Why is HDTune data so irregular?

C

cybrguy1

n00b
Joined
Jan 3, 2011
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This is from a 2 week old Seagate ST31000528AS. I did update the firmware to CC46 from CC38 but it made little difference. This IS the system drive so I'm sure that contributes to the irregularity, but testing on a quiet system I would expect better grouping of the data. Am I wrong and this is OK?
6hdtunebenchmarkst31000.png
 
If this is Vista or above there is no such thing as a quiet system.

And as always look at the SMART raw data.

Also that is an old version of HDTune.
 
You're probably testing your system drive; which you cannot exclusively benchmark since it is also used for the system itself. If during the benchmark the system disk is accesses for system purpose, then you would see lower performance in your benchmark. We call this contamination.

You can only properly test a data disk that isn't used by anything else except the benchmark.

That said, you performance looks fine for a HDD; no obvious problems.
 
OK, here is HD Tune run from UBCDWin (which runs XPP). The results still seem somewhat erratic (though better) for a new drive, but maybe I am missing something. I'm not really a hardware guy...

And 2.55 is the most recent FREE version of HD Tune.

8hdtunebenchmarkst31000.png
 
HDTune Pro allows you to set a larger block size, giving you less fluctuating performance graph. But it's no indication of any problem!
 
If the squiggly graph line really bothers you there is one surefire fix - get an ssd. :p
 
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