Slow HDD access in Vista?

Gimpymoo · 6 Mar 2007 at 12:28

I have 4 SATA Drives on my system. Not setup in RAID.

The general speed of the drives in Vista seems slower, i.e, transfering files between drives, copying files etc.

Could this most likely be a Mobo chipset issue?

Am currently running an Nforce 4 Ultra mobo.

EDIT:

Just noticed a post regarding Nforce SATA drivers on Windows update todayy.. Mmm.. Wonder if they might help - ROFL.

dirtydog · 6 Mar 2007 at 13:45

If that doesn't fix it, check this out... it seems to be a common issue.

http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=519457

Gimpymoo · 6 Mar 2007 at 13:54

Great thread, thanks.

Gimpymoo · 6 Mar 2007 at 14:05

Start >> Control Panel >> Programs and Features

Click on " Turn windows features on or off" on the left side of the panel

Uncheck "Remote Differential Compression

The above more than doubled my transfer speed when copying/moving between HDD's.

v0n · 6 Mar 2007 at 14:36

There is yet another issue with copying I suspect, and that takes me back to Windows 2000 beta testing times:

After you disable couple of things (watch you antivirus utilities too, some of them work slow as a dog in Vista) the transfer rate as such doesn't seem to be much different from XP. Yes, it's not optimized, it's nothing to write home about, but it's not THAT slow:

However, once you start copying files you'll notice two things:

First - until calculation of "Time Remaining" is done transfer rates are absymal, especially for large files

Second - you'll notice the actual copying process seems to be in.. bursts.. for the lack of better word - you'll notice your hard drives go bzzzzzz and bar move to about 10%, then nothing for few seconds, looking pretty, bzzzzzz and bar moves to 20%... What's even weirder, the time remaining is sometimes calculated as late as 50% of 800Mb file.

This "bursting" is especially prenounced when you copy to network drives, sometimes there is nothing, nothing, nothing, then all of a sudden "whooompf!" 80% done, 5 seconds remaining.

It's not until the end of copying that the process reach faster speed, and even then it's nothing like it should be:

Gents - I am more than sure this is just another case of pretty animation and copy calculation slowing down the actual transfer. It happened before and it looks like it is exactly what happens now.

And finally just for laughs - this is what happens when you copy to a drive with a pagefile.sys. "What?! You want to copy to it?!"

Gimpymoo · 6 Mar 2007 at 14:42

I get 15MB/sec tops.

I have a feeling it is partly Chipset related as well.

the-void · 6 Mar 2007 at 15:19

This was one of the many reasons I gave up on Vista for the time being.