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[Solved] WD1001FALS incredibly slow transfers

Forum Storage : Hard Disks - [Solved] WD1001FALS incredibly slow transfers

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Best answer from sub mesa.

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SuperTongue   10-23-2009 at 06:16:16 AM

So I bought this 1TB Caviar Black just under a month ago and have just started using it with Windows 7 as my second drive. It's installed and running just fine, but transfers speeds from my external to it are around just 1MB/s, while transferring the same files to just my desktop will go to about 27mb/s.

I'm not very keen when it comes to hard drives, but I should be able to answer any basic questions you may need to help me solve this (of course, if you're so kind to do so! :D )

I'm trying to use it to hold my media and games, but this transfer rate is incredibly slow. Thanks for any and all help ahead of time.

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Best answer from sub mesa
You did not mention, but i figure you're using USB for your external drive. So its the USB interface that is 1MB/s (which is right if the bandwidth is 12Mbps like USB 1.1).

So the problem is that you connected your external casing to a slow USB port, or that slow USB devices (keyboard/mouse) are connected to the same hub, forcing it to downgrade to 12Mbps speeds (1MB/s) instead of the 480Mbps (~40MB/s) USB 2.0 is able to deliver.

So try some other USB ports, connect directly to the motherboard USB ports without other devices on the same USB channel.
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Bronze Storage badge sminlal   10-23-2009 at 07:56:43 AM

Start -> (right-click on "Computer" ) -> Manage

Click on "Device Manager" in the left pane

In the right pane, double-click on "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" to open it up, then do the following for each channel in turn:

Right-click on the channel and select "Properties".

Click on the "Advanced Settings" tab

In the "Devices" box, make sure that the "Current Mode" is some variant of DMA

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

If a channel is not running in DMA mode then that's your problem. To fix the problem, right-click on the controller and uninstall it, then reboot.

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SuperTongue   10-23-2009 at 01:20:36 PM

Alright, well all are running in DMA Mode 5. Not sure if this matters, but the drive itself is marked as Slave in the BIOS.

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sturm   10-23-2009 at 01:54:41 PM

You running SATA or PATA/IDE drive? Have you tried a different cable?

------------------------------ I ain't signing nothin
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Bronze Storage badge sub mesa   10-23-2009 at 03:40:50 PM
Best answer

You did not mention, but i figure you're using USB for your external drive. So its the USB interface that is 1MB/s (which is right if the bandwidth is 12Mbps like USB 1.1).

So the problem is that you connected your external casing to a slow USB port, or that slow USB devices (keyboard/mouse) are connected to the same hub, forcing it to downgrade to 12Mbps speeds (1MB/s) instead of the 480Mbps (~40MB/s) USB 2.0 is able to deliver.

So try some other USB ports, connect directly to the motherboard USB ports without other devices on the same USB channel.

------------------------------ ...man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on.
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SuperTongue   10-24-2009 at 06:28:39 AM

Seems sub was on the right track. The external drive was slowing down other ports during transfers, and even after changing USB Ports, it remained at weird transfer speeds (between 1mb/s and... 30 mb/s), but I got all my data on my new drive and the internal (the 1TB) seems to be running fine, everything loads just fine and my games play well off of it.

Thanks for the help. (Now that I feel like an idiot for not realizing this! =P)

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SuperTongue   11-02-2009 at 01:44:38 AM

Ok, I'm back. It seems the drive itself might be broken. I've swapped power connectors as well as changed SATA cables and it still transfers slow from my main drive to itself. First access shows a moderately high speed (30 to 40 MB/s) and then it just drops to 2 MB/s.

It's still under the 5-year warranty, so should I call WD and get it replaced?

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