Slow Reads on HD in Vista

[hurricane1951]

I haven't been able to find a post that describes my problem, and it's
a strange one.

I've got a problem with disk READS on one of my hard drives in Vista.
It popped up seemingly out of nowhere.

My system drive is on a separate hard drive and it seems unaffected.
My D: drive (data drive) is where the problem lies.

Folder-to-folder copies are taking about 4 minutes for a 700 MB file.
On the system drive, they take about 35 seconds.

Copying the file from C: to D: also is fast, so it doesn't appear to
writing to D:, only reading.

My Computer is set to not use icons or thumbnails.

I've defragged the drive to no effect. Also did a virus scan with
nothing found -- to be expected on a data drive.

Any clues?

 

[Malke]

I haven't been able to find a post that describes my problem, and it's
a strange one.

I've got a problem with disk READS on one of my hard drives in Vista.
It popped up seemingly out of nowhere.

My system drive is on a separate hard drive and it seems unaffected.
My D: drive (data drive) is where the problem lies.

Folder-to-folder copies are taking about 4 minutes for a 700 MB file.
On the system drive, they take about 35 seconds.

Copying the file from C: to D: also is fast, so it doesn't appear to
writing to D:, only reading.

My Computer is set to not use icons or thumbnails.

I've defragged the drive to no effect. Also did a virus scan with
nothing found -- to be expected on a data drive.

The drive may be in PIO Mode and/or may be failing. For the first, see MVP
Hans-Georg Michna's site for an explanation and fix:

http://winhlp.com/?q=node/10

For the second, download a diagnostic utility from the drive mftr.'s
website. You will create a bootable CD with the file you download. You will
need third-party burning software to do this such as Roxio, Nero, or the
free CDBurnerXP Pro. Burn as an image, not as data.

http://www.cdburnerxp.se/

Boot with the CD you made and do a thorough test of the drive. If it fails
any physical tests, replace it.

Malke

 

[hurricane1951]

Hello Hurricane,

To be safe, I would recommend that you backup that drive first and
quickly in case it is dying on you.

You might also run the Check Disk command "chkdsk /f /r" (no quotes),
substituting that hard drive's letter, to see if it can find and fix any
corruption in it. This tutorial will help show you how to if needed.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/67612-check-disk-chkdsk.html

You might also check to make sure that you have "Enable advanced
performance" checed for your hard drive to enable faster caching.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/59886-hard-drive-speed-boosts.html

Hope this helps,
Shawn

hurricane1951;881225 Wrote:













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- Show quoted text -

I've tested sme things, found some unusual results.

First, I regularly do backups, so I immediately did another one. That
done, since I hadn't been mucking around in the BIOS, I'd leave that
for later and concentrate on things that were relatively easy.

I swapped in my XP boot drive to check if the drive showed the same
slowdown on reads as under Vista. It did.

I decided to replace the drive with another drive and see what the
results would be. I offloaded the contents of one of my backup drives.
These are drives I use for monthly backups, archiving, etc. They are
in external enclosures and they see very little use. I reformatted
this one and restored the contents of the backup I had just done on
the other drive. I set the "new" drive next to the existing drive,
swapped the cables, and powered up the machine.

BIOS wouldn't recognize the drive. Hmmm.

Even though I knew that drive was good, I tried another drive, the XP
boot drive I had just used for a test.

BIOS wouldn't recognize the drive.

Connected the original drive back up and BIOS properly recognized the
drive.

I stopped testing to think that one over. BIOS is the latest from the
manufacturer. I went over the BIOS settings and everything seemed
kosher. Besides, this one made no sense. Unless the BIOS was somehow
prevented from seeing new drives, and that was obviosly not true since
I'd already swapped in the XP drive and booted from it.

So I abandonded this for now to give it some more thoughts and to see
if you have any. Then I received another surprise: after rebooting
into Vista the drive's "slowdown" had disappeared.

Too many mysteries.

 

[Michael Walraven]

It wouldn't be the first time that unplugging/replugging cables fixed a
problem. While you did a great deal more, that was end result. Also it is
possible that the drive was installed too well (to tight screwing it in can
warp the drive enclosure). I used to do a lot of field repair of computers
and the mechanical problems were always the weirdest.

(If the drive is having problems it may not be able to do high speed DMA
(direct memory access) operations and may revert to PIO (parallel i/o) which
is much slower. Only applies to IDE (large flat cable) drives).

Michael

 

[hurricane1951]

It wouldn't be the first time that unplugging/replugging cables fixed a
problem. While you did a great deal more, that was end result. Also it is
possible that the drive was installed too well (to tight screwing it in can
warp the drive enclosure). I used to do a lot of field repair of computers
and the mechanical problems were always the weirdest.

(If the drive is having problems it may not be able to do high speed DMA
(direct memory access) operations and may revert to PIO (parallel i/o) which
is much slower. Only applies to IDE (large flat cable) drives).

Michael

















- Show quoted text -

Problem has returned but I think I also found the cause (and the
cure).

When rebooting the BIOS now failed to identify the D: drive. Uh-oh. So
I went back inside, reseating cables as a hope against hope, but deep
down I knew the drive was dead. But its SATA cable -- a new one fresh
from a sealed bag -- didn't seem to be seated fully on the
motherboard. I KNOW I seated all these cables before. I removed the
connector, but when I tried to reseat it the connector just wouldn't
seat. It just didn't seem to want to hold its position.

So out came another SATA cable in its place. It seated fine. And now
everything seems to work tip-top. Even to the point of the BIOS
recognizing a new drive. So I have cautious optimism.

And I violated a rule I learned a long time ago: never assume the
replacement is good. I learned that lesson working on cars.

And it also reminded me of what happened to a colleague way back when.
He was rebuilding his system with a new MB. When he got done it
wouldn't work. So he went over it and over it and over it. The problem
turned out to be a defective JUMPER. When I heard that, I knew that I
would be going around for days trying to fix a problems like that. A
jumper? Who would ever question a jumper?

So, thanks for all the help. It got me thinking straight when I was
starting to get a little to frustrated.