Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.
Native Command Queueing It makes a small difference. There's no reason a home user should need to have it enabled. It could make an impact on a server with lots of connections though.
As for the spikes, try disabling any background processes and re-running the benchmark. If Steam was accessing the HD while you were measuring its performance you'd see a spike - also make sure Avast! isn't scanning in the background.
can i jump on this thread?, i have a WD2500KS which is sata2 or 300mb/s but HDtach seems to be closer to 1.5 speeds. I tried putting a jumper in "OPT2" because i read OPT1 forces 1.5, but that didn't resolve anything. i've ran this several times as well.