New HDD slow write speed (reads OK)

[V1N]

Hi there,

I'll try and keep this as brief as possible.
After having previously been happy with 2TB WD Green drives, I just bought two more.

One for an old XP machine that's used as a file server, and my current Windows 7 system, as per sig.

I formatted the first drive in the Win7 system, before installing in the XP machine (to prevent alignment issues)

This drive works and performs fine.

The second drive was installed in my machine, formatted, and I proceeded to transfer files from some smaller HDDs to it, so as to remove smaller drives.

I noticed it was slower than I expected, but just left it to get on with it.

Subsequent testing shows that my write speed on this drive is around 17 megabytes /sec.

Read speeds are fine, up in the 80s. DMA is running as Ultra Mode 6, write cache is enabled, all looks fine.

I first noticed doing a network transfer that whereas I normally see 60 Megabytes a second plus, it was dropping to around 15 shortly after beginning. Transferring the same files over the network to an older 320GB HDD I still have installed runs at full speed.

Then I tried transferring between internal HDDs, same speed.

I then tried speed tests on the HDD I installed in the XP machine. It seems to be running perfectly... write speeds 80 or more.

So, I tried moving the SATA cable to another Port. No difference.
There are no errors that I can find, reliability seems fine... just atrocious write speeds.

I called Western Digital, and to be honest, apart from suggesting I run their diagnostic software I didn't get much help. I'm still running that diagnostic software, 2.5 hours in, 3 remaining. I don't expect it to find any errors.

Again, the other mechanical SATA drive I have installed works fine.

Has anybody else seen this? Googling found a few similar cases, but no solutions.

I'm on Windows x64 Pro, my Mobo is an ageing P5B, but still seems to work fine... and besides, the other drive I bought at the same time is connected to an old Pentium 4 Mobo, and runs surprisingly well.

Frustration (I've been trying for days already) caused me to call and request a replacement, though I have a horrible feeling the replacement will be just the same.... but in the meantime I thought I'd ask in here if any of you clever people recognise this problem, and can suggest a cure?

Thanks for reading,
Kind regards,
Vin.

 

[bledd]

Try another cable

 

[V1N]

Try another cable

Sorry, yes... I know that's an obvious thing.... I used my last one for this drive, but will steal one from another drive just to test it.

Thanks for the response,
Vin.

 

[bledd]

I'd test in this order..

Another cable
Another port
another PC
Format drive again as NTFS
RMA

 

[V1N]

I'd test in this order..

Another cable
Another port
another PC
Format drive again as NTFS
RMA

Hey there Bledd,
I agree with your list... the only problem my end is that I'm physically disabled, and therefore have to rely on other people having time to pop around and help.

I did try another port, which actually I'd thought had solved the issue, it did seem faster for a short period.
Another cable I would've tried first, if I'd had a spare.... but that is next on my list, another PC... yes, I guess I could try it in the server on the same cable as the other 2TB drive is attached to.... I was asking around if anybody I knew had a spare PCI SATA card to try, but sadly they didn't.

I was also considering deleting the partition and starting again. It is formatted as NTFS already, MBR... so i could transfer the 900mb of stuff I already have on it to the server HDD and try that.

Otherwise RMA, yes.

The Western Digital Diag tool is still running here.
Strange if it is a cable issue though, with full speed in reading, no errors reported, DMA mode initialised OK, but stranger things have happened.

Thanks again, I'll post back when I manage to find someone to swap the cable over... sadly it probably won't be today.

Cheers,
Vin.

 

[V1N]

OK, I haven't been able to change the cable yet, but I thought I'd post some more results.

Firstly, after six hours, the extended test from the Western Digital Diagnostic finished, and as expected, found no errors

Test Option: EXTENDED TEST
Model Number: WDC WD20EARX-00PASB0
Unit Serial Number: WD-WCAZAE0*****
Firmware Number: 51.0AB51
Capacity: 2000.40 GB
SMART Status: PASS
Test Result: PASS
Test Time: 17:36:07, August 07, 2012

So to better show what's happening, I used HD Tune to do a Benchmark... here are two results. I was interested to note that there are actually speed spikes while it's writing. When I write a large file to the HDD I can observe a high speed initially, which I'll put down to caching, and then a dropoff straight down to 15-20MB/s.

Here's the HD Tune graph.
As you can see, read speeds are OK, if not exceptional, write speeds are terrible

Second run

I've never tried HD Tune before, so if anybody knows of another option or benchmark that may show up where the bottleneck is, I'll happily run it.

Again, I will change the cable when possible, but for now that's the issue.

Vin.

EDIT:

That's interesting... No Buffer? My other (old 320gb) mechanical drive shows a buffer. My SSD also shows N/A

HD Tune Pro: WDC WD20EARX-00PASB0 Information

Firmware version : 51.0AB51
Serial number : WD-WCAZAE0*****
Capacity : 2000.4 gB (1863.0 GB)
Buffer size : n/a
Sector size : 512 bytes
Standard : ATA8-ACS - SATA III
Supported mode : UDMA Mode 6
Current mode : UDMA Mode 7
Avergae speed : 85 MB/s
Rotation speed : -

S.M.A.R.T : yes
48-bit Address : yes
Read Look-Ahead : yes
Write Cache : yes
Host Protected Area : yes
Device Configuration Overlay : yes
Firmware Upgradable : yes
Automatic Acoustic Management: no
Power Management : yes
Advanced Power Management : no
Interface Power Management : yes
Power-up in Standby : yes
Security Mode : yes
SCT Tables : yes
Native Command Queuing (NCQ) : yes
Trim : no

Volume : New 2TB (G
Capacity : 1907726 MB
Free : 1297637 MB
Usage : 32%
File system : NTFS
Serial : 8CE9-0999
Alignment : 1 MB

EDIT 2: Checked in Device Manager... is this right? Current driver I mean?

 

[bledd]

Hi mate. Which AV software are you using? Sometimes they can impact on the speeds.

 

[V1N]

Hi mate. Which AV software are you using? Sometimes they can impact on the speeds.

It's just Security Essentials running on here.
Checking the Resource Monitor doesn't show any other activity while the benchmark is running.

Was just about to make another post.... I ran some benchmarks this morning, and managed to swap the cable with another SATA drive that's in there. Both drives still running as before. The drive did run fast once this morning, on first boot (BEFORE I did the cable swap).... which is strange as I think that's what happened on Monday. I mentioned that it seemed faster for a while. Subsequent warm/cold restarts have made no difference.

I've also noticed that when the write speed is higher, so too is the read speed.... and when the write speed is even lower, so too is the read speed.

I now wonder if this intellispeed thing isn't spinning the drive up for some reason? No tool that I know of that will report the actual RPM? WD Diag doesn't seem to.... I'll carry on and make my post below shortly.

Vin.

 

[V1N]

OK, just started copying all files to network drive. MANY small files, so this will take most of the day.... saying that, just as I typed that it's got to my Outlook archive which is around 9gb, and it's transferring at a constant 70 megs a second.... so again, nothing wrong with the read speed from this drive, or the write speed of the new drive it's arriving on in the server.

Anyway:

When I turned my PC off last night, I also disconnected it from the mains.

This morning I booted the machine up, and once Windows had finished loading all it needed to, I ran a speed test

HD Tune Pro: WDC WD20EARX-00PASB0 File Benchmark

Drive G:
Transfer rate test
File Size: 500 MB

Sequential read 104244 KB/s
Sequential write 70580 KB/s
Random read 116 IOPS
Random write 339 IOPS
Random read (queue depth = 32) 329 IOPS
Random write (queue depth = 32) 277 IOPS

But then, in the short time it took me to save a screenshot and paste the text info above, I ran another test, and

HD Tune Pro: WDC WD20EARX-00PASB0 File Benchmark
Drive G:
Transfer rate test

File Size: 500 MB

Sequential read 63823 KB/s
Sequential write 13276 KB/s
Random read 117 IOPS
Random write 179 IOPS
Random read (queue depth = 32) 283 IOPS
Random write (queue depth = 32) 74 IOPS


I ran a third test, and it was slower still

HD Tune Pro: WDC WD20EARX-00PASB0 File Benchmark
Drive G:
Transfer rate test

File Size: 500 MB

Sequential read 35660 KB/s
Sequential write 5185 KB/s
Random read 100 IOPS
Random write 129 IOPS
Random read (queue depth = 32) 49 IOPS
Random write (queue depth = 32) 51 IOPS


I did run another test a little later, and it was also about as slow as the last one...

One further thing I've noticed is that when the write speed varies up or down, the read speed does too... Look at this last one, write speed was only 5 megs a second, and the read speed only 35! When the write speed was over 70 megs, the read speed was over 100.

Cable Change.

Anyway, despite physical limitations, I pulled the side off my PC, and was able to just feel where the SATA ports were, and swapped the cables around... so that the old 320gb HDD I have in there now has the cable from this 2TB drive, and vice versa.

I won't bother posting more speed tests, it was exactly the same. SLOW.
It made no difference at all, to either drive. My old 320gb drive reads and writes at 60 Megs a second, which must be about right for that. My SSD speeds are also correct, although one test I made showed a massive decrease in speed, although being a Windows drive, windows could've been up to something at the same time.


So I've tried 3 different ports, 2 different cables (one of which works perfectly with another already installed HDD) and apart from the odd burst of speed, I can't get the thing to work properly.

Again, no errors, no reliability issues... just slow.

I searched for firmware updates, but came up empty.

So as I said above, I'm now backing up the drive over the network, which I' d have to do anyway if I want to exchange it... so I'll remove the partition and create a new one with Disk Management in Windows, reformat it and do a speed test off the bat.

Haha, my file transfer says "1 day remaining" It's mostly Pics and music... but when a big file does appear, at least I see my gigabit connection working hard.... Windows Security essentials doesn't seem to like my backed up Hosts file either... when I move it between drives, I get a message saying something was disinfected

Category: Settings Modifier

Description: This program has potentially unwanted behaviour.

Recommended action: Review the alert details to see why the software was detected. If you do not like how the software operates or if you do not recognize and trust the publisher, consider blocking or removing the software.

Items:
file:G:\Backups\windows\system32-drivers-etc\Hosts

But that's another matter (I have a self modified hosts file, so I keep it backed up so I can easily install it on any machine)

So I'll leave this backup run, and hope I can get it working better after another repartition and format.... I can't imagine why there would be something wrong with this partition, I did it the exact same way I did the others.... select it in Disk Management, create a partition that spans the entire disk, and format as NTFS. Only thing different between the drives is that I formatted the one now in my server as a FULL FORMAT, because it was for file storage use, and the one in here was just quick formatted... also because it took EIGHT HOURS to format the other drive (or maybe that was due to having write speed issues in this machine?)

Anyway, thanks again for your help with this strange issue,
Vin.

 

[V1N]

Backup completed earlier.

I had an email from WD after my telephone discussion the other day, just telling me to try different ports/cable etc.

So I thought I'd run another benchmark and send him a screencap.
I was astonished to see this blistering speed.

I was even watching from the Windows Resource Monitor, and saw much of the file being written at 700-800k per second.

Subsequent tests are similar.

It's getting worse!

Next stage was to remove partition and make a new one and format.

Incidentally, and out of interest, I ran a single test on the other drive I bought, which remember, is only sitting in an old Pentium 4, connected to an early SATA 1 port, and the system has 1gb ram... it managed this

Anyway, that's enough for now.
More when I know it.
Vin.

 

[bledd]

I don't know how feasible this is for you, but I'd want to test the drive in another pc.

You wouldn't need to remove it from the current case, you can just plug in the power/sata from the other pc into that case (put the cases side by side)

Just to rule out problems with the computer in question.

If I live anywhere near you, I'd pop in for a look!

 

[V1N]

I don't know how feasible this is for you, but I'd want to test the drive in another pc.

You wouldn't need to remove it from the current case, you can just plug in the power/sata from the other pc into that case (put the cases side by side)

Just to rule out problems with the computer in question.

If I live anywhere near you, I'd pop in for a look!

Hey there again mate,
Thanks for your comment... I'm right down the bottom end of Cornwall, so doubtless very far away!


This morning when I booted my machine from cold, I immediately ran the HD Tune file benchmark again on the new drive, and once again, numbers were GOOD. Writing at over 80MB/s, reading at over 100MB/s.
This continued for a few tests, slowly deteriorating... and after a few short minutes, the speed plummeted to absolute crap again. Weird.
I don't think it's a temperature related issue either.... starting temp was 23 degrees, and the hottest I've ever seen it, after running a long backup, was 27 degrees. It's sitting right behind a front chassis fan.

So as before, an initial cold start gives reasonable speeds... subsequent warm or cold restarts then make no difference. I even found an old WinPE boot disk earlier and booted from that. Sadly it didn't detect any HDDs, too old, maybe didn't pick up AHCI drives.. but I was in that environment for a good 15 mins, rebooted back to Windows 7 and the write speed was still very poor.

I'll try turning the PC off shortly, and leaving it off for 30-60 mins, boot it back up and see if it's fast initially again.

I've also found someone who has a PCI SATA card spare, so I'll borrow that when I can, today if possible, and connect the drive to that to rule out any BIOS/port issues.

Then finally, I'll see if I can get someone to come over this evening and remove the entire HDD cage from my tower, and swap the cables with the working drive in my server and see how it runs in that. If it runs perfectly in the server on that old Mobo, and not in this one I'm not sure what I'll do. Perhaps the PCI SATA card will help.

The RMA arrived this morning too, but I won't break the seal until I'm sure the drive is at fault.

I also haven't removed the partition yet, and started again.
In fact I think I'll try that next.

What a strange issue.
Vin.

EDIT: As I type this the HDD is just running crap in general now. I downloaded a file this morning to it, so I just wanted to do something with it.... just clicking on Computer and there was a second or two delay before the drive appeared correctly, and clicking into the drive and into my download folder, the icons took ages to slowly appear. I loaded MKVtooknix to demux a file. Usually this process would take around 20-25 seconds... it was going to take 7 minutes+. I set the output to another internal drive... the read speed crawled for the first half of this 1gb file, and then suddely sped up around half way through, and the speed fluctuated then until the end. Never an error though, read/write errors I mean... just slow.

 

[V1N]

Hi there,

Just a quick update while my PC has its side off.

As a test I got someone to bring over their new 3TB drive to connect to my system.

I did so, and got read and write speeds using the same benchmark as before of around 200MB/sec. I ran the test over and over for around 15 minutes, and saw no degradation of speed.

I then tried a PCI SATA card, which didn't work at all. Great!

So, after the 3TB drive working so well, we decided hell to it, crack open the new (RMA) 2TB HDD and try that.

Just got it hanging out the side of the PC at the moment, and speed tests indicate it's working fine. Again, had it benchmarking for around 15 minutes, and in that time I get varying speed between 100MB/sec to as low as an average of 75MB/sec.... but on the whole it seems to be working fine.

Fingers crossed.... as I type this it's now been properly installed in my PC, so I'm off to try it again, and fill it up with the backup.

Thanks Bledd and others for your response and for reading... let's hope the new drive continues to function as it should.

All the best,
Vin.

 

[V1N]

Just as an aside... the person who helped me... well, the person who did all the physical work, took the faulty HDD away with him after installing the new one, and tried it at home in his shiny new i7 system

Exactly the same. Started off OK, and got unusably slow after a short period. I guess there's a hardware error inside of some kind... which only affects write speeds.... weird!

Thanks again to all who took the time to read.
Turns out it was the drive at fault, and the RMA one in my machine now is functioning normally

Cheers.