Slow SATA (Swap File ?) Performance

higgledyhiggles

higgledyhiggles

higgledyhiggles

Associate
Joined
6 Dec 2009
Posts
4
Hi,
I thought I`d ask here.
I bought an overclockers OC`d Quad Core with 4GB.
It`s got a 500GB SATA. I run XP64 for 3dsmax, After Effects etc..

The problem is, often the machine hangs for up to 5 mins paging to the swap file. This cant be right. Am I missing some drivers or what ?

I gotta say the build quality from OC wasn`t great and the couriers were awful.
It works though and its a quick machine if it wasn`t for this problem.
Is there something wrong with SATA or XP64 or drivers or ... ?

anyone got anyu ideas or if you need more info please reply and let me know because it`s driving our studio nuts as we have 3 machine behaving the same way. ALL OC built and OC`d.

Forgot to say, if I copy a big file to my local and try to work it`s impossible. The machine slows to a complete crawl because of HD access. Might help target the problem ?

I also noticed that the SATA drive doesn`t seem to run as SATA ??? I have two UltraDMA devices listed, a 4 and a 5. Since I only have a DVD writer and 1 Hard drive, whats going on here ?

Hard drive is: ST3500320AS Barracuda 7200.11 SATA 3Gb/s 500-GB
thanks
Anthony Hicks
 
Last edited:
SATA is just the interface, its not "how the drives run". By default, all drives (SATA, PATA) run in IDE mode. UDMA is normal. As for the pagefile writing.... Try recreating the pagefile, maybe its hideously fragmented, causing this problem.

Set it as one size, not system managed. A system managed pagefile causes fragmentation lots.

Also, check your CPU usage. it may be that you have a hardware interrupt problem. I had one of those a while back, took ages to find out. Go download sysinternals Process Explorer, and run that. It's a better form of task manager, and tells you if you have hardware interrupt problems. If it shows lots of cpu time on the interrupts, try removing some expansion cards.

hope this helps...
 
Hi SMandy,
To be honest I cant see any Hardware interrupts with that utility ? the cpu is mostly at 96-98% free with nothing going.
When the system is stressed 5 mins or more of paging is unacceptable. Its slower than my old P4.
I realise I`m doing more, but since when does your system all but halt when you copy a couple of gigs to your hard drive while working in 3dsmax. ?
 
higgledyhiggles said:
Right, I`ve just run HD Tune 2.55 and it says my HD Speed is 51MB/Sec min 109MB/sec max. Does this sound right ?
Click to expand...
Raw speed doesn't matter that much.
Seagates have quite inbalanced firmware and certain kind access patterns can pretty much "shoot down" their performance.

And you should definitely have fixed swap file for avoiding its fragmentation. (especially that fragmented file access pattern would slow down Seagate)
 
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