especially for RAID). You may need to update the controller BIOS or drive firmware, if the mode does not stick. If data corruption occurs verify the cable and consider switching (if any) drives on the same channel onto other channels.

If the built-in controller does not support the mode, consider using the on-board/RAID controller or even disable the built-in controller and install a new controller.
SiSoftware Sandra Help File

Click to expand...

i guess my hdd isnt running at its full potential i was wondering what can i do? since i dont understand that fix at all up there.

please help me

That message is tailored to PATA IDE drives which can have two drives and multiple modes of PIO/UDMA. SATA version 1 is 150MB/s on the interface. I haven't seen any other available modes offered. I'd tend to doubt Sandra more than anything else. It's notoriously bad at HDD benchmarks.

is there any other TOOL i can use to see if its actually running at its speed?

It operates at 150MB/s, there are no other speeds available. You can check for BIOS/firmware upgrades for the MB and make sure that you are running the proper level of drivers for the BIOS.

You can benchmark using PCMark, ATTO, HD Tach and others. Sandra is worthless for disk subsystem testing. I've gotten completely unreliable results the few times I used it, and that was for verification that it was unreliable. It stated that I had a 37MB/s data rate on a U160 SCSI controller with a 36GB 15K RPM SCSI drive where other benchmarks indicated a start rate at almost 70MB/s and finish rate at 50MB/s. Do not trust Sandra for disk subsystems.

Run another bench and see what you get. ATTO is here:

http://www.attotech.com/software/app1.html

Get the Windows SCSI Utilities and run the benchmark with a Length of 32MB and a Queue Depth of 10.

k here is the result. i dont knwo if its good or bad. please let me know

If it's a Seagate Barracuda V, then it's about perfect:

http://storagereview.com/php/benchm...&numDrives=1&devID_0=242&devID_1=247&devCnt=2

For a 7200.7 and running your OS, then it's probably within acceptable tolerances. The OS drive can have access going on during the benchmarks and can lower results slightly. You can see some of this in the graph where read values are lagging writes and by the slight jaggedness of values above 32K.

here is my HDD,
http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/marketing/detail/0,1081,586,00.html

Are you using it as the OS drive and have you defragged it? Which OS are you using? How much data is on the disk as well?

These variables all will affect disk benchmarks. The OS drives both have periodic access and have data at the outside of the disk where the drive is fastest, moving the benchmarked sections farther into the slower portions of the disk. The OS and file system have an impact on loading of the disk subsystem. NTFS has a higher disk overhead and is a bit slower in benches. XP is heavier in services and paging with stock services running, including some indexing and filesystem optimizations that run in the background. Defragging and freespace can have a major role in benchmarks as well by limiting the areas that can be used for testing to less than optimal areas.

From the results, provided it's an OS drive, it's running well within spec. If it's not an OS drive, then make sure that you are running the latest BIOS, which will include the firmware for the SATA controller, and matching drivers for the SATA and motherboard chipset.

i hope when u say OS drive that u mean it has windows running on it. well yes its a 120gig hard drive with winxp pro running on it, not partitions nothin total available space is 111gigs i have 81gigs free so 30gigs is used. i just went to defrag and hit analyze and it said that i do not need to defrag it. i run defrag often. and i dont understand what u mean by firmware. i have a asus mobo and the bios is update to date the have a newer one but its the beta im waiting for the final release than ill update.

Yes, the OS running on the drive will lower the data rate of the benchmarking program. 30GB of data will also lower the data rate. Since it's over 32GB, the filesystem will be NTFS, lowering the score. Always defrag before any benchmark attempts, even if the OS states that it doesn't need it since it will lower scores.

The firmware for the controller is what tells the BIOS what device specifications are for the attacted controller. Since the BIOS level is current, the firmware level of the controller is current. If you are using the current level of driver, everything should be set up properly.

The benchmark values are completely acceptable and well within parameters given the conditions. All told your drive is behaving as designed and I wouldn't worry about performance unitl the next BIOS/driver upgrades.

thx a lot for this help.