Is my HDD running at Sata II speeds??

allosunshine

allosunshine

allosunshine

Associate
Joined
11 Feb 2007
Posts
999
Location
High Wycombe
I just downloaded and installed HD Tach and run a quick test and in the graph it says it running slower than Sata 150. Now I know the drive (WD50000AAKS) is Sata II and I have it plugged into the GSATA port 0 on my mobo. Am I doing something wrong or is there a setting somewhere that I need to change for it to run at Sata II speeds??
Thanks.

 
You must understand that the SATA150 and SATA300 specs refer to the interface, not the physical drive. There aren't any drives yet that can reach SATA300 speeds. Have a read of the sticky at the top of this forum.

There are several things that you can try.
First, check that the drive isn't jumpered for SATA150.
Next, check what level of UDMA the drive is using in Device Manager. It's under IDE controllers rather than Disk drives.
Finally, put the drive on the Intel controller and check Device Manager and HD Tach again.
 
In general the speed is fine for the first 80% of the drive, the tail of the trace is very worrying though, it should gently trend downwards to about 45MB/s, not drop right to the floor like that.

Was there anything else running at the time of the benchmark?
 
Well I moved the HDD across to one of the Intel ports and I've got better results as you can see below.

hdtach3ze3.jpg


My only real query now is that its says the HDD supports UDMA Mode 6 but its running in Mode 5.

hdtune3jd8.jpg


I've done a quick google and people are saying theres not much difference but we all want our machines to run at the best they can. So I've tried to enable AHCI in the bios as I believe this will make it run in UDMA Mode 6 but it blue screens just as its about to boot into the desktop. Anyone got any suggestions??
Thanks.
 
I've done a quick google and people are saying theres not much difference but we all want our machines to run at the best they can. So I've tried to enable AHCI in the bios as I believe this will make it run in UDMA Mode 6 but it blue screens just as its about to boot into the desktop. Anyone got any suggestions??
Click to expand...

I went to ACHI mode from an install of Vista where it previously was not enabled and all I did in Vista before went into the BIOS to enable it was to...

1. Exit all Windows-based programs.
2. Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
3. If you receive the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue.
4. Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci
5. In the right pane, right-click Start in the Name column, and then click Modify.
6. In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.
7. On the File menu, click Exit to close Registry Editor.

Then reboot - previously I had the latest Intel drivers installed....
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Product_Filter.aspx?ProductID=816

I had copied the above from a website ages ago in case that I needed them and, for me, it worked fine. Vista booted with no BSOD and found the drives and installed the drivers. If you follow it and you FUBAR your system don't blame me :D

However it made tidily squat difference to anything from a practical or benchmarking point of view. And considering it then took longer to boot up, only a few seconds I know, I decided to go back to the non-ACHI interface.

My drive(s) show this....

okli1.png
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom