Erratic HD transfer rates, anything to worry about?

tourist2001

Honorable
Feb 17, 2013
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0
10,510
Hello,

I might be having a problem with my brand new Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200.14. I already own two of these drives and while testing them with HDTune, I noticed something fishy. Here's a pic:

http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/3822/hdd9.png

The left result is from my former identical 2TB drive, the middle and right pics are both from the new disk.

As you can see, the transfer rates on the new drive are extremely erratic. Having some spikes is common, but the frequency of fluctuation and size of these spikes (in parts around 100MB) on the new drive seems a bit much. All my other drives (internally and externally) run comparably smooth, similar to the left pic.

The drive has the newest firmware, SMART values are normal, no rt-AV programs are running and as far as I can tell there's nothing accessing the drive. For one, it's the E drive in my system, so there shouldn't be any system functions anyhow, and according to the resource monitor there's only some activity on C drive and apart from HDTune, nothing accessing E drive.

I've copied some files to the drive and the average speeds were good (around 100MB/s), but the erratic fluctuation still worries me, because of the wear and tear it might cause in the long run.

What do you guys think? Should I be worried? I can still return it and swap for a new drive if necessary.

Thanks!
 
I wouldn't be worried, that looks just like the site review benchmark runs, like THIS ONE.

edit: also, I have never run one that looked as smooth as the one on the left on scores of drives, none of which has failed in 24/7 NAS RAID use.
 


Well, for me it's been the exact opposite, all my drives run relatively peacefully, as seen here. Which explains why I'm a little worried, especially with so many mechanical failures being reported, warranty time reduced etc..

But thanks for the reassurance and hopefully all will be fine.

PS: Cute doggie, btw.
 
Thanks, she thinks so. Her cousin Swagger won reserved best in show (2nd place) at Westminster last week. Mine is just a pet though, way too spoiled to put up with any show cr@p. :)