Very Bad HDD read/write results

[buffs_star]

I find my machine really slow at copying files from one internal HDD to the other, small files seem to take ages to copy.

The drives are:
C: Seagate ST3320620AS (300gig, 168freespace)
D: WD WD6400AAKS-75A7B0 (600gig, 428freespace)

The results on the performance test were :
C Drive:
Read=39
Write=1.8
Seek+RW=2.37

D Drive:
Read=100.9
Write=1.84
Seek+RW=2.62

(not typo's they are the actual figures i get!)

I have looked at other results and my figures are really bad.
I defrag regularly and do all the anti virus/spyware scans.

The System motherboard is:
Gigabyte 965P-DS4 v3.3 bios f12b
running windows xp pro.

Can you offer any suggestions to what might the problem here?
thanks for the help!
Anne.

[passmark]

Check you have the correct motherboard device drivers.
Check the cabling to the drives.
Try moving the drives on to different IDE buses if they are currently master / slave on the same bus.
Try disabling / uninstalling your anti-virus software for a while.

[buffs_star]

thanks for the reply.
I have updated the scsi and raid controller. also i think it updated the primary & secondary ide channels.

the results from testing have improved:
Cdrive:
write 39
read 40
rw 2.97

ddrive
write 102.8
read 98.1
rw 3.7

i can see this a huge improvement, but are these numbers still bad ?
next thing i shall check is the cables.

[passmark]

If C: drive was a brand new drive I would say it was a little bad. If it was a couple of years old, it would be more or less what I would expect.

[buffs_star]

The drive is about 2 yrs old i guess.
Im pretty happy with the new results now.

Thanks for the help with this.

[wonderwrench]

I have the same ST3320620AS drive and had poor performance with it since I got it back in 07. Your drive looks slower than mine did though. You may have other problems. In my case read speed was much lower then write write speed. About a year after I got the drive I found out that many people had the same problem and it was firmware related.

After much searching I found the updated firmware and flashed my drive. The drives read performance increased substantially. The performance problem seems to only affect drives that shipped with firmware version AAK and the firmware update only applies to drives with the part number ending in 308. The PN and firmware version is printed on the drive BTW. The updated firmware is AAM. The file I found was named ST3320620AS3.AAM.zip. Links related to the problem
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/243810-32-seagate-7200-firmware-performance-issues
http://www.fluffles.net/articles/seagate-AAK-firmware
http://forums.vr-zone.com/hard-disk-optical-storage-technology/213448-seagate-7200-10-aak-firmware-issues.html

A comparision of AAK and AAM firmware on my 7200.10.
http://i156.photobucket.com/albums/t25/wonderwrench/Misc/720010.jpg

Keep in mind flashing your drive is not risk free. You could brick your drive and loose all your data. If done correctly the chances are very low.

[buffs_star]

wow, what do you know, it is AAK firmware on that drive. I wonder what response i will get from Seagate when i email them. After reading the links you sent im suprised there hasnt been a recall or something.
I always wondered why my machine was slow since it was brand new with a decent spec.
Maybe i will swap it and use it as the slave, let the WD become the master.
thanks for the info!