Second hard drive very slow

[sobaros]

Hi,

I have just built a new computer, specs as follow:

OS: Win 7 Pro 64bit
CPU: i7-2600
GPU: Gainward GT 520
Mem: 8GB DDR3 1333
HDD: 2TB WD20EARX (x2)
MBo: Asus P8H67-V

It's all working fine except for the second hard drive which is extremely slow (~2-4MB/s) when reading / writing /deleting large numbers of files at once.

Both hard drives are SATA 3, and connected to the two SATA 3 connectors on the motherboard.

The primary (boot) hard drive with Windows on is working fine - rapid read / write of files as expected.

On the second drive, the speed drops to ~4 MB/s or less when working with multiple files. For example, a 2GB folder containing ~20,000 files takes over 40 minutes to copy on the second drive compared to under 2 minutes on the primary drive. For single large fies it generally starts fairly fast (~30MB/s) then drops to around 10MB/s or less. General use read-write on the drive is also very slow - I've been trying to run an XAMPP server on the drive and it's reguarly breaking PHP's 30 second timeout when loading very basic web pages.

I've tried a few things already:

1) Killed anti-virus
2) Removed drive volume and re-created
3) Turned off Windows file contents indexing on the drive
4) Drivers on the system are all the latest versions

Any thoughts would be appreciated ...

Thanks in advance

 

[hunuok]

Have you enabled Write Caching under Control Panel>Device Manager>Disk Drives>(Right Click on drive)Properties>Policies?

 

[sobaros]

Yes - both drives have write caching enabled (by default).

 

[sobaros]

Hmm actually the drive is now refusing to complete any write operations at all - I'm starting to think it may be faulty ...

 

[hunuok]

Maybe time to RMA the HDD.

 

[Wisecracker]

You need to verify you have the REV 3.0 - B3.

If not, you might have the Intel B2 Booger and need to replace the motherboard, OR move to the SATAII connector.

Asus should give you a free replacement.

 

[sobaros]

It is the Rev 3.0 B3 revision. What is the issue with the earlier version?

I actually just had windows lose the drive - it dropped out half way through a file transfer and just stopped showing it in Explorer / Computer Management -> Disk Management.

Came back after a reboot.

 

[Wisecracker]

The B2 SATAIII controller goes to crap and corrupts the HDD/SSD

 

[RetiredChief]

Go to drive manuf website and down load there HDD utiliies and check the drive.
Most Likely a defective drive.

Side comments.
For WD I only buy their "Black" models. Looking at the "Green" model it has a very High dissatisfaction rating @ Newegg, Like 33% 1 gg - ouch.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136891&Tpk=WD20EARX
Compared too: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185
PS often onsale for around $60
Currently my drive of choice is the Samsung F3, but max size for it is 1 TB.
Use to buy the WB Blacks, but switche to Samsung's F3 for the last 3 that I've bought.

 

[sobaros]

Good call on the diagnostics tools - the drive failed within seconds.

Problem down to a bad disk then - thanks everyone for your suggestions.

 

[sobaros]

Best answer selected by sobaros.