Abismally low HD speeds

S

Stoly

Supreme [H]ardness
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Jul 26, 2005
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I have 4 hds on my rig

500GB western digital
320GB seagate
and 2 WD2000JD 200GB western digital

I recently installed HDtune and tested all the drives, the first 2 perform as expected but both WD2000s are extremely slow, one averages 5mb/s and the other 3mb/s. Both are error free and shouldn't be fragmented.

Any ideas?
 
Check which Access Mode they are using and how much CPU is used for the test.
High CPU probably means they are using PIO (Programmed IO) and not DMA.

If they are using PIO mode, try changing to DMA modes.
If you cant change the mode, you may not have decent drivers installed for the hard drive controllers you are using.

Are they PATA or SATA?
If they are PATA make sure to use 80 conductor ribbon cable, not the old 40 conductor cable.
 
If they are PATA, try a different cable even if you have and 80 conductor cable on there already. You may be getting some crosstalk at a connector.

If the are sata, try swapping cables and the connectors that the working drives are plugged into. Only change 1 thing at a time though so you can easily figure out what fixed the problem.

Don
 
all of them are SATA and the access mode is the same on all drives
BTW using Vista 64 SP1
 
I would go poke around the support section of WD's web site and see if you can find any mention of this problem.

It seems fishy that just those 2 drives are slow.

Don
 
I tested a 700mb file transfer between all the drives.

Copying from the 500 to 320 and back 60 to 82 mb/s
From the 500 or 320 to any of the 200gb about 20~40mb/s
from the 200gb to any other about 17 mb/s

I already exchanged sata cables, sata ports, power cables and the results are the same

I erased the partiton and formated one of the 200gb and still the same thing. Also tested a couple of 80gb and both perform well.
 
Welp, you have a couple of options.

You can put them in a different system and see how they do.

You can put them in and external enclosure and see how they do.

You can send them to me and I'll see how they do.

You can scrap them and buy some drives from a real vendor like Seagate like I did. ;)

Go to the WD website, and track down their diagnostic program in their support section and run the full or long test and see what's up. I am baffled. If the drives check out fine, they should not be able to act like you are experiencing.

Don
 
I tested one of the drives with DLGDIAG and HDtune for errors, nothing wrong whatsoever.

I'll put it on another system and see how it does.
 
I would still run the WD diagnostics on them. If they find anything wrong, you can at least RMA them then.
 
DLGDIAG is the WD diagnostics, I ran all the tests including writing zeros, supposedly everything is fine, no errors.

Fortunately no data was lost (prior writing zeros of course). Time to get another 500gb I guess.
 
Oh, OK, I haven't had any WD drives in a while.

You sure have a strange one there. Have you been able to get them into another system to test yet?

Don
 
DonDon said:
Oh, OK, I haven't had any WD drives in a while.

You sure have a strange one there. Have you been able to get them into another system to test yet?

Don
Click to expand...

Sure something's fishy, I even flashed the latest bios on my DS3L as someone suggested on another forum, same thing.

I'm thinking there must be some kind of incompatibility with the mobo, both were on my older rig an Athlon64 and had no problems whatsoever. I moved them to my new rig in january.

I'll be testing them on another pc soon.
 
well it seems there are some issues with the WD2000JD and the P35-DS3L. I tested the drives in 3 different pcs and they perform well. I also tested several drives of different sizes/manufacturers with the DS3L and they all performed well.

Fortunately a friend of mine will trade a 500gb drive for both WD200 gb.
 
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