Drive Throughput issues

[italtazman]

Hi everybody - I have an ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 mobo running 3x1TB drives. Two of the drives are WD Black (7200 RPM) and one is a Seagate Barracuda (7200 RPM).

I have noticed that my 2nd and 3rd drive (basically D: and E throughput is much lower than my primary drive (C.

The thing is that my "C:" drive and "D:" drive have the same specs (WD). If I move a file from either D: or E: ro C: I get an average of 70-80 mb/sec, if I move from any drive to either D: or E: I get 25MB average (which is WAY low).

I checked indexing and it is disbaled. What else could be causing this? Any thoughts or suggestions?

OS is Win 7 Pro 64bit

Thanks

Rob

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi Rob, & Welcome to Tom's Hardware!

Couple of more pieces on info needed. What transfer rate application are you using? Might download and use HD Tune or HDTune Pro trial version, since the transfer rates can be different from other applets, and most folks are familiar with HDTune. You can copy its screenshot to the clipboard, and post it for review here.

Other thing is to give us the SATA ports (SATA_1, or SATA_6) you are using for each HDD, if they are Intel Southbridge connected, and the speed of these ports. There are other ports (IDE and SAS) on this board. Your boot drive should be on SATA_1, other HDD's on SATA_2 and SATA_3, and DVD on SATA_4 or SATA_5.

Also are you letting the OS assign drive letters to the drives automatically? If you have a DVD burner, it will be assigned to D: automatically.

 

[italtazman]

Hi John and thanks for the help.

FOr now I am just using the Windows' data transfer info. I will install HD Tune, I just figured that the numbers were so off (and you could tell when copying) that the windows meter gave me at least an order of magnitude.

I maually assign drive names (DVD burner is F. The HDD are plugged into SATA 1-4 (I'll check when I get home and tell you exactly). The DVD burner and external SATA port are on 5 and 6. How does the port order affect performance (trying to learn)?

 

[smorizio]

on newer mb the intel chipset control first 4 to 6 sata ports. then mb vendor add a 2 sata controller for more ports. the new mb are set up as port 0/1 as 6g ports. ports 2-5 as sata 3g ports. the other ports cand be all 6g or all 3g depending on the mb vendor. one thing to check on your hard drive is there firmware. see if it up to date. to me is sounds more like a firmware issue then a hardware issue.

 

[italtazman]

I just updated the BIOS yesterday (is that what you mean?). No new drivers available.

 

[italtazman]

On my mobo (older one) it states 6 xSATA 3 Gb/s ports

 

[John_VanKirk]

When you get home, Rob, download HDTune and install it.

Then run the Info tab to check each HDD, then the Health Tab to make sure there is no problem witnh the SMART parameters. Then run the performance Tab. It will give you a max, min and average transfer rate. The transfer rate will be about half at the end of the drive normally. I have seen other performance applets give markedly off rates, compared to HDTune, so it's a good one to use, and have in your toolkit.

All the SATA ports 1-6 come off the intel southbridge chip, so there shouldn't be much of a difference. As importantly mentioned by Smorzizio, if you use a 3rd party additional chip, like the Marvel chip, the transfer speeds could be different.

Also list the model # of your 3 HDD's and the sector size. If they are older HDDs or used before on Win-XP, there could theoretically be a sector allignment issue that could slow one of them down.

You should be able to check each one individually with HDTune, and if there is an issue, move it to a different port to see if it's the HDD or the port.

Another thing to consider, in the BIOS is to disable any IDE, SAS, Floppy ports that you are not planning on using or don't have hooked up.

 

[smorizio]

i was talking about the firmware of the new hard drives. they may be the same drive but have two firmwares on them. i seen issues like this when i worked at a storage vending company. to make sure there was never any of thses issues one of the first steps was to load the newest bios code on all the drives in the storage rack.