Are these good results for a normal HDD?

[Upendra09]

HD Tune Pro: Maxtor 4D040H2 Benchmark

Read transfer rate
Transfer Rate Minimum : 5.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 35.3 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 27.5 MB/sec
Access Time : 16.6 ms
Burst Rate : 74.0 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 32.5%


Maxtor 40 gig HDD


i don't know how to post the graph so can someone please make a suggestion, on how to do that?

And i was wondering if these are good results for an 8 year old HDD, and i was wondering how much more time this HDD has left in it?

And this is an Ultra DMA HDD, could some one please give me some more info on that? I tried Wiki but they don't give me a good enough idea on this technology.

Your replies are greatly appreciated. Thanks

 

[rand_79]

for any pictures/graphs.

you have to host the image online somewhere then post a link to it,

the numbers appear somewhat normal for a 40gig hdd , if its an older 40gig hdd

the cpu usage seems very high I would expect something around 10% or less.

 

[cjl]

Those are utterly miserable for any remotely recent drive, but for something as old as a 40 gig, they're fairly normal.

 

[440bx]

As cjl said, the numbers are miserable for a recent drive but, they are normal given the fact that the drive in question is an old 5400RPM drive.

The high CPU usage is likely due to its using PIO Mode 4 transfer instead of UDMA.

You can change the setting using Device Manager. Changing it to UDMA would improve those numbers (particularly the CPU) but, don't expect more than a 10% improvement in the numbers except for CPU which should drop to the low 20s to high 10s.

HTH.

 

[shubham1401]

I also have a 9 year old seagate 40GB as my secondary HD and your test are better than mine(I get around peak 27mbps).
So for your drive I will say the scores are good.But nothing in front of new modern drives.
Even my 3 year old WD does 100MB/sec average.

 

[daship]

I also have a 9 year old seagate 40GB as my secondary HD and your test are better than mine(I get around peak 27mbps).
So for your drive I will say the scores are good.But nothing in front of new modern drives.
Even my 3 year old WD does 100MB/sec average.

Id like to see this 3 year old WD get 100MB/s, a WD Black gets 92MB/s give or take a few.

 

[shubham1401]

Mine also gets ~91mbps.
I rounded off it too 100.

I used HD tune for it.I guess a long time ago......

 

[Upendra09]

@ 440 bx

would that give me a significant enough load speed from the HDD like during startup and loading programs?

@shivam

Shouldn't your HDD be better? cuz it is a better brand than mine and Seagate probably has better tech than Maxtor.

 

[Upendra09]

@ 440 bx

how do you change it in the Device manager, i have XP sp3 so does have to be changed in the BIOS?

 

[shubham1401]

Shouldn't your HDD be better? cuz it is a better brand than mine and Seagate probably has better tech than Maxtor.

Seagate is better but the product sepcs are not better.
Or maybe the drive has degraded over the years.

The best thing is it has no damage blocks according to HD tune.

 

[rand_79]

If it was in PIO mode 4 its limited to 16.7MB/sec so that doesnt explain the high cpu useage.

 

[Upendra09]

what is PIO mode?
And how does CPU usage play a part in this?

 

[Upendra09]

HD Tune Pro: Maxtor 4D040H2 Benchmark

Read transfer rate
Transfer Rate Minimum : 17.6 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 35.3 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 28.9 MB/sec
Access Time : 16.6 ms
Burst Rate : 76.0 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 3.8%


I redid the test and this is what i got. and the graph look like steps. I redid the test again and now i have tons of spikes with one going as low as 1 mb/sec,does computer usage have anything to do with the test? like if i use the comp the same time it is testing are the results going to be different?

 

[jitpublisher]

It is like, which is faster, my 89 Chey Geo with steel belted radial tires, or polyglass belted radial tires. I don't care what you do, or how you try to tweak it, it is still going to be slow.
Everytime you test it, it is going to give you varying results. Make sure you have defraged before you run the test.
Yes, leave the computer alone while the test is running, it will throw the results way, way off.
And like others have said, even at it's best, it is slower than molassas in winter when you compare it with a modern drive.

 

[rand_79]

oh if you were doing something during first test that would be why the cpu useage is high.. on an older machine even moving the mouse can have a large effect.

3.8% in the last one is normal.. those are really slow numbers compared with a new drive but acceptable for that drive.

 

[Upendra09]

alright i will defrag and retest.

 

[shubham1401]

I did the test and my drive gave exactly the same results as yours...........Wierd

 

[440bx]

what is PIO mode?
And how does CPU usage play a part in this?

PIO - Programmable Input Output. To make a long story short, it is an I/O mode where the CPU is involved in the setup and transfer of information from the hard drive to memory.

There are multiple modes, Mode 4 is the fastest of the PIO modes.

Since the CPU is actively involved in the processing of the I/O, PIO modes consume a fair amount of CPU cycles, hence the high CPU usage.

PIO was replaced by UDMA which uses significantly less CPU and is also significantly faster.

rand_79 is correct when he pointed out that PIO Mode 4 is limited to about 16MB/s. I forgot about that, it's been a while since PIO was current.

Since you are getting numbers that exceed the limit of PIO it is reasonable to presume that transfer is set to UDMA but, just in case, you check by going to the device manager and under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, right click on the Primary IDE Channel and select properties, the advanced settings tab will tell you the "Current Transfer Mode". You may want to repeat this for every channel to ensure that all of your devices are using the fastest transfer mode available.

For the record, Windows XP and above usually set the best transfer mode automatically. Windows 98/ME/2000 often needed to be manually set. In your case, I would check just to be sure since the drive is old (there is a slim chance that it might require to be set manually).

HTH.