Viewing Thread:
"Low Disk Performance?"

I ran PC Pitstop on my pc today (www.pcpitstop.com) and it came up with this:
---------------------------------------
TIP > Unusually low disk performance
Drive C has an uncached speed of 1.54 megabytes per second.

For comparison, systems with the same CPU, clock speed, and memory size as this one have an average cached speed of 204 MB/s and an uncached speed of 4.76 MB/s
---------------------------------------

I have read eveything on the page, and still no luck. Anyone got any ideas on how to speed this up? Cheers.

Yes, but it should only significantly slow down if the other hard disk is going hell for leather during the test run.

Will it slow it down if there are 2 hard drives on the same ide cable from the mobo?

Norton et al are infamous performance parasites, if Norton had decided to randomly scan while the test was running then that might affect the result, as would doing silly things like playing an mp3 in the background :O)

(Win2K/XP): Right-click on My Computer, select Manage and then Device Manager. Expand the section for IDE/ATA controllers, then right click->Properties on your Primary Channel (probably, your disk could just as easily be on the secondary channel). In the dialog that appears, select Advanced Settings, and it should display what transfer mode any devices on your Primary Channel are set to. Note that it won't specify WHAT those devices are, so before your run screaming to tech support that your Hard Disk is running in PIO mode, check that it isn't your CD burner it's talking about.

Ideally, your hard disk should be in some form of Ultra-DMA mode. If it's in Multi-word DMA, your HD is likely very old, and if it's in PIO mode you almost certainly have a problem.

Anahera wrote:
> Darkus,
>
> If you have an Intel CPU intall the Intel Application Accelerator.
> Also make sure DMA is Enabled on all HDD, and write cache is also enabled. Finally disable any anti-virus software before running the test.

----------

yep i already have intel apllication accelerator, but never noticed a difference once it was installed. Im pretty sure DMA is enabled, but i didnt turn off norton antivirus when i ran the tests, so perhaps that slowed it down...? Thanks for ya help :)

Hm sounds like tweaking to me, surely tweaking BEFORE a test is a bad idea?

Intel Application Accelerator? I am so dubious.

PPS. sorry about the spelling, but its getting late.

AMD not AND

Angel

Darkus,

If you have an Intel CPU intall the Intel Application Accelerator.

If you have an AND CPU install Via Hyperion drivers. (NOT v4in1 4.46 as these are very slow.) If you are running win98-SE use 4in1 4.35 instead of Hyperion.

Also make sure DMA is Enabled on all HDD, and write cache is also enabled.

Finally disable any anti-virus software before running the test.

Angel.

PS. If you are using AOL run the test through Internet Explorer, not AOL's interface as this con also cause problems.

What hard drive have you actually got? Don't forget if the test hard drive is 7200rpm ATA133 and 8mb cache and yours is an old 5400rpm ATA66 then the results will be different. I would also think that to do a good test you would need alot of disk space as other wise the program may have to delete the files it creates which would take time. Also do you regular defrag the hard drive? As a fragmented hard drive can really down grade performance when accessing files.

I ran PC Pitstop on my pc today (www.pcpitstop.com) and it came up with this:
---------------------------------------
TIP > Unusually low disk performance
Drive C has an uncached speed of 1.54 megabytes per second.

For comparison, systems with the same CPU, clock speed, and memory size as this one have an average cached speed of 204 MB/s and an uncached speed of 4.76 MB/s
---------------------------------------

I have read eveything on the page, and still no luck. Anyone got any ideas on how to speed this up? Cheers.