very low average read speed on raptor

Tange1Tange1
edited December 2005 in Hardware
Hello,
I recently installed a SATA controller card and WD360 Raptor. I've been running HD Tach to get an idea of speed increases when i've found something very odd. The drive's average read speed is VERY low. Burst rate is what i would expect, right around 100 mbps. Unfortunatly it seems to read in spikes. Very high speed, then nearly 0. The graph of the data is in spikes. The average read speed is all the way down at 9.2 mbps.

Any ideas why? Could it be the controller card? This is my first run at SATA and I dont have onboard SATA. The card is a silicon image SiI 3112 SATA raid card. I've done no configuration of the card and its on the secondary channel.

Comments

  • Tange1Tange1
    edited December 2005
    Update: Multiple benchmarking tools each show a 'spike' affect. Read speeds go from low to high throwing off the average read speed ALOT.
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited December 2005
    Have you shut down all the other programs running in the background, including all that stuff down by the clock? :)
  • Tange1Tange1
    edited December 2005
    Yup, it only happens w/ that drive also. My nornal PATA drives dont experience this issue. (the drive is empty during all the testing by the way.)
  • QeldromaQeldroma Arid ZoneAh Member
    edited December 2005
    Tange1,

    If this is a new addition to your system- as I suspect- run Windows Update (I'm assuming you have XP), use the Custom button and look for a Hardware, Optional() update.

    I suspect a driver, possibly firmware problem . Let us know how it goes.

    (Note- there has been a very recent release of this driver)

    Hope that helps :thumbsup:
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited December 2005
    Tange1 wrote:
    Hello,
    I recently installed a SATA controller card and WD360 Raptor. I've been running HD Tach to get an idea of speed increases when i've found something very odd. The drive's average read speed is VERY low. Burst rate is what i would expect, right around 100 mbps. Unfortunatly it seems to read in spikes. Very high speed, then nearly 0. The graph of the data is in spikes. The average read speed is all the way down at 9.2 mbps.

    Any ideas why? Could it be the controller card? This is my first run at SATA and I dont have onboard SATA. The card is a silicon image SiI 3112 SATA raid card. I've done no configuration of the card and its on the secondary channel.

    Yikes, 9.2MB/s quite low. I have a pair of WD360's in my system, and average reads for me is about 90MB/s (albeit with raid-0). You mentioned that your controller card is an addon card. I'd definitely try moving it to another PCI slot. You'd be surprised how strangely these controller cards can behave in certain slots. I had similar problems with an old adaptec scsi card, and switching to another PCI slot did the trick.
  • Tange1Tange1
    edited December 2005
    Yea I need to try a few things, Ill post as I find out more. On the plus side the drive is doing a bit better than 9.2 but it changes on differnet runs. Sometimes its very low sometimes its in the 30s or 40's. The 'graph' of the data minus the spikes fits what I expect so i just need to isolate the spikes.

    I'm trying the drivers, ill try a new slot also.

    Do you think it could have to do w/ this?: I have a small harddrive cooler fant attached to one drive. It adapts the power plug so that it is powered AND the plug is still availble for use. I have the fan on the same plug as the raptor.
  • Tange1Tange1
    edited December 2005
    OK, switched cables, switched PCI slots, updated the driver, changed my power plug situation so it was more normal. Guess what? Works as advertised now. Who knows why...

    Now to try my idea, clone a ATA drive onto the SATA, disable/format the old ATA and boot from the SATA. Any thoughts before i try?

    Thanks again short media!
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited December 2005
    Tange1 wrote:
    OK, switched cables, switched PCI slots, updated the driver, changed my power plug situation so it was more normal. Guess what? Works as advertised now. Who knows why...

    Now to try my idea, clone a ATA drive onto the SATA, disable/format the old ATA and boot from the SATA. Any thoughts before i try?

    Thanks again short media!

    Glad to hear its working well now mate! :cheers:
  • csimoncsimon Acadiana Icrontian
    edited December 2005
    Tange1 wrote:
    Now to try my idea, clone a ATA drive onto the SATA, disable/format the old ATA and boot from the SATA. Any thoughts before i try?

    Thanks again short media!

    I've done it before several times but it's been so long that I don't remember exactly what I did. I definitely used the symantec ghost program but it probably isn't necessary.

    One issue I had that I do remember was that the receiving disk was not a boot disk. Once I got that corrected everything went well.
  • Tange1Tange1
    edited December 2005
    I've cloned old ATA drives and just swaped them out but what im worried about now is this: The SATA drive is being detected as a secondary master, can you boot from a secondary master assuming all the other ATA drives have no OS?
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited December 2005
    Tange1 wrote:
    ...can you boot from a secondary master assuming all the other ATA drives have no OS?
    You should be able to set boot priority in the BIOS. :)
  • Tange1Tange1
    edited December 2005
    Actually all my BIOS supports is 'boot off harddrives, boot of CD rom, boot of external devices; -- crappy dell


    Anywho i disabled the old ATA master drive in BIOS and sure enough it booted off the SATA drive. Very cool.

    Maybe after christmas I have to try my first run at SATA Raid... ::needs a 2nd drive first::
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