[FriedPC]

Hello,

I just bought my first SATA drive recently and it arrived today. I installed it and formatted it with Windows XP. However it seems things are running noticeably slower now. Things like installing programs and unzipping large files with winrar are extremely slow now. It has almost taken me 30minutes just to install Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare now and it usually installs in 5-10 mins tops.

Is there any sort of special setup I need to take into place here? Maybe there are different kind of cables? My HD didn't come with a cable included(refurb) so I used a SATA cable that came with one of my motherboards.

Another thing is it only shows 715gb in windows setup rather then 750gb.

 

[Tumbleweed36]

What motherboard are you trying to set it up on?

 

[raptor_pa]

The space is about right for the space reported by Windows for a 750. It has to do with how Windows defines and GB and how the manufacturers define a GB - but it's all there if you looked at total bytes rather than translating to GB's.

 

[FriedPC]

Motherboard = MSI K9N2 SLI Platinum AMD Socket AM2+/AM3.
This thing is so slow and load I am about to scrap it all together and I just bought it. When it loads something it literally sits there and grinds. My 200gb IDE maxtor maxblast hard drive that I have been using since 2005 has never made a noise since I have owned it. But this new HD is so load I can't stand it.

I swear it took me an hour last night to extract a winrar archive that usually took me 10-20mins on my old HD.

 

[Tumbleweed36]

I have a few of those Seagate drives and they have been fine for me and they aren't noisy. In fact, I have one of the 500gb drives presently in this system and it is only about 6 months old and is fine and quiet. I also have some of those Maxtor drives in my older rig.

If this new one is that loud, then I would return it if you purchased it from someone that will let you do that. It might just be a faulty drive and best to catch it now than wait until it is too late for an exchange.

 

[FriedPC]

I have a few of those Seagate drives and they have been fine for me and they aren't noisy. In fact, I have one of the 500gb drives presently in this system and it is only about 6 months old and is fine and quiet. I also have some of those Maxtor drives in my older rig.

If this new one is that loud, then I would return it if you purchased it from someone that will let you do that. It might just be a faulty drive and best to catch it now than wait until it is too late for an exchange.

hmm. What could be wrong with it? Can I run a diagnostic on it to make sure it is ok? It was sold used on EBAY for 50$ with no returns accepted. Listed said it was removed from a "Working Environment" and the listing had about 20 of them for sale with a 100% positive feedback.

Also do SATA II drives have different cables or use the same cable as any other SATA DRIVE.

It pretty much only makes the grinding loading noise when windows is booting.

 

[Tumbleweed36]

If you want to test it, run SeaTools the utility from Seagate. When they say no returns, that scares the heck out of me, because they can send you a non-working and you own it even if you paid good money for it.

Here is a link to all hard drive utilites:

Hard Drive Utilities

 

[FriedPC]

I wonder if a Zero Fill on the drive would do any good? This thing is still causing some major performance issues with my system. Bogging down loading times on the simplest things.

For some reason on the description of the thread I typed the wrong info of the drive. It is actually this drive here: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3750640AS 750GB SATA

Also I was reading a lot about the drives and seems to suggest there were some with faulty firmware. Could this be an issue?

 

[raptor_pa]

The firnmware issue was on 7200.11 drives, it resulted in a brick with no warning.

 

[FriedPC]

Yea I was going to mention that in my last post. Was just wondering if maybe it affected mine as well, though I didn't really think that would be the case. Just wishful thinking I guess looking for a solution without replacing it.

I was also going to mention that I ran all the tests in SeaTools(besides the advanced tests) and got passes on all.

 

[raptor_pa]

You could try MHDD from hddguru.com to see if there are slow sectors - slow sectors don't show as bad sectors as long as they fall within the read timeout specs, but a large number of slow sectors could be an issue.

 

[FriedPC]

Thanks. I'll give that a try.

I suppose there is nothing I can do about that if that is the case?

 

[raptor_pa]

MHDD will alllow you to remap slow sectors to good spares, the problem is, why are they slow, and is it indicative of impending drive failure. Let's take it one step at a time and see what teh MHDD results are. You could also try HDDScan from the same site, it uses a windows interface - I like MHDDs result display better tho.

 

[FriedPC]

Thanks for the info. I will try this again today or tomorrow. I tried MHDD yesterday but I didn't see my hard drive shown in the menu when I booted up on it. However I think I burned it wrong because I had win98 files in the temp files directory when I burned it. When I booted up the disk it showed WIN98 then it went to the MHDD dialog. Is that normal or did my temp files effect it?

Anyways when I got into the MHDD it only showed one drive and it said "DVD ROM".

I will try the other one today and see what it comes up with.

 

[raptor_pa]

The drive may need to be set to IDE in BIOS and installed as a slave

 

[FriedPC]

You mean just using it as a storage drive?

Here is the HDDScan S.M.A.R.T. report for now. Running other tests now and will post results if you can still help me. The hard drive is running worse and worse everyday it seems. Slowing down simple tasks like loading a firefox page.

 

[raptor_pa]

I meant for running MHDD.. Smart values look goo, see if any slow sectors show up.

 

[FriedPC]

Here is what the test shows so far.

I meant for running MHDD.. Smart values look goo, see if any slow sectors show up.

Oh ok, I will give that another shot later after I finish the HDDScan and see what that comes up with if needed.

Also can a mod edit the title of this thread to 7200.10 instead of .7. I still don't know how I typed that wrong.

 

[raptor_pa]

Thread title changed - doesn't look too bad a few slow ones but only 1 that is an real concern. Let's see if MHDD will run and then see what you get.

 

[FriedPC]

Alright. I think I'll set it up and let it run tonight overnight. Thanks for the help, hopefully something can be resolved here.

There are actually 3 500ms now since the time of my last post.