WD Blue getting about 1 MB/S in 4k random access?

WyomingKnott · May 15, 2017

I got a new machine with a WD blue 500 GB drive, and the machine was SLOW. I noticed that disk active time was 100% with under 1 MB/sec combined read and write. So I ran Crystal DIsk benchmark. The darn thing scores110 MB/s sequential read and write, and 0.8 to 1.4 MB/s in 4k random read and write.

That is pitiful, isn't it? Something wrong, for S.M.A.R.T. status and WD diagnostics? Or have I gotten totally spoiled by my SSDs?

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It's just a cheap Lenovo S510 that will do nothing more demanding than Skype, Word, and web browsing.
Lenovo S510 Desktop Computer; Intel Core i3-6100 Processor 3.70GHz; Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64-bit; 4GB DDR4-2133 RAM; 500GB 7,200RPM Hard Drive.
But even something that pokey can't be underpowered for web browsing, can it?

Sakkura · May 15, 2017

HDDs are just that slow in random read/write.

If you divide 1 MB/s by the 4K access size, you get a figure of around 250 IOPS. Which is actually relatively good for an HDD in 4K random IO.

Someone Somewhere · May 15, 2017

Open up resource monitor and make sure that it's not doing anything in the background - particularly on a new build, there'll be lots of search indexing, windows update etc. Once that's finished, it should be a lot faster. Note that this can easily take a few hours.

Momentus 7200.4 500GB, 4K read and write <1MB/s. I think that's on something without AHCI, though - this can improve performance significantly.

WyomingKnott · May 15, 2017

Thanks. As I speculated, I got spoiled by SSDs. Yes, the background noise showed to be from threads accessing things like update files (and the journal????) and eventually quieted down. But it's still pretty poor when I start doing something with it. I'm not used to seeing a disk go to full service time so quickly, with read delays over 1000 ms (for low-priority processes).

OTOH, any need to put more memory into this thing? I suspect not, if it will top out with Skype. I might toss in an old GPU from the parts pile to free up all the memory for non-graphics tasks. It's nice having a parts pile!

Sakkura · May 15, 2017

4GB should be enough unless you tend to have a lot of browser tabs open.

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WD Blue getting about 1 MB/S in 4k random access?

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