New build VERY slow - SATA HDD Read/Write issue?

hungryduck

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Mar 29, 2005
Messages
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So I just threw together my first 'new' build in a decade or so on a spur of the moment thing with a bunch of stuff I found on sale. (on a budget...) Nothing fancy, just hoping to play a few games I've missed over the last few years.

Intel core i5 3470 3.4ghz
MSI B75MA-P45 mATX mobo
8GB Corsair Ballistix
Toshiba 1TB 6gb/s hard drive
EVGA GeForce GTX 650
Cheap-o SATA DVD drive
Thermaltake 600watt PSU
Fractal Designs Core 1000 case
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

All the parts went together fine, and windows seemed to install OK.

Problem:
When installing drivers I noticed the speed of windows as abysmal - like it would take 10 minutes for it to boot and 20 minutes to install a driver. "Probably will work itself out after all the chipset/video drivers are in!" is what I thought. However, all the drivers are in now, and it's still going very, very slow.

I downloaded a HD Benchmark utility to find that I'm averaging 1.5mb/s read speeds and 50mb/s write speeds on the hard drive, which seems way too slow, and the performance of the machine is god awful. Takes 1 to 2 minutes for folders to open, and 30 seconds to open the control panel or start menu. Once things open it's smooth, so I feel like this is a HD issue.

Solutions I've tried:
Tried reinstalling the intel chipset drivers. No result.
Tried moving the hard drive from the 6gb/s SATA port to another SATA port. No result.

Any help would be appreciated - I've been out of the game here for many years, so perhaps I'm overlooking something obvious? (Looks like I joined this forum 8 years ago.....how time flies....)
 
I'm stumped myself, so I'll ask a couple of follow-up questions:

Was the Toshiba HDD set up in ACHI mode or RAID mode (prior to the OS installation)?

Do you have another HDD you could test on this machine?

If push comes to shove, could you return/exchange/RMA the HDD or (failing that) buy a new drive (HDD or SSD)?
 
I'm stumped myself, so I'll ask a couple of follow-up questions:

Was the Toshiba HDD set up in ACHI mode or RAID mode (prior to the OS installation)?

Do you have another HDD you could test on this machine?

If push comes to shove, could you return/exchange/RMA the HDD or (failing that) buy a new drive (HDD or SSD)?

It was in ACHI mode as far as I know. Looking at the settings now, that's what it's set to.

I'll try to dig up another HDD to test and see what happens. I bought the drive yesterday, hopefully a return is possible if it's a bad drive.
 
Which Thermaltake 600W PSU is that?

Is CPU downclocked in any way?
 
Sounds like an hdd issue. Try a different drive, cable and port.
 
Sounds like an hdd issue. Try a different drive, cable and port.

You are correct sir - I should have known it. The HDD refused to boot last night after a day of use.

The drive in question was a 1TB SATAIII Toshiba DT01ACA100. Upon further research lots of other users reporting bad compatibility with Windows 7 and this drive, not to mention bad reliability issues. Returned and did what I should've done in the first place, bought an SSD.

Thanks for the help, case closed.
 
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