Tom's Hardware > Forum > Storage > Hard Disks > SATA HDD Issue

SATA HDD Issue

Forum Storage : Hard Disks - SATA HDD Issue

Tom's Hardware: Over 1.4 million members in 6 different countries available to answer all your high-tech questions. Sign up now! Its free!

Ask the community Add a reply

Bottom Search this thread

Help.

I've noticed, over a period of time, that Installing / patching games seems to take ages on my PC.
Now I have a half decent PC and it got quite annoying.
So... I just ran a HDD test on my PC using "HD Tach", and it seems my samsung spinpoint HD160JJ (SATAII) has an average read/write of 7MB/s.

I ran the same test on my old Western Digital drive, that I keep for dumping media on, and found that it had an average of 60Mb/s.

Seems somewhat harsh....

Any Ideas what would cause a SATA HDD to run so slowly without errors?

Add a reply

I just read another thread and here's some answers in advance.

I've Just checked the Primary IDE Chanel, in device manager, and it says PIO Mode.

The Secondary IDE Channel says Ultra DMA Mode 6.

I have an nForce 4 motherboard (asus)

Reply to JayEnnBee

Does http://support.microsoft.com/defau [...] -us;817472 look like a reasonable solution?

Reply to JayEnnBee

Among my HD's I have a Samsung HD 160JJ. I ran HDTach on it to give you an idea, and the results were: average read = 49.6 MB/s, burst speed = 148.9 MB/s.

This is the slowest of my HD's, but it's also the quietest one and extremely reliable. The other two are a 320 GB Seagate and a 500 GB Western Digital. The WD drive is very problematic when it comes to compatibility with some motherboards (I actually had corruption issues when it was installed on a Foxconn mobo) and it's also the noisiest. I've had the Samsung for a while now, across 3 motherboards. It showing as working in PIO mode is definitely wrong. Check in the BIOS if you have UDMA enabled, and make sure you've installed all drivers for your motherboard. Also check on the drive's properties if you've disabled caching for the HD.

After making any changes, I suggest deleting the IDE channels from the device manager and restarting Windows to have the OS detect the devices again.

Message edited by Ephebus on 09-19-2008 at 04:55:08 PM

Reply to Ephebus

Fantastic.
Average speed 51.3Mb/s
Burst Speed 176.8 Mb/s

I deleted the Controller and rebooted. Back to UDMA 6 now.
Thanks much!

Reply to JayEnnBee

I'm glad I could help. Greetings from Brazil. _o/

Reply to Ephebus

Ask the community Add a reply

Tom's Hardware > Forum > Storage > Hard Disks > SATA HDD Issue

Go to:

Help |
Forum rules

There are 488 identified and unidentified users. To see the list of identified users, Click here.

Page generated in 0.573 seconds

Please mind

You are about to answer a thread that has been inactive for more than 6 months.
If you still wish to proceed, please ensure that your posting is original and does not duplicate or overlap any prior responses to this thread.

Add a reply Cancel

Focus On

SATA HDD Issue

Forum Storage : Hard Disks - SATA HDD Issue

Please mind