Extremely Slow HDD Speeds?

[zDonaldson]

I have a Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKX.It feels extremely slow, and there's at least a 2 minute period after I boot my computer where I can't do anything because my hard drive is maxed out, and it only reads a few mb/s in performance monitor. In Performance Test 7.0 I'm getting 683.7 for overall HDD speed, 96.7 for Sequential Read, 89.6 for Write, and 2.75 for Random Seek + RW. I've defragged, re-installed Windows, and even swapped the drive for a replacement and the problem persists. So far I haven't the slightest idea what the problem could be. My specs are

Intel Core i5-2500k @ 4.1 GHz
Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3H-B3
Corsair Vengence 8GB @ 1600 MHz
AMD Radeon HD 6950

and I'm using a 6 gb/s connection. If anyone has any ideas, I'm all ears. Thanks.

[David (PassMark)]

Those speeds aren't too bad. Around 90 - 100 MB/Sec is what I would expect from this drive for sequential read and write.

Given that the benchmark results are OK and you have already replaced the drive, I think you need to look elsewhere.

I would start by looking at what software you have got installed besides Windows.

Are you using Win7 64bit?

I would then have a look at the Window's resource monitor to see what programs are accessing what files during that 2 min period. You might find it is a background anti-virus scan, or Window's update running in the background.

[zDonaldson]

It's usually just background Windows processes and such. My anti-virus is MS Security Essentials, and I don't think I've ever had a problem with it. Windows Update would be a prime suspect but this happens EVERY time I boot my computer. It's also notable that when I try HD Tune Pro, instead of giving me numbers around 100 mb/s, I get something around that on average, but it constantly dips down to 1 mb/s or less. Thanks for the suggestions, though, I will try uninstalling MSE