I wonder if my Hard drive is under performimng

[jmjg]

Hello, I have a WD Cavier black 2 TB drive that I wonder is not performing as it should. Until recently this was my windows drive, but after being advised several time to format and reinstall I decided to get an SSD for windows. before when I used this as my windows drive, my windows seemed to run very slow at times. It would take unto 5 minutes or more for programs to run and when I downloaded a program it sometimes took over 5 minutes from the time I clicked the install file to the time I saw the install window, during this period there was no indication the install was running at all, I could not even find it in task manager. right now for example I am doing a file transfer to get files off the drive before I reformat it, and it seems to be taking a lot longer to copy files from this drive then it does from my other drive a 3 TB drive. I have run several programs to check the disk health and everything passes, I did do a benchmark with hd tune the other day, I can post if someone would be able to interpret it.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Here is the benchmark as well as the health and info tabs.

 

[jmjg]

Again any help would be appreciated, as far as I can tell everything looks ok, except the benchmark, I ran one for my other drive and it looked much different, but that is a Seagate 3 tb, so not sure if that is why.

 

[Rit_86]

There is definitely something wrong about your HDD. The CPU usage and access time are way too high and the data read fluctuation is way too much. Give your full system specs, including the AV solution you are using and post a screen shot of the health section of HDtune.

 

[jmjg]

I thought I did post a screen shot of the health section.
As for my specs it is an HP Paviolion HPE-240 with an intel i5 cpu 650 @3.20 GHz, with 8 GB ram, win 7 64 bit, video is ATI Radion 5570.
HD are currently, WD cavier Black 2 TB which has my windows on it, and a Seagate 3 tb drive formatted as GPT. (a tech at Seagate advised me to do that since the 3 tb drive was not going to be used as a boot drive).
Except for the hard drives, everything is still the original equipment when I bought the computer in 2010.

please let me know if you need any other specs.

 

[Rit_86]

You have posted screenshots of the bechmark and info section. Click on the "Health" tab and give a screenshot of that section. It will give the SMART attributes of your HDD.

 

[jmjg]

Let me also add the system has been slow for a while, I have had software tech support on the phone helping me to install programs comment about how long my system was taking to restart, especially after changes were made such as installing or removing a program. I guess I just got used to it so did not think about it. I had the drive replaced several years ago by geek squad because I could not get windows to boot when tied to migrate my data to the new disk, so I had them do it for me. Now I am wondering if the drive has been slow since then and I just did not notice it till recently. It has certainly slowed down considerably in the last few months.

 

[jmjg]

You have posted screenshots of the bechmark and info section. Click on the "Health" tab and give a screenshot of that section. It will give the SMART attributes of your HDD.

I see the screen shot for the health tab showing, but I go ahead and repost it
.

 

[jmjg]

BTW: I am planning on installing windows on a SSD, so this drive will only be used for data once I get my information off it, but considering how slow it is, does it pay to try to format and use the drive or should I see if I can RMA the drive, I believe it is still under warranty till 2016.
Again I appreciate all your assistance.

 

[Rit_86]

Nothing worrying there. What AV are you using? Do a detailed disk check. Right click on the disk - Properties - Tools - Error checking - Tick all the boxes and do an error check. Though the SMART data is OK, the disk may fail in the near future as all the indications are just not right. Backup all your important data ASAP.

 

[jmjg]

Nothing worrying there. What AV are you using? Do a detailed disk check. Right click on the disk - Properties - Tools - Error checking - Tick all the boxes and do an error check. Though the SMART data is OK, the disk may fail in the near future as all the indications are just not right. Backup all your important data

I am not sure what you mean by AV, if you mean Anti virus I run Norton 360.
I am currently backing up all data I want to save, and I did do a image of the windows partition so I can retrieve any data that was on the partition.
I take it you do not think a format will improve the drive, and I should just go ahead and RMA the drive. I just checked and it is still under warranty until 9/16.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there, jmjg!

The SMART status and overall health seems to be perfectly fine, however the speed is something that is not what the WD Black is supposed to deliver.
I'd suggest to check the SATA cables. If you have a spare, I'd swap them to see if that will improve the speed.
I'd recommend testing it with the WD's diagnostics tool as well. Here's a link to the utility: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=34tTUu

P.S. Btw, great choice on the SSD as boot and the WD Black as storage/gaming drive!

Keep me postedl!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[Rit_86]

I do agree. Checking the SATA cables is a good idea.
Yes, by AV I meant antivirus. You are using a good one, so no problem there. Though, you can change it (try Avira free) and see if matters do improve, even if slightly. Formatting in all probability will not improve matters much. If you can RMA it, it seems to be the best option.

 

[fzabkar]

The Interface CRC Error Count is 0, so I doubt that cabling is a problem. The benchmark looks horrible, but you always have to wonder whether there is interference from background tasks in Windows.

I would perform a full scan in DOS using MHDD. MHDD will identify any "slow" sectors, ie those that require one or more retries. You may need to temporarily reconfigure the SATA controller in BIOS for legacy or IDE compatibility mode.

http://hddguru.com/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/

 

[jmjg]

Yes I did swap out the cable, the old one was so short I had to disconnect the drive before I could remove it from the case, now the cable is long enough that I can pull the carrier the drives are mounted too all the way out of the case before I have to disconnect the cables.
I had tried running several different diag tools and they all said the drive was fine, that is until I saw someone post a benchmark for their drive in this chat and decided to try it myself.
I will try WD diag as well as MHDD but I think since it is still under warranty I will call tech support and see what they can do. I am in the process of backing up everything from the drive right now.
Actually the decision to use a SSD was forced upon me, I bought a new 2 tb drive to reinstall windows to rather then format and reinstall on this drive that I already suspected was bad, but windows would not install to the 2 tb drive, and the sales person where I bought the drive told me he has windows on a SSD and his system boots in 12 sec. so I decided since I have a spare sata port and the bay for a second DVD I would install the SSD there and still keep my 2 reg HD for storage.
Thanks everyone for your help.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Yes I did swap out the cable, the old one was so short I had to disconnect the drive before I could remove it from the case, now the cable is long enough that I can pull the carrier the drives are mounted too all the way out of the case before I have to disconnect the cables.
I had tried running several different diag tools and they all said the drive was fine, that is until I saw someone post a benchmark for their drive in this chat and decided to try it myself.
I will try WD diag as well as MHDD but I think since it is still under warranty I will call tech support and see what they can do. I am in the process of backing up everything from the drive right now.
Actually the decision to use a SSD was forced upon me, I bought a new 2 tb drive to reinstall windows to rather then format and reinstall on this drive that I already suspected was bad, but windows would not install to the 2 tb drive, and the sales person where I bought the drive told me he has windows on a SSD and his system boots in 12 sec. so I decided since I have a spare sata port and the bay for a second DVD I would install the SSD there and still keep my 2 reg HD for storage.
Thanks everyone for your help.

Hi again, jmjg!

Sorry again for the bad experience you've encountered with the WD Black.
Here are the contacts of our tech support: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=IpnHnu
And a link explaining how to RMA your product: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=7Xzrxd

Good luck!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[jmjg]

I am trying to reply to SuperSoph_WD, but the system just keeps taking me back to the beginning of the thread.
Thanks for the information, I have contacted WD support and they are sending me out a replacement HD at this time, in fact it should be arriving in a few days.
Again thanks to everyone for your help and confirming what I suspected .