Is my HDD benchmark ok?

[Rom Hook]

My freshly installed windows 7 home premium takes about five minutes to boot up. I'm suspecting there's a problem with my old Hitachi hard drive so I've run an HD Tune benchmark and here's the result:

http://i1229.photobucket.com/albums/ee464/Nomassangre/HDTuneProBenchmark_zpsfqxlppen.jpg

Does my HDD start to die? Thanks!

 

[Ironsounds]

Hello... 1) did ya do a "clean Install" ? delete all the previous Partitions first, before OS install?
2) do you have ant yellow or red marked "devices" in your device manager?

 

[kyzarvs]

An average of 82MB for a mechanical drive sounds pretty normal? If I'm reading that s'shot right I'd not be worrying too much about the hdd.

By the way 5 mins isn't too bad - the PoS laptops given by the top-100 international corporation that should really know better I'm currently contracting for is giving out i5 / 4GB ram W7 Pro laptops. With all the bloat / encryption / security on them they are 15-18 minutes from pressing the power button to having access to email... Nowt wrong with the drives, they are 7200rpm speedies...

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there Rom Hook,

As there may be something wrong with the drive, it may be a good idea to back up the data stored on the drive until you sort this out.
These slopes could indicate some bad sectors. What does the health tab shows. It would be useful if you provide a screenshot of the SMART report: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility

Let me know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

 

[garrett1986]

your HDD is fine.

what you have is referred to as "windows rot" which basically means that your windows install is so old its registry has become well, bloated and inefficient.

you could try running CCleaner to speed up your boot but the best solution is to just reinstall windows.

 

[D_Know_WD]

@garrett1986 The OP mentioned that the OS was installed recently.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD

 

[kyzarvs]

@garrett1986 The OP mentioned that the OS was installed recently.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD

But he doesn't mention how fresh fresh is, whether it's a legitimate copy of Windows and not a pirate version, if it was an upgrade etc.

I still think an average of over 80mb and the absence of SMART messages suggests a Windows issue rather than hardware.

 

[Rom Hook]

I should have mentioned that I've made a clean install (reformatted the HDD before the installation). I've disabled Windows Firewall and some other scheduled tasks and it seams to start a bit faster now. What made me feel concerned was the fact that the reading speed is all over the place.

 

[garrett1986]

HDD's are fastest at the start of the first partition because its at the edge of the disc (inside the HDD) and they get slower the closer the read head gets to the center of the disc. this is simply because the outside edge of the disc is moving faster then the inside edge and the read head can access more information faster when its nearer to the outer edge of the disc.

in general HDD's performance is normally all over the place so that is not really a concern.

if windows is taking a long time to load try.

making sure all windows updates are installed

all drivers are up to date

use Ccleaner to clean up the registry and disable unneeded start programs.

delete any and all facebook games, things like weatherbug and other useless applications that just #$#$ on your pc.

make sure you have at least 4 gigs of ram, preferably 8-16gb

buy an SSD, once you use one you never go back.

also turn windows firewall on, its not the best but its better then nothing and if its not interfering with the software you use you might as well leave it on.

if turning windows firewall OFF sped up your PC then i would definitely check to make sure your networking drivers (most likely they come bundled with your chipset drivers if its onboard) are up to date and install spybot S&D 2 and spybot anti beacon to root out anything fishy.

windows firewall should take almost none of your systems resources when its on under normal conditions.

 

[Rom Hook]

HDD's are fastest at the start of the first partition because its at the edge of the disc (inside the HDD) and they get slower the closer the read head gets to the center of the disc. this is simply because the outside edge of the disc is moving faster then the inside edge and the read head can access more information faster when its nearer to the outer edge of the disc.

in general HDD's performance is normally all over the place so that is not really a concern.

if windows is taking a long time to load try.

making sure all windows updates are installed

all drivers are up to date

use Ccleaner to clean up the registry and disable unneeded start programs.

delete any and all facebook games, things like weatherbug and other useless applications that just #$#$ on your pc.

make sure you have at least 4 gigs of ram, preferably 8-16gb

buy an SSD, once you use one you never go back.

also turn windows firewall on, its not the best but its better then nothing and if its not interfering with the software you use you might as well leave it on.

if turning windows firewall OFF sped up your PC then i would definitely check to make sure your networking drivers (most likely they come bundled with your chipset drivers if its onboard) are up to date and install spybot S&D 2 and spybot anti beacon to root out anything fishy.

windows firewall should take almost none of your systems resources when its on under normal conditions.

Thanks fro the reply! Since it's my secondary computer, a few minutes start up time is not an issue. I've had to remove one of the faulty RAM sticks recently so now it only has 4 gigs.

I'm now having a different problem though. Every time I turn it on I'm getting "s.m.a.r.t status bad, backup and replace" error. I'm guessing the hard drive is going to die soon so I'm not storing anything important on it. I'll probably have to replace it. Unfortunately my motherboard does not have any SATA III ports so I'm guessing an SSD is not an option.