Windows Experience Index says my disk transfer rate sucks

[electricsashimi]

I've installed windows 7 on my laptop and i noticed that in the experience index, the disk transfer rate was 2.0
When i had vista on this machine this number was much higher (i think it was 5 but i forgot)

So this has to be a driver problem. All other drivers installed successfully including the driver for the speaker, video card etc (using the vista 32 bit drivers).

However the "Intel Matrix Storage Console" didn't allow me to install since its not the "correct operating system". I then ran the setup in compatibility mode with windows vista and it successfully installed and prompt for a restart.

I ran another assessment of the experience index and the score for data transfer is still 2.0

I know its still in beta so don't flame me for this, I just want to know if you guys had any similar problems and found solutions to this.

(I'm using windows 7 build 7000 32 bit, the laptop I'm using is not an old crappy laptop, but recently bought with solid specs)

 

[montyuk]

well my old wd 7200rpm got a 5.4 so im guessing your drive is a 5400rpm,

you could try and see if your drive has its acoustic management set to quiet which might (slightly) reduce its performance, have a look at 'hd tune'.

but unless you feel your computing experience is being destroyed by a normal laptop drive i wouldnt worry about it.

 

[michiganteddybear]

your using a beta version of windows... get used to bugs and errors..

until actual windows 7 drivers are avail, you may get crap like this show up

 

[leo2kp]

Consider also that drives are getting faster, and the OS needs to account for that. Back in the day, 50 or 60mbps was fast enough. Now, 100mbps is more mainstream on a single drive. With SSDs coming out, that raises the bar even more. Suddenly that 5.0 score looks more like a 2.0 when compared to modern drives and how fast things are moving.

 

[Nik_I]

unless you're using an IDE hard drive for the 90's, you shouldn't score that low. my seagate barracuda 7200.11 500gb scores a 5.9, and my old barracuda 7200.7 sata 150 still scores somewhere around a 5.2.

 

[Scotteq]

Key Word: "Laptop"

He has a 5400 RPM drive, and *yes* they are that slow.

 

[leo2kp]

Not all laptops have a 5400 RPM drive...

 

[cjl]

Key Word: "Laptop"

He has a 5400 RPM drive, and *yes* they are that slow.

No, they aren't. I had a Samsung HM250JI drive in my laptop, hardly a fast drive (5400rpm and buggy, since replaced with a WD 7200RPM drive), and it still scored 4.2. There's something wrong with a computer that scores 2.

 

[geofelt]

Run something like HDTACH or HDTUNE and see how you do.

If the speeds look nominal, don't worry about the experience index.

 

[njalterio]

Yeah that score is definitely low for your hard drive, even if it's a 5400 rpm drive. Chalk it up to the beta version of windows.

 

[stoner133]

You also have to remember the index has changed between Vista and 7, Vista maxed out at 5.9 and 7 goes much higher.

 

[buzznut]

So I would say that people that compare lappy drive scores from vista with your results from 7 aren't making apples to apples comparisons.

Until you see a score from a laptop drive of similar make and model on windows 7, its hard to say exactly what that score really means. I agree that the beta build at this point, this may be a feature that is not fully worked out. I wouldn't worry about it too much.

 

[electricsashimi]

so is it the drivers from vista bit 32 that is faulty??

or is it because windows 7 ranks are different?

my laptop Hard Drive is SATA so I doubt its really this slow. (my rank was 5.0 in vista)

But still my experience with windows 7 is so much better than with vista

 

[lappydog]

My hard disk score is much lower in w7 too. 5.3 in vista and 2.0 with W7.
I am running w7 on a dual boot partition. w7 partition is only 30GB and may be the cause of my low score.
maybe I am wrong, please comment.

 

[jrgandara]

The very same problem here!

With Vista, my Disk Drive Data Rate score was 5.4. This very same drive in Windows 7 scores 3.0. I tested with HD Sentinel Pro before and after W7 instalation and the HD is fine. Must be a W7 bug. I don't know if this wrong number could slow down my system, but actually is running pretty fast even with this wrong low score.

I installed W7 in a much old machine using an old HD drive and the score was 3.9, much higher than my new machine with new disk drive. So it's not the the new score algorithm, but some bug. If someone find out how to fix it, just let us know. If not, I'm sure will be fixed in W7 RTM.

Thanks

 

[electricsashimi]

I actually notice a speed difference in 7 when accessing multiple files. For example if I want to shuffle and play all my songs in the music folder (1000+ songs) it usually takes 3-4 seconds for vista to access and create a song list. However in 7 it takes 9-10 seconds to create the song list.

But other than that i don't find any slow downs....
I also suspect that my torrenting may be slower than vista....

 

[jrgandara]

I Think these minor slows performances issues will be adressed in RTM version. But I'm really impressed with the performance. My old machine, running XP before, feels faster with W7 than with XP.

A new problem now it's my two Windows 7 machines refusing to update from Microsoft, as posted at: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/33-63-windows-update-stopped-working-machines

 

[jdw_swb]

So many people complaining about the performance and quirks of a product that has not been finished yet.

 

[Scotteq]

So many people complaining about the performance and quirks of a product that has not been finished yet.

Yah - I wonder when those idiots in Redmond will realize all they have to do is write XP again, except this time with 1/4 the lines of code, no security holes, and make it so it runs Crysis at 250 Frames Per second... On a 10 year old P3 with integrated graphics and 512MB of DDR RAM... And it better run every application known to mankind... and circumvent any and all known, all unknown, and all Yet~To~Be~Invented forms of Licencing... And it has to be distributed through Bit Torrent... And Install itself... And automatically fix any and all known, unknown, and yet to be broken hardware and software issues... For Free... And installable on as many computers as the user wants... for free...

It's so simple!! Rewrite everything, but change nothing!! And use lots of Ellipses!!

...

...

....

 

[Scotteq]

Oh Yeah - For Free

 

[LoneEagle]

Anyone has:

Windows 7
SSD or VelociRaptor (one or in RAID-0)

This would give us an idea of what could be the maximum?

 

[cjl]

Max is 7.9.

My only score that hits that is graphics (4870x2), though gaming graphics doesn't hit 7.9 for me (it's high 6's IIRC - a 7.9 would probably take something like tri-sli 280's or quadfire 4870s), and my CPU is 7.7 (i7 at 3.73 - I could overclock it more, but it doesn't seem to give me any more benefit to get it to 4+)

Oh, and my disk score is a 5.9 on a WD Caviar Black 1TB (secondary volume). I've got a pair of RAIDed velociraptors, but they're still running Vista, and I'm not moving 7 to the primary volume until it's out of beta.

 

[masda70]

Same thing happens to me, no matter what my HDD's experience index is stuck at 2.0. My laptop wasn't performing that great either with some applications, until I updated the drivers for my Intel Ultra ATA/SATA storage controllers, completely removing them before proceeding. It did improve the performance of these apps and seemed to improve boot time slightly, yet everytime I run the performance assessment it displays a 2.0 rating. My HD is a Toshiba mk1637GSX 5400rpm.

If I remember correctly Vista's primary HD rating was between 4.5 and 5.0. I was also wondering how much did the block size used for HD's operations affect HD's transfer speed. HDTune gives me benchs that roughly max between 35MB/s and 40MB/s.

 

[rako77]

I had the same problem. my hard drive was rated at 5.6 in vista but windows 7 rated it at 3.0. but i found a fix (for my system at least:


1. Control panel>hardware & sound>device manager
2. Under disk drives, find your main drive
3. Right click your main drive and select properties
4. Policies tab, uncheck the "enable write caching on this device"
5. Click ok, and re-run your WEI

Credits: http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/1760-low-hard-drive-scores-windows-experience-index.html

now my score is 5.8. its a 7,200rpm western digital with 16mb cache.


P.S. i think re enabling the catch after running wei would be a good idea.

 

[croc]

I had the same problem. my hard drive was rated at 5.6 in vista but windows 7 rated it at 3.0. but i found a fix (for my system at least:


1. Control panel>hardware & sound>device manager
2. Under disk drives, find your main drive
3. Right click your main drive and select properties
4. Policies tab, uncheck the "enable write caching on this device"
5. Click ok, and re-run your WEI

Credits: http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/1760-low-hard-drive-scores-windows-experience-index.html

now my score is 5.8. its a 7,200rpm western digital with 16mb cache.


P.S. i think re enabling the catch after running wei would be a good idea.

Thanks for the link, and the tip. I as well wondered about the low disk scores in win7, but now it makes good sense. Basically, caching a cache is never a good thing.

I think I'll run HDTune with and without that setting before I commit myself, but I suspect that it will confirm my thoughts.

EDIT: Only difference was burst rate went up from 106 to 112 with cache disabled. Not enough difference, IMO, for such a large swing in PEI #'s, but who knows how they determine scores? Never the less, I'll leave caching off...