Sata3 Seagate Barracuda max read/write 90mb/sec

[graphixboy]

I have a brand new Seagate Barracuda (st375052 5AS) that claims to be SATA3 with a burst read up to 300mb/sec. That drive is connected to a SATA3 header on Biostar TA990FXE Motherboard. Every test I've run (AS SSD & ATTO) shows a max read/write of 90mb/sec. To me that seems pretty slow even for an older traditional HD. BIOS and Win7 are both completely up to date on drivers.

Obviously I'm not expecting 400mb-500mb speeds like a SSD but am I wrong in thinking it should be quite a bit higher than 90mb/sec?

If those speeds seem slow any ideas what I should try for a fix? I've tried different SATA ports and cables and nothing seems to make a difference.

 

[WyomingKnott]

The 300mb/sec refers to the SATA II interface. The drive _controller_ is capable of passing data to your machine that fast, if only the drive could push the data that fast. It's like using a six-inch hose to carry the output of an aquarium pump. You won't get any more flow than with the quarter-inch hose that came with the thing. The disk's read/write speed is the chokepoint.

If the drive has cache then, in theory, a read that is satisfied from the cache could reach that speed.

Now the question - is the hard drive's speed reasonable for a hard drive? That depends on your spelling. 90 mb/sec is much too slow, but 90 MB/sec would be low-end reasonable. Did you mean bits, for which a lower-case b is appropriate, or bytes, for which an upper-case B is required?

EDIT - SATA III should be burst rate up to 600 Mb/sec. Sigh. The controller speed is irrelevant. They don't even put fast-fast controllers on slower HDDs as an advertising gimmick, it's just cheaper to use the same model controller on everything.

 

[graphixboy]

Yeah thats what I get for typing late at night 🙂 I did indeed intend to say 90MB/sec. I completely get the SATA through put being much higher than what the drive can handle.

90MB/sec just seemed a bit odd when the 5 year old WD 5400rpm drive it replaced was putting up similar read/write numbers. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't seeing an issue with SATA controller or drivers that would be making the new drive under perform.

Either way thanks for the reply. The drive is functioning fine albeit not significantly better than the old one so I probably won't worry about for now.