Sandra 2001 says my harddrive is pretty slow...shouldnt be.

[T-Bird]

Sandra 2001 says my harddrive seek time is only 6MB/sec, which translates to only UDMA. Western Digital claims that the drive is ATA33/66/100 for speeds up to 100mb/sec. What is wrong? Do I need something to get the seek times up? I have optimized settings in BIOS.

Athlon 800mhz
256mb PC133 RAM
Epox 8KTA-3
Western Digital 20GIG 7200 HD
Windows ME(yuk)
Toshiba 12X DVD-ROM

[codybear]

you must also realize that Sandra is NOT a benchmarking tool....run the tests and then run them with changes and see if they are better or worse...it can be used for a comparision tool for your own system but cannot be relied upon to be accurate when comparing others with yours...there are way too many variables involved from system to system for it to be used that way.

[Wilan Wong]

For hard disk benchmarking, try using the Business Disk Winmark and Highend Disk Winmark from the ZDWinbench 99 Suite. It tests fairly well as well, make sure you defragment your drive and you enable DMA. Also try getting the latest drivers for your components as well. The site is http://www.zdnet.com/etestinglabs/stories/benchmarks/0,8829,2326114,00.html Hope that helps.

[T-Bird]

OK, heres the scoop/ I download HDTach and did another test. Same results with the read burst speed....slow.

I came out with only 2.2mb/sec. Random acces time was 11ms.

My motherboard(Epox 8KTA-3) has auto DMA detect. My harddrive has the real real fine cable going to the IDE. According to Western Digital , they describe the drive like this :

" WD Caviar 7200 RPM drives offer Ultra ATA/100 and Ultra ATA/66 interfaces, low seek times and up to 100 MB/s data transfer rates, all of which add up to a fast data delivery system.

I scandisked and de-fragmented my drive prior to both tests.

[NDD]

Correct me if I wrong, but I think "100 MB/s data transfer rate" is somekind of TOP hard disk INTERNAL tramsfer rate. Just for the test, I copied few times 500 MB of different files of different sizes (276 small files/3 big files/78 MP3s - all of the packs were 500 MB), within SAME partition, and on my Athlon 1 GHz/KT7A/IBM DTLA 75GXP 45 GB(ATA/100) it took 7-10 seconds ...
Again - I could be wrong http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif
My personal Sisoft Sandra 2001 Pro benchs (if it helps) :

Total Benchmarking : 26760
Benchmark Breakdown
Buffered Read 43 MB/s
Sequential Read 36 MB/s
Random Read 9 MB/s
Buffered Write 29 MB/s
Sequential Write 28 MB/s
Random Write 11 MB/s
Average Access Time 8 ms (estimated)

VIA 4-in1 4.28 was installed, with Microsoft IDE drivers


Best Regards ...

[SpookyEddy]

Seek time sounds OK.

Make sure that DMA is checked under device manager for your drive.

Just to give you an idea; here are some of my HDTach scores.

Seagate drive: max burst = 46 Mb/sec (UDMA 66 drive)

Quantum Fireball : max burst = 56 Mb/sec (UDMA 66 drive)

Both are cheap drives and not that new, so you should get much better scores.

What CPU utilisation does HDtach give?

Regards

Eddy

[SpookyEddy]

Hi T-bird,

I think you might be getting seek time & transfer rate confused.

The seek time will probably be measured in fractions of a second, not Mb/sec.

Seek time - The time it takes for the drive head to physicaly move across the disc (usually between 8 and 16 msec).

Transfer rate - max burst amount of data transmited per second eg 100 MB/sec for UDMA 100 (only theoretical, never actually achieved).

I would recomend HDTach as a good free drive benchmark. I will try to dig out a URL but I would think you could find it from google.

Regards

Eddy

[This message has been edited by SpookyEddy (edited 03-12-2001).]

[T-Bird]

Eddy, CPU utilization was 88%, and 94%. This drive should permit ATA 66/100 speeds. Yes. DMA IS checked in device manager. :-(

[SpookyEddy]

Unfortunately DMA does not appear to be working at all. I get a CPU utilisation of between 2 & 5 % on my drives.

Have you got any 3rd party Busmastering drivers installed (the early versions supplied with Via chipset patch often caused problems)?

Any IRQ conflicts with otherdevices?

You could try resetting to BIOS defaults, my abit KT7 will not run at UDMA66 with enhanced chip performance switched on (drops to UDMA33).

Have you got the UDMA cable the correct way around (blue end at motherboard)? Simple I know but worth checking.

What version of the Via 4in1 patch are you running? Try upgrading to the latest version (4.29 I think).

Are all the troubleshooting settings switched off for the drive?

Just a few ideas.

Regards

Eddy

[SpookyEddy]

http://www.epox.com/html/english/support/motherboard/drivers/via-4in1.htm

[T-Bird]

Eddie, where can I get these patches? Im running the Epox 8KTA-3 KT-133a chipset. Yes, the cable is correct(dont think you can operate with it backwards can you?). I may call western digital and see what they say.

[T-Bird]

OK Ran another test.

Sequential Speed(KB per/sec 2000+
Random Access time 11/ms
Read Burst Speed 2.2mbps

CPU Utlization 95.2%

No conflicts anywhere in system. All drivers for this device are most recent.
--------------------------------------
Also set BIOS to Optimized settings and heres what I got.(thought they were already set at Optimal)

Sequential Speed 6000 kilobytes p/sec
Random access time 10.7ms
Read burst speed 6.1 mbps

it got faster, but its still not at even ATA33 speeds!

[This message has been edited by T-Bird (edited 03-13-2001).]

[T-Bird]

WooooHooooo guys! I fixed it! It wasnt the drivers, it wasnt the DMA settings.....It was the cable! I read in my mobo manual that I needed to buy a 80 conductor cable. Well, I rememeber that I had a pretty fine cable going to my hard drive. I counted...Yep 80. So I plugged the cable back in and VIOLA!!! Sandra said DMA Enabled....YES.

My buffered read went from 2.2MB/s to 68MB/s!!! Thats about where I thought it should be :-) Thanks for any help you guys! Eddie, that 4in1 patch was the same version, Epox sent with the Mobo.

[This message has been edited by T-Bird (edited 03-14-2001).]