How do i know

hartty · 1 Feb 2006 at 22:34

Hi all, I have recently upgraded my pc and have bought a sata II hard drive and compatible mobo, bascically i installed the sata drivers when installing windows but to be honest loading times havent increased that much if at all.

Is there a way or a programme to determin if my sata drive is running at full speed or have i installed it wrong

Thanks for any help

P.s The hd is a WD 200gb and the mobo is a msi K8N NEO 4

bluesouljah · 1 Feb 2006 at 22:52

Hi,

Use HDTach, it will measure the drive and also has benchmarks for similar drives, so that you know how your setup compares.

Cheers,

SoulJah

hartty · 1 Feb 2006 at 23:41

By using that programme it is saying that i am getting 170mbs, is that right. I know its above sata speeds but seems slow for sata II speeds

Street · 2 Feb 2006 at 00:08

SATA and SATA 2 speeds only specify the theoretical maximum bandwidth through the channel. In the real world, drives are barely maxing out the old IDE channels, let alone SATA1/2. That 170mbps is probably the burst speed which isnt what you want to be reading. Look for the sustained transfer speed and the seek time. These 2 are more important than the burst speed.

The sustained transfer should be around 60mbps. Post a screenshot up here of your HD Tach results and I'm sure someone will tell you if it looks ok

Heres some more info on SATA2 courtesy of smids... explained a bit better than me...

LinkyMcLink

hartty · 2 Feb 2006 at 00:23

My average speed is 56mbs

Street · 2 Feb 2006 at 12:25

That sounds about right for your drive