Question about 64-bit and IDE?

[Grumpy]

Dumb question maybe. I am fishing for explanation of what I see as
slowness in my W7 64-bit. Since my 500GB hard drive is IDE, I am
wondering if it could be that IDE can't handle 64-bit processing and
that I must go to SATA.

Anyone?

Grumpy

 

[Andy Burns]

Dumb question maybe. I am fishing for explanation of what I see as
slowness in my W7 64-bit. Since my 500GB hard drive is IDE, I am
wondering if it could be that IDE can't handle 64-bit processing and
that I must go to SATA.

Well it still *works* but sounds like the drive is probably the oldest
component of your machine, and is starting to show its age ...

Is the drive performing slower that it did under previous operating systems?

 

[Grumpy]

Well it still *works* but sounds like the drive is probably the oldest
component of your machine, and is starting to show its age ...

Is the drive performing slower that it did under previous operating systems?

yes - much

Grumpy

 

[Wolf K]

yes - much

Grumpy

Replace it. If it's big enough, you can still use it for backups.

Wolf K.

 

[Paul]

yes - much

Grumpy

Run a benchmark, and tell us what you see.

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

My HDTune results are in the left hand column. Usually, a rotating hard
drive, has a "declining" curve, as the diameter of the concentric tracks
changes as you get closer to the hub.

http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/842/500gb3500418ascomposite.gif

You can also use the "Health" tab, and look at the SMART statistics.
If the drive isn't all that healthy (failing), you might see an indicator
in there. If you see a "yellow" entry, that's OK. I have a couple
bogus yellow entries, and they're nothing. Since there are relatively
poor standards for SMART, sometimes the stats are misinterpreted.

The HDTune benchmark, doesn't check for alignment issues. The
partitions on a disk, can be aligned on multiple of 63 boundaries.
Or offset by multiples of 1 megabyte (Windows 7 method). If your
drive is new enough, it can be 4KB internal sectors, with "512e"
sector emulation for compatibility. And if a data partition is
misaligned, I suppose that could reduce performance.

The "64-bit" is a red herring, and has nothing to do with this problem.
Via DMA, the hardware takes care of copying the disk data into memory,
so when working well (non-PIO mode), the processor really isn't involved
in the transfer phase. Once in memory, the code will be written properly
by the driver or OS designers, for the most efficient transfer modes
if needed (cache-line aligned block transfers etc).

The high level copying code can suck. It sucked when Vista came out,
and that code was completely re-written at that point (new for Vista).
Since the code wasn't properly optimized before release (rush job),
it took a whole 'nother OS to attempt to fix it. So rather than software,
you could blame some aspects of that re-write for the issue. But
the issues weren't 32 bit versus 64 bit or anything.

This blog entry, is an example of a guy looking at why the
Vista copy code didn't work very well.

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

Paul

 

[Grumpy]

Replace it. If it's big enough, you can still use it for backups.

Wolf K.

I forgot to say - IT IS BRAND NEW.
it is a
Western Digital Scorpio Black 500GB 7200 rpm. Model# WD5000BPKT

Thanks

Grumpy

 

[VanguardLH]

I forgot to say - IT IS BRAND NEW. it is a Western Digital Scorpio
Black 500GB 7200 rpm. Model# WD5000BPKT

Since you used this drive in an older version of Windows (but neglected
to say WHICH older version), the problem could be with sector alignment.
The drive you mention supports the new alignment where the first
available sector is number 64 instead of 63 in the old scheme.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=130
"... with a clean install".

When you installed Windows 7, did you have its setup delete all
partitions and create new partition(s) for the OS (and data)?


Here's my canned response on alignment:

New disk types are emerging that disrupt the old scheme of 512KB per
sector used in prior hard disks. They are sometimes referred to as
"green" disks because Western Digital assigns that color scheme to this
new line. Seagate calls them by Advanced Format Drives (AFDs) or Smart
Align Technology. This new disk uses 4KB sized sectors internally but
maps to the standard 512MB sectors on its interface. This misalignment
can cause lots of problems. These work by using 4KB sector sizes on the
platter and translating in their interface to 512KB; however, there is a
problem in misalignment since some versions of Windows start a partition
at sector 63 instead of 64. You could end up with a very slow external
hard disk due to misalignment because of the need to do
read-modify-write instead of just a write.

Read:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2888/2

http://www.paragon-software.com/landing-pages/WhitePapers/paragon_alignment_tool.html
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/partition-alignment/index.html
(was free but not after 30-Jun-2010)

http://www.wdc.com/advformat
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/WhitePapers/ENG/2579-771430.pdf
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=805
(aligns during cloning)

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/support/downloads/The_Advanced_Format_Drive.pdf

 

[Wolf K]

On 04/05/2012 11:14 AM, (e-mail address removed) wrote:
[...]

I forgot to say - IT IS BRAND NEW.
it is a
Western Digital Scorpio Black 500GB 7200 rpm. Model# WD5000BPKT

Thanks

Grumpy

Then if it's slower than under the previous OS, my guesses are:
a) fault in the drive (it does happen, even to brand new ones. ;-(
b) malware.

Good luck,
Wolf K.

 

[Wolf K]

On 04/05/2012 11:41 AM, VanguardLH wrote:
[...]

Since you used this drive in an older version of Windows (but neglected
to say WHICH older version), the problem could be with sector alignment.
The drive you mention supports the new alignment where the first
available sector is number 64 instead of 63 in the old scheme.

[etc]

Interesting information. Looks like another "improvement" which isn't one.

Wolf K.

 

[Grumpy]

Since you used this drive in an older version of Windows (but neglected
to say WHICH older version), the problem could be with sector alignment.
The drive you mention supports the new alignment where the first
available sector is number 64 instead of 63 in the old scheme.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=130
"... with a clean install".

When you installed Windows 7, did you have its setup delete all
partitions and create new partition(s) for the OS (and data)?

Actually no. There was a small partition and a large partition, and I
delete and reformatted only the latter. I am reformatting the entire
drive now to see if copying speeds up. I am thinking that you have
spotted the problem. Hope so.

Thanks

Grumpy

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Dumb question maybe. I am fishing for explanation of what I see as
slowness in my W7 64-bit. Since my 500GB hard drive is IDE, I am
wondering if it could be that IDE can't handle 64-bit processing and
that I must go to SATA.

Anyone?

Grumpy

There should be very little difference between IDE and SATA drivers,
you'll only see them show up when you're running really high speed SSD
drives, but not on regular old mechanical hard drives. The IDE drivers
are basically conforming to the ATA7 specification, while the SATA
(AHCI) drivers conform to the ATA8 specs.

Run a benchmark, Paul suggested HD Tune, but I think a much simpler one
that gets right down to the point is Crystal Disk Mark:

http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskMark/index-e.html

You can copy and paste the information from it, and post it right in you
messages here, like this:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 81.678 MB/s
Sequential Write : 79.594 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 39.837 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 53.323 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.634 MB/s [ 154.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 1.395 MB/s [ 340.6 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 0.693 MB/s [ 169.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 1.421 MB/s [ 346.9 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [E: 0.0% (0.1/465.8 GB)] (x3)
Date : 2012/04/24 2:12:56
OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)


Yousuf Khan