laptop hard drive problem

[Mike01]

Hi all,

I'm having a problem with the HDD in my 7426GX. When I first got the thing, it was testing at 30MB/sec sequential, 2MB/Sec random and 12ms seek times.

Now I get no more than 20MB sequential, sometimes less, about 1MB random, and 17ms seek times. [update: more like 4.5MBs/sec]

What's going on? It seems to have happened after I defragged the drive. Any ideas?

 

[Mike01]

Anyone?

 

[roadkill1313]

I'm assuming you're using HD Tach.

Try running a drive test on it:
http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

It will detect errors on the drive itself. Otherwise I'm not entirely sure what would cause your problem. It's possible that Windows defragmenter did not do what it was supposed to.

Also uninstall and reinstall the HD Tach program.

-RK

 

[corkyg]

Also run CHKDSK on it - could be a bunch of lost clusters in the way.

 

[Mike01]

Problem solved!

I noticed that my hdd was using 100% of the CPU during transfer, so I investigated and sure enough, it was in PIO mode, as opposed to DMA.

After doing some research, I learned that windoze automatically scales back drive modes after access failures (such as those it thinks take place when you enter standby, etc.).

I used the fix in the following site:

http://users.bigpond.net.au/ninjaduck/itserviceduck/udma_fix/

A big thank you to the author.

My hdd is back on track...30MB/s, etc.