daught
Well-known member
I have a HDD that is very very slow. It's 1TB and it's full. I am trying to back up the important stuff on it, but it's going at less then 1MB/s. I don't get any errors or SMART warnings. Any idea what's up with it?
Very slow HDD
- Thread starter daught
- Start date
The data is fragmented to crap and those 30gb of free space are scattered all over the physical medium... it's gonna keep being slow until you unload some data (at least 20%, IMO) and run a defrag. If you're filling up a 1TB drive beyond 80% (and thats generous) capacity, you really need to add more drives. Read/write performance is massively impacted by available space, and fragmentation of data.
daught
Well-known member
Are you using a USB dock or something? Really old version of windows? 1MB/s just dovetails too nicely with USB1.1 speeds
Fragmentation is not a big problem these days. NTFS copes with it fairly well. There's no way fragmentation is entirely responsible for slowing it down to a trickle
Fragmentation is not a big problem these days. NTFS copes with it fairly well. There's no way fragmentation is entirely responsible for slowing it down to a trickle
If this is an external drive and you have on demand AV it might be scanning the files as you are transferring them. Check your process list and see if anything is taking a considerable amount of CPU or memory.
Sent from Tapatalk.
Sent from Tapatalk.
What kind of drive, specifically? Just curious to look it up...
Every hard drive will lose about 50% read/write speed from empty to full. Some drives I've seen benchmarks for completely lose their ****, upwards of 80% performance drop at full. If your data is badly fragmented, and consists of smaller files rather than large ones, I could see a massive drop in performance. You did say it worked fine at one point though (even near full) so this may not really matter.
These are just data drives right, the OS isn't actually on there??
Every hard drive will lose about 50% read/write speed from empty to full. Some drives I've seen benchmarks for completely lose their ****, upwards of 80% performance drop at full. If your data is badly fragmented, and consists of smaller files rather than large ones, I could see a massive drop in performance. You did say it worked fine at one point though (even near full) so this may not really matter.
These are just data drives right, the OS isn't actually on there??
MP3s? It's not the files then. This is so weird.
Some motherboards have an auxiliary SATA controller to provide additional SATA ports, and sometimes those controllers are terrible / have poor driver support. Usually those ports are marked in a different colour, or labelled "Data Only". Does this sound like your situation?
Some motherboards have an auxiliary SATA controller to provide additional SATA ports, and sometimes those controllers are terrible / have poor driver support. Usually those ports are marked in a different colour, or labelled "Data Only". Does this sound like your situation?
Try something like this in linux and see what do you get? You need root, so su -, or sudo hdparm. Run it a few times in a row to get consistent numbers.
hdparm -tT /dev/sda
I get something like this from my drive here:
/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 4626 MB in 2.00 seconds = 2314.41 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 1066 MB in 3.00 seconds = 355.30 MB/sec
daught
Well-known member
I haven't changed anything from when it was working.
Oke, so here's the long story.
A few weeks ago when there was the big storm my building lost power. When it came back my computer would turn on then turn right off, before it even got to bios. My built-in network card LEDs were on, like they usually are when my computer is usually off. In the end wiggling the motherboard power supply connector fixed it(weird). My computer booted, but my network card was dead. No lights on it(weird #2). I thought it's fried so I just used my wifi for a few days. After a few days I wiggled my motherboard power connector again and my network card works again(weird #3). Right after I noticed my hdd running slow(weird #4). I have't changed anything in the was it was connected. It uses the same power rail as my other HDDs so it's not a power issue.
Oke, so here's the long story.
A few weeks ago when there was the big storm my building lost power. When it came back my computer would turn on then turn right off, before it even got to bios. My built-in network card LEDs were on, like they usually are when my computer is usually off. In the end wiggling the motherboard power supply connector fixed it(weird). My computer booted, but my network card was dead. No lights on it(weird #2). I thought it's fried so I just used my wifi for a few days. After a few days I wiggled my motherboard power connector again and my network card works again(weird #3). Right after I noticed my hdd running slow(weird #4). I have't changed anything in the was it was connected. It uses the same power rail as my other HDDs so it's not a power issue.
Agreed - try the drives on a different interface or within an enclosure.
Also, by the sounds of your recent power issues, it may be that your PSU has been harmed and the draw from all of your devices is stressing it. Consider trying another power supply in your machine, or testing it with a... tester (kinda like an outlet tester for your PSU).
daught
Well-known member
Once I had about 20% freed up the disk picked up some speed. ~2mBs. I defragged it, but it did not make much of a difference. I moved more files and by the time it was 80% empty it was up to 5mBs. After a format it's back to 90 mBs.
I found lots of duplicate folders and files between my two drives. Can someone recommend a good tool to get rid of duplicated?
I found lots of duplicate folders and files between my two drives. Can someone recommend a good tool to get rid of duplicated?
Riceburner
Well-known member
I use an old version of "Easy Duplicate Finder". http://www.easyduplicatefinder.com/ Haven't tried any newer versions though.
