WD15EARS is very slow

anthrex

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 7, 2004
Messages
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This drive is infuriatingly slow. It takes very long for the drive to be recognized. It takes about 3-5 seconds (sometimes longer) to open the hard drive. Once in the hard drive it takes maybe 10 seconds to open a folder up. This is all initially. If I let the drive spin down I believe, which is about a minute or so it will do the same long folder opening the folders up again. When opening up a video file usually a DVD rip of about 700-1000mb mkv it might open up immediately, but sometimes it won't. Also it will only let me skip around two times before at most before it takes about 15 seconds before it finds the next place i skip to. I use this with my Thermaltake Blacx which doesn't give me any problems with my old 7200.10. I guess I'll try putting the drive inside my computer, but was hoping to keep it outside and eventually give it to my parents for their media backup in a few months. If it's this slow normally it'd be good to know so I won't buy one of these drives ever again.
 
Let me guess, you're using it with XP or 2003 Server but didn't use one of the two workarounds? Search WD Advanced Format. The new 4K size sector EARS drives require either a jumper on pins 7 and 8 (IIRC) of the drive or that you use WD's alignment utility.
 
Windows 7 so no problems with 4k size sectors.

You think it could be a dieing drive? It's new :(
 
Run WD's utility to test the drive. New drives die far more often then old drives. That's why it's best to use drives for something non-system critical for the first 100 hours or so.
 
So post some benchmarks; without any real data we can't help you. For all you know it could be a PIO issue.

So download HDTune, post screenshot of the default benchmark. Then hit the Health tab and make a screenshot of that as well; upload both screenshots and post them here, so we can have a look at your drive. :)
 
WsH87.png

uWAgy.png


HD Tune Screenshots.

Also ran the quick test with the WD Utility and it passed. From just my usage it seems to be an access problem. Transfer rates seem to be fine and beyond opening the folding I want to copy onto it is fast (Or at least faster than my WD640gb black). I've heard PIO being used instead of DMA in relationship to slow drives. How do you tell if it is one way or another?

All the files on it are copies from my Seagate so no big deal. Worst case I have to re-rip a few dvds.

I really appreciate all the help!
 
Go to Window's power options and turn off any HDD power saving options. That might keep it from spinning down so often, and hopefully help with performance.
 
had the same issue, but with a 1GB EADS, XP, W7, W7-64. Drive access was normally fast but I'd get frequent freezes on things like opening apps or web pages. Got a new drive, problem solved. Works fine as a backup, just as the main drive it has some sort of access issue.
 
Drive seems fine. Could you check for alignment with the utility AS SSD, to be downloaded here:
http://alex-is.de/PHP/fusion/downloads.php?cat_id=4

When you execute AS SSD, you should see "1024K - OK" in the window; and not "31.5K - BAD". If it says BAD then your EARS drive is running unaligned; and you would need to re-create the partition on this drive.
 
Cool! Thanks for the help. Hopefully I'll get a chance to fix it tonight or definitely tomorrow. I'll keep you tuned!

Jimi that sounds like what I might be looking at. Definitely not going to use it as a main drive, but hopefully its something as simple as power settings *crosses fingers*

Also does anyone know how RMA'ing hard drives with Amazon? It is after the 30 days (wish I had tested it sooner).
 
does anyone know if docks have anything to do with it.

maybe cause its usb 2.0 or possibly even sata the transfer rate could be a factor.

Suggestion: if he were to partition into 2 would the speed increase. or a short stroke faq would help with his seek time with the hdd's
 
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