Speeding up hard drives?

[Thomas]

I read in another post something about speeding up hard drives, or access to
the read write cycles. I have 2 drives installed on My Windows 7 64 bit
machine. I have a Gigabyte MB with a dual core Intel 3 gig processor. I
don't understand a whole lot about IEDE modes and some of the settings I
have seen seem to be missing or just not available. The drives are both
7200 RPM, one is a 500 Gig (Primary) and the other is a 1 TB. Is there a
method of speeding up the access/read/write of these drives?

 

[GTS]

Maybe, but mistakes will make your system unusable and possibly wipe out
your installation. At the least you would want to do a full backup first.
Given your stated level of knowledge, I'd strongly recommend leaving things
be. Unless you're an extreme gamer or performance hobbyist or do very disk
intensive work like large database operations there's unlikely to be any
benefit worth the risk.

 

[Peter Foldes]

Thomas

Doing that is playing with fire. Leave it be. Of you want a hard drive that is fast
then next time purchase one that can run at 15,000 RPM or plus. Costly but extremely
fast

--
Peter

Please Reply to Newsgroup for the benefit of others
Requests for assistance by email can not and will not be acknowledged.
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

 

[Ken Blake]

Thomas

Doing that is playing with fire. Leave it be. Of you want a hard drive that is fast
then next time purchase one that can run at 15,000 RPM or plus. Costly but extremely
fast

And even faster (but more costly) is a solid state drive.

Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP (Windows Desktop Experience) since 2003

 

[Gilgamesh]

And even faster (but more costly) is a solid state drive.

From what I've seen of solid state drive specs the read write speeds are
slower than 7900 RPM SATA drives.
Are there any specific ones you are thinking of?

 

[Canuck57]

Thomas

Doing that is playing with fire. Leave it be. Of you want a hard drive
that is fast then next time purchase one that can run at 15,000 RPM or
plus. Costly but extremely fast

Actually, Vista/Win7 is the slowest OSes out there to copy files disk to
disk or disk to net or net to disk.

Run Solaris, Linux (any version), Open/Free or Net-BSD and they all
consistantly run 3 to 10 times faster than Vista/Win7 for copy
operations, especially on large files such as 4gb media files.

 

[John B. Slocomb]

Actually, Vista/Win7 is the slowest OSes out there to copy files disk to
disk or disk to net or net to disk.

Run Solaris, Linux (any version), Open/Free or Net-BSD and they all
consistantly run 3 to 10 times faster than Vista/Win7 for copy
operations, especially on large files such as 4gb media files.

I tried this with a 2.66 processor Dual core (4 processors) chip, 4
gig memory. Fedora 12 and Gnome 2.28.2.

Copying a 1,569,816 byte file from file to file on the same disk and
in the same partition took 13.12 seconds with Linux and 30.91 with
Windows 7 - hand timed.

Not quite 3 times but close enough.

..
John B. Slocomb
(johnbslocombatgmaildotcom)

 

[Paul]

From what I've seen of solid state drive specs the read write speeds
are slower than 7900 RPM SATA drives.
Are there any specific ones you are thinking of?

This is one of the first consumer SATA III interface SSDs, and it actually
delivers data faster than SATA II on reads. There is room for improvement
on writes, so this won't be the fastest drive. I would expect Intel
to develop something to match them, but give Intel a bit of time
to do the job right. The previous generation Intel SSD was pretty good.
(You can plug this into a SATA II port if you want. Your read speed will
drop a bit.)

Crucial RealSSD C300 CTFDDAC256MAG-1G1 2.5" 256GB SATA III $680 retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...&SelectedRating=-1&Keywords=(keywords)&Page=1

"In the end I get read speeds of 350 MB/s and writes of 210 MB/s"

http://www.crucial.com/pdf/Datasheets-letter_C300_RealSSD_v2-5-10_online.pdf

It is still an immature technology. A firmware fix is needed for that
particular drive, but is probably being shipped on new units by now.
Anandtech is good at beating up the drives and making them
malfunction They do better testing than many of the manufacturers.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2974/crucial-s-realssd-c300-an-update-on-my-drive

Paul

 

[Epsom F. Shagnasty]

Actually, Vista/Win7 is the slowest OSes out there to copy files disk to
disk or disk to net or net to disk.

Run Solaris, Linux (any version), Open/Free or Net-BSD and they all
consistantly run 3 to 10 times faster than Vista/Win7 for copy operations,
especially on large files such as 4gb media files.

If you already have Windows 7 or Vista, who the hell would want to run that
crappy Linux just to copy files? LOL!

 

[Epsom F. Shagnasty]

Of course it does. You're just too stupid to understand it.


Not a whole lot of copies to people who've never used Windows. Ubuntu,
OTOH, is being used by former Windows users. See the trend?


A lie.


Yet there are millions and millions of new desktops so the real number is
different than you would like to mislead people to believe.


Another lie.


Do you really think your lies are funny?

First of all, the statements are not lies. Second of all, they pay nothing
for the software and what they use is worth exactly that: NOTHING.

No magic there.

 

[Leythos]

I tried this with a 2.66 processor Dual core (4 processors) chip, 4
gig memory. Fedora 12 and Gnome 2.28.2.

Copying a 1,569,816 byte file from file to file on the same disk and
in the same partition took 13.12 seconds with Linux and 30.91 with
Windows 7 - hand timed.

First, to ensure that you're actually testing the difference in each OS
and File structure, you must ensure that the drives are not going to
fragment the test files used.

Second, you should do this under as close to the same conditions as
possible for each OS - meaning that you either don't use Antivirus and
other scanners during the test or you use the same vendors AV/Scanners
on both platforms.

When testing with Windows, don't drag/drop the file using Explorer, use
RoboCopy and it will provide the actual timing values for you.

 

[Canuck57]

I read in another post something about speeding up hard drives, or access to
the read write cycles. I have 2 drives installed on My Windows 7 64 bit
machine. I have a Gigabyte MB with a dual core Intel 3 gig processor. I
don't understand a whole lot about IEDE modes and some of the settings I
have seen seem to be missing or just not available. The drives are both
7200 RPM, one is a 500 Gig (Primary) and the other is a 1 TB. Is there a
method of speeding up the access/read/write of these drives?

I have spent many hours trying to improve it, to no avail. But if
running Linux or Solaris in a VM or native out of another partition it
copies much faster, go figure. Seems like Win7/Vista is just hog slow
at file copy.

 

[Canuck57]

I tried this with a 2.66 processor Dual core (4 processors) chip, 4
gig memory. Fedora 12 and Gnome 2.28.2.

Copying a 1,569,816 byte file from file to file on the same disk and
in the same partition took 13.12 seconds with Linux and 30.91 with
Windows 7 - hand timed.

Not quite 3 times but close enough.

.
John B. Slocomb
(johnbslocombatgmaildotcom)

Not much different than mine but my file sizes were 4.7 to 5.2 gb.

I also tried in Virtual Box and with the OS in another partition.
Surprisingly in Virtual Box the Linux and Solaris were also still much
faster than the host. I am sure the issue in in the OS ocpy functions,
maybe a brain dead QOS??

 

[Canuck57]

First, to ensure that you're actually testing the difference in each OS
and File structure, you must ensure that the drives are not going to
fragment the test files used.

This should not make any difference unless you deliberatly run the tests
over a defrag period I did not run copy while defraging. In fact I
quit about as much as I could, unloading gtalk etc.

Second, you should do this under as close to the same conditions as
possible for each OS - meaning that you either don't use Antivirus and
other scanners during the test or you use the same vendors AV/Scanners
on both platforms.

Agreed, but it isn't as hard to do as you think. When I did my run, AV
was not running because it wasn't even or ever installed. I didn't even
own it when I ran my tests. But do grant, Vista gets slower with AV a
running.

When testing with Windows, don't drag/drop the file using Explorer, use
RoboCopy and it will provide the actual timing values for you.

Funny, this is unfair. I bet I could write a large file copy program
for Linux and UNIX that would be even 10 tiems faster. Go direct disk
to DMA...

It is fair to use CMD.EXE copy and File Explorer. Even tried pscp on
the network comparing it to OpenSSH scp. Even tinkered with the
compression, Vista was hopeless slowwww..

I also noticed push/pull speeds different. 2 Vista boxen. Push being
copy to the other share, pull being getting from the remote share. They
were not similar in times and also slow like a slug. The network
analizer showed neiter system used more than 25% of the available bandwidth.

I briefly upgraded to Win7, didn't rerun all the tests but the ones I
ran showed no difference with vista.

 

[Canuck57]

If you already have Windows 7 or Vista, who the hell would want to run
that crappy Linux just to copy files? LOL!

I use Linux and Solaris as my servers as they are rock solid and faster
as servers even though they use slightly older hardware. Give me no
troubles either.

 

[Canuck57]

First of all, the statements are not lies. Second of all, they pay
nothing for the software and what they use is worth exactly that: NOTHING.

No magic there.

Yes they are. They were bundled sales, not sales of the product itself.

 

[Death]

On 04/06/2010 5:19 PM, Death wrote:
SNIP


Even if I believed that figure, and I don't, 52 million in the world for
an OS like MS Windows is pathetic. As a percentage that would mean
Win95 out sold in fair market sales no bundling).

You must focus on the word "NEW" as Alias seems to be making a point
that no "new" users are buying Windows 7.

Of course they are.

Windows has 900,000,000 users.

 

[Death]

Actually, Vista/Win7 is the slowest OSes out there to copy files disk to
disk or disk to net or net to disk.

Run Solaris, Linux (any version), Open/Free or Net-BSD and they all
consistantly run 3 to 10 times faster than Vista/Win7 for copy operations,
especially on large files such as 4gb media files.

Funny, I ran a test.
894 mp3 files(3 GB) from one HDD to another HDD on same PC.
Fedora 12 = 1'35".
Windows Vista = 50".

I'll have to test 7 later, though I imagine similar results as I've never
seen this "horrible file transfer rate" issue.

 

[Paul]

I have spent many hours trying to improve it, to no avail. But if
running Linux or Solaris in a VM or native out of another partition it
copies much faster, go figure. Seems like Win7/Vista is just hog slow
at file copy.

Have you tried the HDTune benchmark ?

http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe

"Supported operating systems: Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7.

Hardware requirements: hard disk (internal or external), SDD, USB stick, memory card reader.
Note: due to hardware limitations some drives may not support all functions.

Licensing information: free for personal use"

Do you get a reasonable sustained transfer rate demonstrated by that ?
If you did, that partially absolves your hardware from being responsible.

The blue line is the transfer rate, as a function of percentage of position
across the platter. The "max" here is 111MB/sec, which is typical for
a recent SATA drive. Is your graph radically worse ? Is your transfer
graph curved, or a flat line ? A flat line, means some bus in the
path, is slower than the media-limited transfer rate. (Flat line graphs
are also seen on SSD drives and USB flash sticks, because they don't
use spinning disks. Flat lines on things like an SSD, can be a bus
limitation, or a flash chip read/write rate limitation.)

http://www.hdtune.com/images/screenshot.png

Another factor might be anti-virus software, attempting to read and
scan any file opened by the file copying routine. My copy of Kaspersky
a few years ago, was pretty bad for that. It was the absolute worst,
when you tried to use the "Disk Cleanup" button, and when Windows
tried to compute the amount of stuff it could delete, the Kaspersky
engine activity in the background took eons. Kaspersky was scanning
every file that was about to be deleted.

Articles like this one, show how file copying is done. Part of the
complexity, is inter-operation with legacy OSes, on things like network
copies. I don't know if an article like this has been written for
Windows 7 yet or not.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2008/02/04/2826167.aspx

HTH,
Paul

 

[XX]

Actually, Vista/Win7 is the slowest OSes out there to copy files disk to
disk or disk to net or net to disk.

Run Solaris, Linux (any version), Open/Free or Net-BSD and they all
consistantly run 3 to 10 times faster than Vista/Win7 for copy operations,
especially on large files such as 4gb media files.

Snow Leopard beats them all hands down.