Western Digital WD20EARX Bad Performance?

PiKe · 8 Mar 2012 at 00:39

This is connected to my SATA3 port partitioned into 60gb C: and the rest as D:

Why isn't the curve linear? Or for why isn't there a curve for that matter?

Surveyor · 8 Mar 2012 at 01:07

There is a curve, it's just got a lot of dips in it.

What sort of SATA 3 port is it connected to?

It it's something like Marvell then swap the cable over to a SATA port native to the chipset even if it's SATA 2.

Also you're testing your OS drive.

If something else is trying to read or write data at the same time as you're benchmarking it's going to have an effect.

PiKe · 8 Mar 2012 at 01:13

Surveyor said:
There is a curve, it's just got a lot of dips in it.

What sort of SATA 3 port is it connected to?

It it's something like Marvell then swap the cable over to a SATA port native to the chipset even if it's SATA 2.

Also you're testing your OS drive.

If something else is trying to read or write data at the same time as you're benchmarking it's going to have an effect.

Its a Gigabyte Z68ap-d3 I think both controllers are Intel.

Surveyor · 8 Mar 2012 at 01:24

PiKe said:
Its a Gigabyte Z68ap-d3 I think both controllers are Intel.

They are.

Try running the benchmark in safe mode, if you can, there'll be less background activity on the HDD.

Also have a look at the Disk tab in the Resource Monitor while running the benchmark.

You'll be able to see if other programs are accessing the HDD at the same time and perhaps that's where the dips are.

This is my benchmark of a similar drive but not used as an OS drive:

2TB WD20EARS:

PiKe · 8 Mar 2012 at 01:58

Safe mode (looks like you were right), I tried imaging my boot partition to my sata2 drive and whilst successful I cannot make it boot from it, it defaults to sata3 every time, anyhoo...

Surveyor · 8 Mar 2012 at 09:17

PiKe said:
I tried imaging my boot partition to my sata2 drive and whilst successful I cannot make it boot from it, it defaults to sata3 every time, anyhoo...

Try changing the boot order in the BIOS.

If you now have a Windows installation on 2 HDD's your system will boot from whichever is listed first in the boot order in the BIOS.

PiKe · 8 Mar 2012 at 09:36

Surveyor said:
Try changing the boot order in the BIOS.

If you now have a Windows installation on 2 HDD's your system will boot from whichever is listed first in the boot order in the BIOS.

Tried this too, won't play ball.

At least I know the drive is OK...