Samsung HDD is really slow

[Archa87]

I have Samsung 80Gb UDMA133 7200 HDD master on IDE1. DMA is on. My PC is Pentium4 2.4GHz, 512Mb 400 DDR works only 333, Albatron 845GEV motherboard. The problem is that HDD is working really slow. When in DC++ someone uploads from my at speed 2-6 mb/s I can't do enything else. I bought Liteon 1633s DVD writer and even at 4x my PC gets unusable. Sometimes I can`t even play games. Tryed to check HDD with FreshDiagnose benchmark. It shows that writing speed is 11.34 MB/s and reading speed is 11.67 MB/s. Is this normal ? Or where could be the problem

HD Tune: SAMSUNG SP8004H Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 0.5 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 41.4 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 32.7 MB/sec
Access Time : 13.8 ms
Burst Rate : 60.6 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 14.3%

[kwkard]

What DMA setting does windows report? Sounds like you're in the wrong one. You really want UDMA 2 at least.

Is this the only drive in your system/drive with OS on it??

[Archa87]

Windows report that the drive is UDMA 5. Yes, this is only drive on my system. Windows XP SP2 is the only OS.

[kwkard]

Try defragmenting it lately? If files are too spread out over the disk, performance will really start to drop. I use diskeeper lite to defrag, it always gives me a friendly reminder that it's necessary.

[Archa87]

I've tryed defragmenting drive some time ago but it didn't helped. I really don't know what to do.

[slayerking]

Have you checked what other programs are running in the background? Also what programs are starting with windows? It sounds like you've got a shitload of stuff running in the background.

[Metaluna]

You might want to run a S.M.A.R.T. diagnostic utility (Samsung should have one on their website) to check the health of the drive. Last time I had a problem like this it turned out the drive was dying (it was one of the infamous IBM Deathstar 75GXPs). The reason the drive was running slow was because sectors were dying all over the disk surface so there were lots and lots of retries on every read operation. Fortunately the IBM DFT (Drive Fitness Test) diagnostic caught the problem and I was able to pull my data off and replace the HD just in time.

[Archa87]

If it's something running in the background should drive run normal in Safe mode ?

[slayerking]

If it's something running in the background should drive run normal in Safe mode ?

By rights it should.
How much disk space is free?
How much space is allocated for system restore?

You could try running this utility seatools online to see if anything is wrong (it may take a while to run). Yes it works with nearly all drives not just seagate drives.

[Archa87]

Now it's 20Gb free space. Remember time it was only 500Mb . System restore is turned off. I'll try this utility and post my results.

[Archa87]

Results for volume C: (NTFS)

Volume Label:
Volume Size: 80.05 GB
Some files on the volume are open. This may effect the accuracy of the file system check and result in false errors.

The file system contains errors that need to be repaired.

Run: 2004.12.29. 8:25:50

Primary IDE Channel : SAMSUNG SP8004H
Model: SAMSUNG SP8004H
Serial Number: 0574J1FW502658
Capacity: 80.06 GB
Test result: SMART self-test is not supported for this drive.

This may be due to a limitation in the Windows driver for the controller that the drive is attached to or the drive may not support the SMART self-test. In either case, this is not a failure of the drive.

Run: 2004.12.29. 8:26:43

Primary IDE Channel : SAMSUNG SP8004H
Model: SAMSUNG SP8004H
Serial Number: 0574J1FW502658
Capacity: 80.06 GB
Status: No S.M.A.R.T. thresholds exceeded.

Surface test had no errors.

Now I'll try Samsung HDD test utility.

[Archa87]

I checked my HDD with Samsung Hutil utility and it showed no errors message

[SELF DIAGNOSTIC (Hutil v1.21)]
Model Name : SAMSUNG SP8004H
Rom Revision : QW100-60
Serial Number : 0574J1FW502658
Drive Size : 76351MB (LBA : 156368016)
Start Time : Wed Dec 29 12:20:29 2004

---

        Test Loop Number   : 1/1

---

>> CHECK CHANNEL INTEGRITY : Testing... Pass !
>> CHECK M.C.              : Testing... Pass !
>> CHECK S.M.A.R.T.        : Testing... Pass !
>> SPIN DOWN / UP          : Testing... Pass !
>> SIMPLE READ / WRITE     : Testing... Pass !
>> SIMPLE SURFACE SCAN     : Testing... Pass !
>> WRITE VERIFY            : Testing... Pass !
>> AVERAGE SEEK TIME       : Testing... Pass !
>> MAXIMUM SEEK TIME       : Testing... Pass !
>> RANDOM SURFACE SCAN     : Testing... Pass !
>> READ SURFACE SCAN       : Testing... Pass !

   Scan Elapsed Time : 00:37:56  
End Time      : Wed Dec 29 13:01:04 2004
Test was completed.

=================================================

[Archa87]

I've done all HDD tests. I really wouldn't like to format my hard drive or reinstall OS now. What else can I try ?

[Archa87]

By the way my BIOS hardware monitor shows that - 12V actually is - 12.85V. Is this normal ?

[Archa87]

Could someone please reply me about that slow hard drive ?

[pcdoc]

Could someone please reply me about that slow hard drive ?

I will, replace the drive...........

[Kenshin]

Was it that slow when you first installed it?

[Archa87]

Maybe it was. I bought my computer over year ago. I noticed that drive is slow only when I connected internet 6 months ago and downloaded many games and movies. Before that I haven't used computer a lot.

[Braxas]

Uhm, download a little, wait... two little programs. One is called Spybot Search & Destroy and the other is Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition by Lavasoft. It sounds like your system is going to be REALLY cluttered with Spyware. Run and update both of these programs and let them attempt to clean everything out. Do this and see if it makes any difference.

[Archa87]

I have these programms installed already and they didn't found any spyware.