HDD Tach speeds low, weird error in SATA2 page

[randal]

Wondering if anyone has seen this before?

I noticed slower than expected HDTach speeds when I built the PC (220~MB/sec) but forgot about it. Revisited the problem today and found the above error. Checked all cabling and everything seems to be fine too, as were new when I installed them back in August.

It had dumped one drive into SATA1 compatibility mode, and the other into SATA2 as per spec.

Any ideas because sure the below for 2x 160G WD SATA2's in Raid 0 should be faster than this:

Thanks

 

[randal]

OK, so just forced SATA2 on both channels on the controller and the results have improved:

That still seems a bit slow compared to some of the speeds people were getting doesn't it?

 

[helmutcheese]

It used to happen on EIDE, if you got failure X times it would degrade 1 UDMA Mode at a time till you end up in PIO mode.

I aint sure if same for SATA, try to remove the SATA Controler in Device
Manager and reboot and it will reinstall hopefully, thats how you fixed the EIDE one.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/IDE-DMA.mspx

" For repeated DMA errors. Windows XP will turn off DMA mode for a device after encountering certain errors during data transfer operations. If more that six DMA transfer timeouts occur, Windows will turn off DMA and use only PIO mode on that device. "

 

[randal]

Hmm, didn't know that. Cheers.

I'm trying to work out how to read the SMART logs on the drives to see if they're erroring or if it's just Windows getting in a fuddle for some reason. Either way, seems to be improved now - I'll keep an eye on it. I've got some data to shift about later to that should stress it a bit.

Thanks for the suggestion chief.

edit - actually, the more and more I look at tach graphs the more and more I'm convinced that's fubar'd. Why are there massive spikes in a sequential read test - surely the graph should be fairly smooth??

 

[helmutcheese]

Background Processes running in Windows.