Internal HDD transfer speeds.....Whats normal?

[rjkleiner]

Hello,

I have two sata drives and I copied and pasted a pictures folder between the drives that was 10.2 gig, The transfer speed was 12.2mb/s........I thought that was very slow. Both drives are 7200 rpm SATA.

Please advise if this is normal.

All Bois, and firmware is up to date.

Thanks for any input, System info below.

System Summary

Product Studio XPS 7100
BIOS Version String A04
Operating System
Name Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Edition (64-bit)
Build Number 7600
DirectX Version 11
AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1035T Processor (CPU:0)
Name AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1035T Processor
Cores 6
Threads 6
System Memory
Total Physical Memory 8.00 GB
Maximum Supported Memory 16.00 GB
Hard Drive - WDC WD20 01FASS-00W2B0 SATA Disk Device
Model Number WDC WD2001FASS-00W2B0
Firmware Revision 01.0
Hard Drive - SAMSUNG HD103SJ SATA Disk Device
Model Number SAMSUNG HD103SJ
Firmware Revision 1AJ1
Optical Drive - HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GH50N SATA CdRom Device
Model Number HL-DT-STDVD+-RW GH50N
Drive Serial Number K36A2464019
Firmware Revision B103


Operating System
Name Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Edition (64-bit)
Build Number 7600
DirectX Version 11
Windows Directory c:\windows
System Directory c:\windows\system32
System Name
User Name
Windows Experience Index
Windows Update
Automatic Updates Automatic download and install
Last checked 2010-12-14 18:34:06


Security
Windows Update
Automatic Updates Automatic download and install
Last checked 2010-12-14 18:34:06
Firewall - Avira FireWall
Product Name Avira FireWall
Program Enabled true
Firewall - Windows Firewall
Windows Firewall Enabled false
Virus Scanner - AntiVir Desktop
Product Name AntiVir Desktop
Program Up To Date true
On Access Scanning Enabled true


Motherboard
System Board
Manufacturer Dell Inc.
Product 0FF3FN
Chipset AMD RS780/RS880
Southbridge AMD SB700/SB710/SB750
BIOS
Vendor Dell Inc.
Release Date 07/22/2010
BIOS Version String A04
ROM Size 1.00 MB
SMBIOS
Version 2.6


Processors
AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1035T Processor (CPU:0)
Name AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1035T Processor
Cores 6
Threads 6
Signature 100FA0h
Family 10h
Model Ah
Temperature 33.750 C
Performance
Max Qualified Speed 3.10 GHz
Current Speed 2.18 GHz
Multiplier x 13.0 (7 - 15.5)
Bus Speed 167.33 MHz

Features MMX(+), 3DNow!(+), PSE36, x86-64, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4A, NX, SVM
Cache Summary
L1 Instruction Cache 6 x 64.00 kB
L1 Data Cache 6 x 64.00 kB
L2 Cache 6 x 512.00 kB
L3 Cache 6.00 MB

Core : 0
Threads 1
Core : 1
Threads 1
Core : 2
Threads 1
Core : 3
Threads 1
Core : 4
Threads 1
Core : 5
Threads 1
L1 Data Cache
Quantity 6
Level L1
Type Data
Size 64.00 kB
Associativity 2-Way Set-Associative
Line Size 64 bytes
L1 Instruction Cache
Quantity 6
Level L1
Type Instruction
Size 64.00 kB
Associativity 2-Way Set-Associative
Line Size 64 bytes
L2 Cache
Quantity 6
Level L2
Type Unified
Size 512.00 kB
Associativity 16-Way Set-Associative
Line Size 64 bytes
L3 Cache
Quantity 1
Level L3
Type Unified
Size 6.00 MB
Associativity 48-Way Set-Associative
Line Size 64 bytes


Memory
System Memory
Total Physical Memory 8.00 GB
Maximum Supported Memory 16.00 GB
Page Files
Total Size 12.00 GB
Recommended Total Size 4.00 GB
Page File c:\pagefile.sys
Location c:\pagefile.sys
Size 12.00 GB

 

[MRFS]

Western Digital's technical specifications show the WD2001FASS
as capable of 138 Megabytes per second, host to/from drive, sustained.

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701276.pdf


Also, these graphs were done by an independent third party:

http://www.supremelaw.org/systems/io.tests/platter.transfer.crossover.graphs.annotated.PNG

... where speed is directly proportional to track circumference
(because during WRITEs, the read/write heads strive to maintain
the same or similar recording density from outermost to innermost tracks)


So, there is either something wrong with your measuring method,
or there is something wrong with your system.


Try ATTO and/or HDTune on each HDD separately.


MRFS

 

[Plumble]

That can be normal if the folder contained lots of small files. If it was 20 500MB files, I would be concerned, but if it was 10,000 1MB files, I would kind of expect that due to the overhead of copying each file. Do run HDTach or HDTune just to chech, but there may be nothing wrong. I've had similar results when copying a vast amount of small files.

 

[rjkleiner]

Thanks for the response.

It was about 4500 files so I am hoping you are right. I will test the drives the way you suggest.

I can try to copy a single large file and get speeds off of that transfer.

Happy Holidays!

Thanks again!

 

[sminlal]

I have two sata drives and I copied and pasted a pictures folder between the drives that was 10.2 gig, The transfer speed was 12.2mb/s........I thought that was very slow. Both drives are 7200 rpm SATA.

Are you sure that you were copying between your two physical drives and not between two "drive letters" that are actually partitions on the same physical drive? If you did the latter then you should expect slow transfer rates because the drives' access heads are being forced to seek back-and-forth between the two partitions.