VERY slow WD400BB (WD 40 Gig 7200rpm) HDD! What's wrong?

[revvy]

I have a Western Digital 40 GB 7200 rpm retail Hard drive.. and I don't know why the hell it's so goddamn slow?!<BR>I tried running the Data LifeGuard diagnostic tool provided by Western Digital's website, but it says nothing is wrong with it. I particularly notice how slow my HDD is when I'm playing C&C Renegade online.. it keeps spinning up and down for not particular reason!<BR><BR>Should I reformat and start anew again?<BR><BR>What to do?

[spirol]

post your system specs.. maybe its a bad hard drive.. try running on UDMA.. I always set mine on auto. I don't really care so much on how fast is my hard drive. as long as it can run at 160 fsb...

[Colin]

Hmm... That's a tough one. <BR><BR>What does it register with SiSoft Sandra or HDTach? Are you sure DMA is enabled in the OS and BIOS?<BR><BR>What do you have running in the background? What drivers are you using?<BR><BR>I hear that C&C Renegade has a bug making it slow online but I'm not sure since I don't have the game.

[revvy]

Well, I set everything in my BIOS in regards to my HDD to auto, so that shouldn't be a problem.<BR>With everything loaded up and not playing around with any settings, I yielded a score of 17000 or so.<BR>I tried shutting down icq, msn, and zone alarm and then tried using the SiSoft file benchmark program.. interestingly enough, it yielded a 2000 point increase! Afterwards, I tried loading up icq, msn, and zone alarm again, and ran SiSoft another time.. that my score jumped up to 21000 or so.. very odd! Still curious, I shut down those three programs and ran SiSoft again.. still at 21000.. can anyone account for these fluctuations? is SiSoft reliable? or should I try out HD Tach and throw different scenarios at it to see how my HDD performs?

[Colin]

Hey revvy... Sandra can be unreliable, however those fluctuations are higher then normal.<BR><BR>Yeah I'd try HDTach, it will tell you what your data transfers are like.<BR><BR>Does it actually slow down your system performance though?

[revvy]

one problem.. I don't have HDTach!

[Colin]

You can find HDTach <a target=new href="http://www.tcdlabs.com/hdtach.htm">here</a><img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif"border=0>

[revvy]

thanx <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif"border=0>

[Colin]

So how did things go? What are your data trasnfers and access time?

[revvy]

Yeah<BR>one of my friends said the problem might lie within the VIA drivers