My sata 500gb harddisk is slower then old 160 gb harddisk

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aloksharma2k27

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Dec 11, 2011
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hello folks,

first of all i want to tell ou that i am not much in hardware stuff, so please be a little detailed with me for what i need to do._______ ok that apart ,here is my problem i am facing from last two months and i have tried many methods given in this forum and other places where i can find something relative on google i tried almost everything in them.

here is my hardware/software configuration:

1. Intel chipset- Intel(R) 945 Express Chipset Family
2.Memory Controller: 82945G/GZ
3.I/O Controller: Intel(R) 82801GB/GR I/O controller hub (ICH7/ICH7R) SATA Controller found in IDE mode
4. graphic cards : nvidia geforce 6200 turbo cache(i guess it doesnt relate with my problem)

device ide mode is : ultra dma 5 for harddisk and system OS is: win xp sp3 prof.


the problem is that my old 160 gb hard disk gives speed of 50mbps data rate(i use super copier to check it with large files)
while the new harddisk is only giving me ~25-30mbps data rate while dma mode is same for both .

FYI: old hard disk is now removed from system and i am using this 500gb harddisk only

i have tried uninstalling ide device and reboot system ,even tried the dma reset.vbs found on net for speed problems.
also tried changing data cabel(red id) with new one and port changing for harddisk. even tried reformatting on disk.


somewhere i read that new harddisks have more speed in AHCI mode (i have no idea whats that) but my hard disk is very slow as you can see now, if you can please help me about how can i make it atleast at that old drive speed Or can i use AHCI mode for my hard disk.

plus my bios showed primary master is cd drive, slave not available is that the problem? can i add this solution will it help?
http://techrena.blogspot.com/2009/01/download-intel-sata-ahci-drivers-for.html

regards
Alok sharma
 
Solution
Hawkeye22


Enhanced mode should be AHCI in the bios.

Here is a video showing the use of F6 during install. Once you see setup files being copied, you can skip to about 1:55 minutes into the video. Remember, you need the AHCI/SATA/RAID drivers on floppy disk for this part.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oDT40ewh90...
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What model are the old and the new hard disks and what motherboard do you have?

Edit: Are you copying from/to the same hard disk? I performed that test and I get similar results, but copying from a hard disk to another hard disk is at least 4 times faster. I can also confirm that copying from/to the same hard disk is faster on an old multi-platter drive than it is on a new single platter drive. You shouldn't be too concerned because copying to the same hard disk is not very useful and it's rarely used.
 
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^+1

If you're copying from one file to another on the hard drive, then what you're really measuring isn't the transfer rate of the drive but rather the speed with which it can move it's access arm back and forth between the "from" and the "to" files. And if it happens that the "from" and "to" files are farther apart on one drive than on the other, then it's going to show up as being much slower even if it's actually a faster drive.

Instead of using a copy utility to test your speed, you should use a benchmark program like HDTune which simply streams I/Os to the drive as fast as it can accept them. The problem with using copy as a benchmark is that it will always be bottlenecked by whichever is slower - the "from" or the "to" - and so you never have 100% assurance that the speed you're seeing really applies.
 
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GhislainG & sminlal

thanks for your response but i have firm believe that this this harddisk is working slower then my old 160 gb(which i am not using now) as the OS loading time and Online games(MMO like wow etc.) and huge softwares(like VS 2005, macromedia etc) are working/loading very slow now which can not be a problem of internet problem and i thus it can only point to one thing HDD speed
plus their is one more thing after attaching this new drive(when old one was still in use) my ystem got into ultra dma 5 which was 6 before and now not switching back to 6, no matter how many times i reinstalled windows or ide drive(something is wrong)


i will provide you the hdtune status if you want.

regards
Alok sharma
 
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Is the new drive an advanced format drive? if so, you can't use XP to format it. if you do, performance will suffer. The drive manufacturer's web site should have an advanded format utility you can use to format the drive. You can also use a win 7 computer to format the drive, then move it to the XP system as win 7 knows how to deal with advanced format drives.
 
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thnx i will do try that it should be a new format drive cause i just purchased it 2 months ago and the below are drive specs from HDDscan can i turn my drive into raid cause i read that raid have much greater speed over ide(currently on my system)


ST3500418AS-9VMS7BZM-ID.mht
HDDScan Identity Report
Model: ST3500418AS
Firmware: CC46
Serial: 9VMS7BZM
LBA: 976773168

Report By: HDDScan for Windows version 3.3
Report Date: 12/12/2011 7:38:16 PM

Main Information
Name Value
LBA SupportYes
LBA28268435455
LBA48976773168
ATA Version8
Logical Sector Size512 bytes
Physical Sector Size512 bytes
Cache size16384 KB
ECC bytes4
Nominal Form factorNot Reported
RPM7200
InterfaceSATA
Connected throughIDE-onboard controller


DMA Support
Name Value
DMA SupportYes
Multiword DMA 0Supported
Multiword DMA 1Supported
Multiword DMA 2Supported
UDMA 0Supported
UDMA 1Supported
UDMA 2Supported
UDMA 3Supported
UDMA 4Supported
UDMA 5Selected
UDMA 6Supported


PIO Support
Name Value
PIO SupportYes
PIO 0Supported
PIO 1Supported
PIO 2Supported
PIO 3Supported
PIO 4Supported


Features Support
Name Value
SATA Gen2 3.0 Gb/sSupported
SATA Gen1 1.5 Gb/sSupported
ATA8-ASTNot Supported
SATA 1.0aNot Supported
SATA II: ExtensionsNot Supported
SATA Rev 2.5Not Supported
SATA Rev 2.6Supported
SATA Rev 3.0Not Supported
Software Settings PreservationEnabled
Commands queueSupported
Queue depth32
NCQSupported
NCQ Priority InformationNot Supported
Unload while NCQNot Supported
TCQNot Supported
Host Protected Area (HPA)Supported
Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM)Enabled
Advanced Power Management (APM)Not Supported
Power ManagementSupported
Read look-aheadEnabled
Write cacheEnabled
Password ProtectionSupported
SMARTEnabled
Device Configuration Overlay (DCO)Supported
General Purpose Logging (GPL)Supported
Streaming featureNot Supported
SMART self-testSupported
SMART error logSupported
SCT Command TransportSupported
SCT Long Sector AccessSupported
SCT Write SameSupported
SCT Error Recovery ControlSupported
SCT Features ControlSupported
SCT Data TablesSupported
Extended Status ReportingNot Supported
Free-fall ControlNot Supported
Sanitize FeaturesNot Supported
CFast SpecificationNot Supported
Data ManagementNot Supported
 
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I don't recommend raid for home computers. They are more trouble than they are worth and with a raid 0 setup, if a single drive fails you will loose all data on the array. If you are curious and want to experiment with raid, be sure you have backups of your data, which hopefully you are already doing.
 
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If you are running vista or win 7 you can go into the bios and switch the sata mode from IDE to AHCI after following instructions here.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976/

If you have XP, the only way I know of to switch to AHCI is by doing a clean install of the OS and using the F6 option to install the sata drivers during the install of the OS.
 
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i have the installation disk but is it not possible to install sata driver without making a reinstall of xp_sp3 setup plus i have intel 945 GNT mobo(old i guess) will the driver work as AHCI in this mobo if yes please give me some step by step procedure as i cant use vista or win7 and in mobo bios setup(which u go through pressing del or f2) dont show other options then ide(it shows here legacy and enhanced)
 
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Enhanced mode should be AHCI in the bios.

Here is a video showing the use of F6 during install. Once you see setup files being copied, you can skip to about 1:55 minutes into the video. Remember, you need the AHCI/SATA/RAID drivers on floppy disk for this part.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oDT40ewh90

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314859
 
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Solution
That's good performance. If copying files is very important, then add another hard disk as it will be 4 times faster. Your new hard disk should normally be faster than the old one, but not when copying files because the heads have to travel more than they did on the old drive.

You probably won't see a significant performance improvement if you switch to AHCI. You provided the chipset (Intel 945 GNT), but not the motherboard model. Your motherboard should definitely support AHCI.
 
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You provided the chipset (Intel 945 GNT), but not the motherboard model. Your motherboard should definitely support AHCI.

how to do that, plus i really want harddisk to perform well everything is slow now as when i connected to my friends new desktop with i3 it was much much faster(how can that be head problem) and

thnx hawkeye

but which one is faster AHCI/SATA/RAID? plus i dont have floppy drive can i use pen drive?
 
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Switching to AHCI isn't going to gain you much performance. It will enable NCQ if the drive supports it, hot swap if your motherboard supports it, and a few other features.

Depending on your motherboard, the AHCI/SATA/RAID drivers may all be the same driver. XP will not install drivers from anything but a standard floppy drive. Remember, XP is 10 years old.
 
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Your friend's new desktop is much faster and newer than your system and he probably runs Windows 7. You can't compare it to your older, much less powerful system that runs Windows XP.

If your motherboard is the Intel D945GNT, then according to http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/sb/biosglossaryalpha_v17.pdf the controller can be configured to support IDE, AHCI and RAID.
 
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Yep, those are very respectable performance numbers. There doesn't appear to be anything fundamentally wrong with the hard drive or its connection to your system.

The huge issue with hard drives is that they don't multitask well. You can read or write one file very fast, but as soon as you try to do something else at the same time performance suffers badly. So if performance is poor then GhislainG's suggestion is the right way to go - use another hard drive and try to separate the files so that whatever work is going on in parallel can proceed using it's own drive
 
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thnx for all your help i upgraded to win 7 now (just today) and the improvement in disk speed is their :) , but it is still showing the ide driver( same as i mentioned above in thread start in devices) ICH7 so i guess thats all i can get on this mobo. So my concern is if i over ride it with new river of sata will it harm my system.
 
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ok thnx here are motherboard specs if you need or can give me some more bits of info


Manufacturer Intel
Model D945GNTL
AA Number AAC96315-405
BIOS Vendor Intel Corp.
BIOS Version Intel Corp. NT94510J.86A.4089.2007.0718.0501
BIOS Release Date 07/18/07
System Memory 2.0 GB
Built-in Audio Driver Component Sigmatel STAC9220
Built-in Audio Driver Version not detected
 
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