SOLVED Slow HDD Copying/Extraction speeds

[BoundByBlood]

My Specs:
Biostar TA790GX A3+
AMD Phenom II x4 965
4 GB DDR3 RAM@1333MHz
Radeon HD 5770 1 GB
WD Caviar Black 640 GB SATA II 7200rpm 32 MB cache (WD6401AALS) / Primary
WD Caviar Green 160 GB SATA II 7200rpm 8 MB Cache (WD1600JS) / Secondary
MS Windows 7 x64 SP1

So, I have a two hdd setup and my 160 GB secondary drive is my storage drive where I keep all of my downloaded content. I don't have a windows installation on my secondary hdd, it's simply a storage unit. Everything was running pretty smoothly until recently.

I had to reinstall windows recently when I added some new hardware and when I did the reinstall I didn't format/delete the partition on the secondary hdd because I didn't think it was necessary. Not to mention I have a ton of unbacked crap on it I didn't want to lose.

What happens now is if I have bunch of rar files and if I try tp extract to D:\ winrar is god forsaken slow. It takes about a hour to extract a 700 MB file and two hours+ to extract a 1 gig or more file.

If I extract to C:\, even if the source file I'm extracting is stored on D:\, then everything is fine and fast as it should be. I've tried extracting to C:\ then copying over to D:\ and the copying is just as slow as extraction.

I've tried extracting to D:\ with 7zip and it's just as slow as winrar. All copying/extracting to D:\ is slow regardless of the utility/app I use.

So, these are the steps I've taken to troubleshoot the issue:

[1] Inside of winrar in Options--->Settings--->General I made sure "multithreading" was ticked.

[2] Winrar: In Options--->Settings--->Miscellaneous I unticked "propose to select a virus scanner"

[3] Device Manager: Uncollapsing the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers stack I checked all of the ATA channels to make sure none of them were in "PIO" mode and in the Advanced Settings for each channel I also made sure "Enable DMA" was ticked on all applicable channels.

[4] Device Manager: Selecting my secondary hard drive under disk drives, I went to Properties--->Policies and unticked "enable write caching on this device".

[5] BIOS: Changed SATA mode from "Native IDE" to "AHCI" (I made sure the latest AMD AHCI drivers for my board from the biostar website were installed before switching to AHCI)

And nothing...

I was almost ready to give up and say, "it has to be because of the 8 MB cache", but it wasn't always like this. A part of me also wants to believe if I had deleted the partition and formatted the seconday drive during the latest windows reinstall this wouldn't be happening.

Something is seriously wrong with the secondary drive and the only logical conclusions I can come up with is that the problem lies with some obscure windows setting or the drive itself. At this point the only thing I can think of is to replace the drive.

If someone can help then please do.

 

[CompuTamer]

It sounds like it's having issues writing. Have you tried defragging it? How full is that drive? And how old is that hard drive?

 

[wagex]

were you sure to install all the latest drivers for you motherboard from the manufacturers website? i had a similar issue and installing the chipset drivers fixed that.

 

[BoundByBlood]

Thanks for the replies.

Have you tried defragging it?

Indeed.

Like I said the secondary drive doesn't have a windows installation, the only thing on it are movies and games. There wasn't much to defrag without a windows installation or a bunch of apps on it. It still didn't change anything anyways. Still super slow copying/extraction.

How full is that drive?

78.8 GB free of 148 GB

And how old is that hard drive?

Pretty damn old. Let's put it this way it's old enough to where I don't even remember when I got it .

I think I may have bought it in '06 maybe?

were you sure to install all the latest drivers for you motherboard from the manufacturers website?

I have the latest LAN, audio, ahci, and ethernet drivers for my board. I didn't install the chipset drivers because all the executable is are AMD catalyst drivers and I already have catalyst 11.4 from AMD.

Still it's worth a shot. I'll download and install the chipset drivers from biostar. I'll post back if whether or not it worked.

 

[BoundByBlood]

Installed the chipset drivers...nothing

Found a pretty good deal on a WD drive:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Western-Digital...ultDomain_0&hash=item2c59a80fa9#ht_1668wt_905

I think I'm gonna just pick that one up once I do some research into the drive.

 

[Automata]

Give HDTune and ATTO a run on that drive and post screenshots, please.

In HDTune, please also include a screenshot of the SMART data, especially if any entries are highlighted.

 

[BoundByBlood]

Thanks for the input thideras.

I'm pretty sure CompuTamer is right and there's a writing problem with the 160 GB caviar green and at this point it might be best to replace since it's so old. At one point in time it was my primary drive, but I had some problem with it (can't remember exactly what) and ended up replacing it with the caviar black which became my primary. I've been using the green as a storage unit for downloaded content for a while now and it was running smoothly until recently.

On the other hand I would like to know what the deal with it is...

I will give those apps a go tomorrow and post the results with screenshots.

 

[BoundByBlood]

Well here are the results of testing.

First up is HD Tune (Standard Version).

The Drive Info:

Health/Status of the Drive:

HD Tune Benchmark:

And finally the Error Scan:

If I didn't know better I would say according to HD Tune everything looks fine with the drive. Damn you HD Tune! You're wrong I tell you, WRONG! Something is not right with this drive.

Since there are extra tests available in the Pro version of HD Tune, did you want me to try that out thideras? I can get a 15 day free trial so say the word and I've give it a go if you think it will help.

As for ATTO I couldn't get it to run...at all. I tried several times with various settings, even tried to get it to test on the -C:\- and the result was always an app hard hang followed by a crash:

The only logical conclusion I can come up with is a 32 bit doesn't play nice with my 64 bit windows.

 

[BoundByBlood]

Have a problem with posting embedded screenshots...I put in the URL link (they're on flickr), but it doesn't want to show up.

Someone want to help me out?

 

[Automata]

You can't link photostreams, you have to link the image itself. I can see the images by being clever, though.

According to that, everything looks normal. If you copy a file from another hard drive (preferably 1GB+ in size) to this 160GB drive, how long does it take?

 

[BoundByBlood]

I can see the images by being clever, though.

Right clicking on the broken image link and opening the image in a new tab?

If you copy a file from another hard drive (preferably 1GB+ in size) to this 160GB drive, how long does it take?

About 40 min to an hour. No lie.

You can see what I mean in the attached image. In the attached image I was extracting a 1.3GB rar file stored on the D:\ to the D:\

Of course if I extract the same file to C:\ it takes about 40 seconds.

This is one of more complicated issues I have troubleshot because I can't come up with any logical reason of why the drive is performing the way it is. I ran the drive through Western Digital's Data Lifeguard Tools extended test and it passed. There's something very wrong with the drive affecting performance, but I'll be damned if I can figure out what it is. It passes tests like it'a brand new so this issue really doesn't make any sense.

The last resort is some obscure windows setting, but this has to be some really, really vague and well hidden setting. The only thing I've learned is there isn't any physical reason for the drive to perform the way it does.

 

[Automata]

I don't mean extracting an archive, I mean a straight up copy.

 

[BoundByBlood]

I think the time calculation is off, but it is what it is.

Here you go:

 

[Automata]

If you can, take all your data off it, format and try the copy again. If it fails after that, it is probably starting to die.

 

[BoundByBlood]

Well, I couldn't outright format in windows, not even in disk management. I had to boot from my windows dvd and use drive tools in setup. I formatted the drive, deleted the partition, created a new new partition, and then formatted it again.

When I booted back into windows I tried to copy something over and same thing happened. So, yea, the drive is dying. I went ahead and picked up that wd caviar blue on ebay I linked to earlier.

Thanks for the help thideras.