Something seems wrong... Hard drive transfer rates

OK so I've had this hard drive for about 2 years now and I've finally decided to benchmark it. It's a Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache [WD5001AALS].

Well the benchmark results don't seem right...
I've compared them to a SATA-II WD 160GB [1600JS-00NCB1] and another WD 80GB drive (unplugged now and I had to open it up so the label doesn't say what model it is. Basically it got exactly the same results as the 160gb but about 1/2 the transfer rate and twice as long access time.

If you look at the access times you'll see for the 500 that there are some pretty off results (not just by a couple of ms) also I'm getting lag spikes (not sure what they're actually called) of 30MB/s. I'm hoping that the middle picture dip is just random and doesn't indicate some serious problem.

Also both disks are <1% fragmented (checked both in 2 different machines before running this benchmark that there's nothing wrong with either)
Neither of them have any corrupt sectors either.

So! Bring on the pics!

If they don't go large when you click on them, right click and click "view image" and you shoulod be able to view it in full.


500GB





160GB





Is the HDD slightly borked? Or is this all to be expected?
Thanks in advanced.

From the looks of it, the 500 gig drive is your boot... so your access times may be off a bit...

See the dips in the benchmark? That's when the drive is in use...

These drives are on the nvidia chipset? it would explain your speed problems.. The ICH7r to 10r has been proven 10 fold!

It is indeed my boot drive but I had turned of EVERYTHING that wasn't needed (including all unused drivers)


Yeh their on the Nvidia chipset. So it's a driver issue? Or a hardware issue? Your talking to a noob here
The chipset is the thing on the mobo right? So does it need a bios update?

tinymouse2 said:

It is indeed my boot drive but I had turned of EVERYTHING that wasn't needed (including all unused drivers)


Yeh their on the Nvidia chipset. So it's a driver issue? Or a hardware issue? Your talking to a noob here
The chipset is the thing on the mobo right? So does it need a bios update?

Click to expand...

Chipset issue... However, if your happy with the performance, leave it...

Are you running SLI? This may be the time to upgrade to the Core i7...so you can continue with SLI if that's why you have a SLI board...

I'm at uni so I have about 50 bucks a month to spend on myself. Most of that goes to our local pub You have to support local buisnesses.

I'm not using SLI, just a single 260. I have a q9550@stock but will overclocking it help? I don't think it will but I don't know nothing about anything with hard drives

I had plans to put in a second 260 but now because of DX11 I think I'l going to just go for a 5850 and upgrade to an i7 in a couple of years (if I have the money, doubtfull)

Those drives I would imagine should be in the closer to the 100MB+ range for average transfer. Thats the dual platter right?

Access times in the 12ms range are ok. Thats what mine is...(though Im aware they are not the same)

Burst does seem low. There are some benches in another members thread regarding 'raid sweetspots' showing my results for the 640GB Caviar black. Those results shouldnt be much different. That was with the drive set to IDE and not AHCI for the record. Now I dont know what it looks like with AHCI.

EDIT: I still cant right click and view image. There isnt even a view image option in my right click. Show picture is greyed out. I cant see them at all without reloading the page and taking a glimpse at it when it loads full size.

EarthDog said:

Access times in the 12ms range are ok. Thats what mine is...(though Im aware they are not the same)

Click to expand...

+1

EarthDog said:

Burst does seem low.

Click to expand...

The solution is to use AHCI.

I really don't know why it only happends to me

And yeh the burst is pretty low annoyingly... I do think that the 640GB has thee platters so I think you would expect that to perofm better.

Oh wait... How do you change it to AHCI? I'm not using IDE, SATA-II but I think i'm missing something here... your talking to a HDD muppet

I recall the less amount of platters performing better. Less head travel, more density on the platter.

You change it in the bios. You can do it without a reinstall but you have to enable the AHCI driver I believe..http://www.ithinkdiff.com/how-to-enable-ahci-in-windows-7-rc-after-installation/

Well I've checked and yup it's enabled.
So is the HDD damaged at all? Or is just not that great of a hard drive...

The 500 gig black drive? with 32MB cache? I'll take it off your hands.... lol

Have a jumper on the drive forcing it to sata 1 speeds?

I'm telling you, The Nvidia chipset is only good for SLI...

I know the 780i SB isnt that great. If I recall its either the 570 or maybe a rehash of the 680i chip but tweaked.

Anyway, are you sure you have it enabled? I had that mbo so long ago I cant recall but a quick google and review doesnt even show it available...

http://techreport.com/articles.x/13790

The 780i MCP also lacks support for the Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI), although unlike the ICH9R, it's able to implement features like hot swap for SATA drives and Native Command Queuing without.

Click to expand...

EDIT: Doesnt seem like a 25% performance hit from that chipset though: http://techreport.com/articles.x/13790/9

Well it does say AHCI and it does say it's enabled (I'll take a picture if you want proof)

Basically are you saying that I have a crappy Mobo? I'm planning to OC my q9550 soon (when I have a few days that are actually free ), will the mobo crash when I OC? Or basically do something that will break something?

Its possible a different revision came out with the board or maybe XFX as opposed to the EVGA didnt have it? I dunno. Articles can be wrong of course. I believe you, I was just showing what I found. I owned the board in 2006 for a short time...or was it 2007?

780i isnt the greatest mobo, especially when trying to overclock 45nm quads. Its not that it will crash, it just wont reach a high FSB like say a P45 based chipset which had 45nm in mind at the get go. 780i really didnt.

Well I'm only hoping for 3.4 or 3.6 maximum and no higher. I want to settle for about 3.2 but I don't know what's possible and what's not possible with the setup I have atm (like will my RAM work with it at 3.2? Or what will work)

Well, your ram is slow for that goal... I dont think that board can go below a 1:1 multiplier (or any?). And to get 3.4Ghz you need a 400FSB which should be achievable with that board...your memory will be that deciding factor Im afraid.

So what speed RAM do I need for 3.2 Or 3.4? I just have a cheap after-market cooler so I don't want to push it, I just want to remove the bottleneck it has on my GPU (I'll be upgrading to a 5850 in the future as well so I'll probably need at least 3.4 but 3.2 will do until then)

tinymouse2 said:

So what speed RAM do I need for 3.2 Or 3.4? I just have a cheap after-market cooler so I don't want to push it, I just want to remove the bottleneck it has on my GPU (I'll be upgrading to a 5850 in the future as well so I'll probably need at least 3.4 but 3.2 will do until then)

Click to expand...

I wouldn't bother buying new RAM, that is a fair amount of money to squeeze an extra few Mhz out of the CPU. You would be better off saving that money for another build where you will see a real performance gain.

Your CPU might be bottlenecking your fps right now (maybe), but with the overclock you are looking for you are not going to see a dramatic improvement. Save your money.

OC with what you have. Can't see the HDD images so not sure.

Though it should be getting 100MB/sec on the high end if not a little mroe depending.