160gb Maxtor acting...slow

Unknown-One

Unknown-One

[H]F Junkie
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Mar 5, 2005
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I've got a Maxtor 6Y160P0 160GB hard disk here that’s starting to get on my nerves. Granted, it was never supposed to be the zippiest thing in the world, but recently its been becoming more apparent.

When I right click and pass the "Send To" option, the computer freezes for over a second while the hard disk accesses! That’s just not right.

I have defragged the drive so I know that isn’t the problem, and sppedfan gives the drive a clean bill of health...I'm still starting to wonder if the drive is going to give up the ghost soon...Any ideas?
 
You can configure what's shown in the "send to" menu using the Win XP Tweak UI PowerToy. My HD's accessed when you go over the "send to" menu also, so your HD isn't going crazy, it just has to spin up.

Reducing the number of items in that menu will probably alleviate the problem.
 
Go to C:\documents and settings\yourusername\sendto. Delete everything. Who uses "Send to", anyways? Not me...

 
unhappy_mage said:
Go to C:\documents and settings\yourusername\sendto. Delete everything. Who uses "Send to", anyways? Not me...

Click to expand...

I didn't think anyone used that either, until a couple years ago. I come to work, and I see all kinds of people using it here. F'n weird, if you ask me.


 
The "Send to" menu isnt the problem, its was an example. >_> Anything I do on the drive makes the disk crunch like crazy, weather it be the "Send to" menu, the Start menu, or whatever else I do...

I might go as far as replaceing the drive with a Western Digital to speed things up if it gets on my nerves enough :(
 
Do you have the drive set to spin down in Windows? Anything would take a while if it is spinning down right after you do something, and then it has to spin right back up again.

Also, have you run SMART diagnostics on the drive to make sure that it is passing all self tests?

 
I've got the drive set to never spin down and it passes SMART tests with flying colors. Its strange that it just hesitates and crunches for absolutly no reson (yes its defraged)...
 
Unknown-One said:
I've got the drive set to never spin down and it passes SMART tests with flying colors. Its strange that it just hesitates and crunches for absolutly no reson (yes its defraged)...
Click to expand...

do you have a spin-down time set in the bios? I once had an issue where I thought my 120gb barracuda was going out just like you describe...turns out that even though I had my os's set to never spin the drive down there was a bios setting that was set to spin them down anyway. Check that out and see.
 
Eva_Unit_0 said:
do you have a spin-down time set in the bios? I once had an issue where I thought my 120gb barracuda was going out just like you describe...turns out that even though I had my os's set to never spin the drive down there was a bios setting that was set to spin them down anyway. Check that out and see.
Click to expand...

Good call. Windows has its own timer that it uses and will then issue a standby immediate. However, if you set it up in the BIOS, it will set the standby timer on the drive and it will spin down on its own without any intervention from the OS. Definitely something to check...
 
Just checked, and my bios are setup correctly. Here are the test results from HD tune if they mean anything to you:

HDTune.jpg


Erm, HDD Health has me worried. I've heard it was normal for the predicted drive failure to start out on a close date, and slowly move further away as data is gathered...but mine went from saying just over a week, to giving today’s date :eek:

HDD_Health.jpg
 
wowzers something is definitely wrong there. The seek times are definitely off...even my slowest drive (a 160gb hitachi deskstar) pulls in 12ms seek times. also it's bitching about CRC error rates which != good.

If you're lucky it'll be a bad cable or a pci-lock/driver issue. If not, then I think the drive is about shit a brick. Backup anything critical immediately.
 
Ok, well at least I know I'm not imagining this...

Any specific things you suggest I try other than swapping cables? I’ll give it a shot, but seeing that the other IDE drive further down the cable is fine…
 
This disk is connected to my old ASRock K8Upgrade-1689, ULI chipset...why do you ask?
 
if you're overclocking on that mobo perhaps it isn't locking the pci bus properly (since it's not exactly an overclocking-style chipset) which is causing your problems. Something to check, at least. If it's overclocked try setting it back to stock speeds and run the tests again. I'm really hoping it's something like that and not a dead hard drive.
 
Wow, I feel stupid right about now; I lowered the FSB by 10 MHz and look what happened! Suddenly, the graph looks a lot more orderly :rolleyes:

I'll drop the FSB a couple more points to see if I can clear up some of those stray dots, but it looks like I've found the problem.

HD_Tune_2.jpg
 
Dark Ember said:
I didn't think anyone used that either, until a couple years ago. I come to work, and I see all kinds of people using it here. F'n weird, if you ask me.


Click to expand...
I use it all the time.
 
Unknown-One said:
Wow, I feel stupid right about now; I lowered the FSB by 10 MHz and look what happened! Suddenly, the graph looks a lot more orderly :rolleyes:

I'll drop the FSB a couple more points to see if I can clear up some of those stray dots, but it looks like I've found the problem.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v349/StarLion/HD_Tune_2.jpg
Click to expand...

No need to feel stupid - sometimes overclocking is something we all take for granted. Just be glad you figured out that the problem was easy to fix. :)

 
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