HDD Tests severely degraded

[h00ch]

When I first installed Windows XP Pro a week ago, I ran the disk test and had about 40 MB/sec transfer rate for both the sequential read & write tests. Now I ran the test again and I'm only getting 4 MB/sec transfer rate! Can anyone tell me why this may be? I still have about 80% free space on my drive and yes, I defragmented the drive.

thanks

[David (PassMark)]

The first thing you should do is check that the result is repeatable. It might have been that there was some task in the background, accessing the disk, when you did the last test.

Assuming it is repeatable, then start looking for other reasons. 4MB/sec is very low.

Some possible reasons might be,
- You have installed or uninstalled a device driver for the motherboard.
- There is now some task running the background all the time.
- New hardware was added that has changed the configuration of the PC (e.g. new devices on the IDE bus)
- The hard drive is faulty

It could well be another cuase but it is hard to guess at the problem without having the PC in front of you.

David
PassMark