SATA II hard drive set to UDMA Mode 5

PunchsucKr 2009-11-13 07:11:33 UTC #1

I recently assembled my HTPC with an E5300 and MSI G31TM-P21 mobo. I've got a 320 GB WD 3200JS hard drive. I notice very low transfer rates like 25-30MB/s...

When i look up in the device manager the drive shows up in the ATA Channel 0 with UDMA Mode 5 listed in the current mode.
I have a PATA DVD writer which shows up in another option listed as ATA Channel 0 (there are two) with UDMA mode 4.

I've hooked the HDD to the third SATA port on the mobo since with the first one the wire was getting bent owing to other cables right beside it.

As far as i know both the mobo and the drive support 3Gbps transfer rates... which should have landed me somewhere around 200 to 300MB/s (or am i wrong??)...

What could be the problem.. :sad:

Thanks

i'm running Windows 7 Home premium.

mciahel 2009-11-13 10:57:29 UTC #2

Hi,[QUOTE=PunchsucKr;2464602]I recently assembled my HTPC (…)I’ve got a 320 GB WD 3200JS hard drive. I notice very low transfer rates like 25-30MB/s…[/quote]That’s quite poor for a modern HDD

When i look up in the device manager the drive shows up in the ATA Channel 0 with UDMA Mode 5 listed in the current mode.
That’s okay if your Sata controller is configured as “IDE” in Bios setup. And no need to change that setting.

As far as i know both the mobo and the drive support 3Gbps transfer rates… which should have landed me somewhere around 200 to 300MB/s (or am i wrong??)…
Well, that’s the theoretical speed limit of the interface. Some very fast SSDs reach that limit, HDDs not.

What could be the problem…
At first, I would get the disgnostic software from WD support website and let it check the drive.
Additionally, you can do some reading benchmark with HDTune (the free version is enough for that job).

Michael

PunchsucKr 2009-11-13 18:16:43 UTC #3

ok i’m currently running the benchmark in the app you specified Miciahel…

so what are the real world speeds that should be expected? :

i just looked up the results of the hard drive on the HDtune website and found that my results from the app were better than the one submitted there :D… mine is the upper screen.

so whats the point of advertising that theoretical transfer rate and making it more confusing to someone new to SATA?

and why do i get so low transfer rates when even the benchmark is above normal…?

PunchsucKr 2009-11-13 20:46:23 UTC #4

The WD diagnostics detects nothing wrong with the drive…

Albert 2009-11-14 05:00:56 UTC #5

In what application do you notice low transfer rates, and what are you doing when the rates are that low?

PunchsucKr 2009-11-14 05:28:26 UTC #6

@Albert I’m doing nothing at all at that time. I get those transfer rates when transferring data from one drive partition to another (other than the OS partition).

Albert 2009-11-14 05:32:05 UTC #7

Hmm…someone will probably suggest the opposite, but I don’t remember every getting much faster than 30 MB/s copying “internally” (read: from one part of a drive to another part of the same drive). This was with fairly modern 7200 RPM desktop drives with 8 MB internal cache, SATA I interface, Windows XP, typical Windows drivers.

Your speeds sound about normal when you consider the drive must read, cache, move the heads, write, and repeat the process numerous times to finish the copying.

The process gets worse with small files or heavily fragmented files, and is typically slower with Windows Explorer than 3rd party programs (that may or may not have a better method of caching data to speed up the process to aid the drive’s internal cache).

PunchsucKr 2009-11-14 06:29:15 UTC #8

yes i was thinking the same thing but why is the UDMA mode 5 selected as default? i tried selecting mode 6 manually but still it runs on the same mode 5.

mciahel 2009-11-14 12:31:48 UTC #9

UDMA 5 is perfectly normal for Intel chipsets.

Michael

zebadee 2009-11-15 06:42:13 UTC #10

Hi
Manufacturers claim that the latest HDD’s are capable of peaking @ 120MB/s.
That’s the theory, in practice is likely to be 110MB/s if you are lucky.
Sustained transfer (more important here).
I know WD claim with their black series to be able to maintain around 85MB/s.
Non of this refers to RAID.
I mention this as some of you know that is all I use (RAID0).
See below for a test bench of my Sammie HDD [non-raid] (external eSATA).

If the above drive was internal. I would expect a slightly higher performance alround.

PunchsucKr 2009-11-15 06:53:50 UTC #11

Thanks mciahel, Albert n zebadee… m now pretty much satisfied with it… i was new to the whole sata affair that’s why had to clear it up. had been using an ol’ p4 machine till at last it gave up
so much for the hard drive performance gain but the overall performance gain is HUGE!

Thanks again…