Are these spikes normal?

[MeepsterNotchy]

I did a quick seek test in HD Sentinel on my 2TB WD Black drive and the big spike up in milliseconds seemed odd.

Image of results:
http://imgur.com/QRrCB2N

 

[techgeek]

Could be a few things. Is this your boot / OS drive?

 

[MeepsterNotchy]

Could be a few things. Is this your boot / OS drive?

Yes

 

[techgeek]

Performing these types of tests on a OS drive can be erratic. Being the OS drive, the OS could access the drive while you are benchmarking it which will cause large Seek Time spikes.

However that isn't to say that those Seek Time spikes are legitimate. To be sure you need to repeat your test and see if they consistently appear in the same locations. If they do, then this isn't being caused by the OS accessing it.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there MeepsterNotchy,

Sorry you are facing some issues with your WD drive. 🙁

I would agree with techgeek's point on OS drives benchmarking.

Apart from that, as you think that there may be something wrong with the drive, it may be a good idea to back up the most important data stored on the drive. You should keep your crucial data stored on several places anyway.

After that, you can test the drive with a tool that can provide a SMART report. You can run both short and extended DLG tests on it: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=CljApM

I believe it will not hurt to attach the drive to a different port(try port 0 in case the drive is not attached to it) different cables.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD