The Hard Drives that ran too slow

[PR.]

I'm having a little problem with my HDDs

I found that when running BNR2 on one of my HD the mouse would judder and if I tried to burn a CD from it that would fail with a Buffer Underrun. I realised that the drive (Seagate 80Gb less than a year old) was running in PIO Mode

All my other drives were running at UDMA of varying modes...

I downloaded SiSoft Sandra to do some tests and was told it was not that good for HD benchmarks but have done them anyway and got worrying results...

Seagate 15,000rpm SCSI U160 - 23mb/s - It thought I should get 40mb/s
Seagate 7,200rpm Barracuda 80Gb - 3.2mb/s - It thought 20mb/s (This is the PIO Mode drive)
Seagate 7,200rpm Barracuda 80Gb - 23mb/s - It thought 20mb/s
2x Seagate 7,200rpm Barracuda 20Gb drive RAID0 - 20mb/s - It thought I should get 43mb/s

I've checked all the cables found that one of the raid drives was running at ATA33 while the other ATA100 I fixed that by swapping cables but still got the same score

I've checked the BIOS and that is all setup to Auto.

Some of the cables are shielded rounded ones and I've been told this makes little difference.

The 2x 80Gb drives connected to my TH7-II mobo. The 2x 20Gb RAID0 is connected to a PCI Adaptec 1200a on seperate channels. The 1x SCSI Drive is connected to a PCI Adaptec 29610N U160 card, all these are rated to run higher than what they are...

So were has my speed gone

HELP

:wall:

 

[Embattle]

Sadly Sandra, like most benchmark software, isn't the most reliable.

Did you defrag your Hard Drives?
Are they full?

2x Seagate 7,200rpm Barracuda 20Gb drive RAID0 - 20mb/s - It thought I should get 43mb/s

You won't get 43mb/s with 2 Barr 20Gb in RAID0, that figure is for 2 WD hard drives with 8MB Cache although you should of got about 30mb/s.

 

[PR.]

The Drives are defragged once a week
None of them are anywhere near full

I read that Windows XP occasionally puts drives in PIO Mode to much data is coming through corrupted, but I don't see how this could be as that drive PIO the next drive on the same cable is running UDMA

 

[Embattle]

Have you tried using PCMark 2002?

 

[PR.]

Ok, I removed the Primary IDE Channel and let it reinstall, and have now got UDMA back, but the SCSI and RAID are still both underperforming

80Gb Drive - 910-930 with PCMark2002
80Gb Drive (Previously PIO) - 730
18Gb SCSI Drive - 840
2x 20Gb RAID0 - 844

All seems very strange, I can't compare the results as it doesn't give the Drives that are used on the PCMark website

 

[smurkin]

Just a suggestion...when I got a shitty problem like yours...I try to break it down...what I mean is...I would disconnect all the IDE drives and start with just your os drive and benchmark that, see how that goes (you have alot of drives ... but do you have the power??)....and ime SiSoft Sandra is very sensitive to fragmentation and bad sectors/error...so test immediately after a defrag. Good Luck.

edit...oops you posted as I did....are those still too low ?

 

[Embattle]

Originally posted by PR.

All seems very strange, I can't compare the results as it doesn't give the Drives that are used on the PCMark website

Yes but you can still supply the throughput rates from the website and compare them to the ones people provide in the thread about it in this foruma while a go.