Is it me or is this slow?

General Computing Hardware & Networking
1

I’ve been experiencing slow downs recently, especially when copying files about. Initially I put this down to the Atom but now I believe it could well be the fault of my hard drive so I ran some tests…

I realise that the Atom will have an effect on everything but these slow downs (especially when visiting sites like facebook) are beginning to annoy.

I ran HD Tune and got the following results

That seems common though when running it earlier I was getting some CPU usage of about 40%! Now not that fussed with with hard drives before, I reckon that these speeds are quite slow and maybe causing some of my issues. This is a Fujisu Siemens drive on IDE - serial = MHV2100AT - I have just googled and found it to be a 4,200rpm drive :eek:

This makes me wonder if a hard drive upgrade would cure some of my issues. I was wondering what others drives were at? And if I was liable to stop as many slow downs with a new drive.

I’m tossing up between a new hard drive or as it’s beginning to annoy a lot, a new PC!:whiteflag:

2

Be careful about sticking a faster drive in there as slow drives run cooler.

I agreed to swap a failed drive in somebodys laptop a while ago, they supplied the drive, a nice zippy 7200 rpm one and it got too hot to touch quite quickly whilst unzipping some big backup files.
A chat with the owner and I found it was not the first 7200 drive that had been in there but they were much faster, for a bit.

3

Heat shouldn’t be an issue as it’s a desktop machine with fans.

HD Tune says current drive is 29 degrees.

4

At first I was wondering if the interface might be limiting, but given the low CPU usage and drop off through the disk, it looks like it really is that slow!

If you think the rest of the PC is ok, then a higher performance disk should moke the system feel more responsive. How much that would be of it you need more is harder to say…

5

Well when I ran it earlier, CPU usage was as high as 40.5% and 45.2%

Running again watching a film and it’s ~20%.

6

since this current laptop that has a 7200rpm drive in it, I shan’t ever buy a slow one again.

Look at solid state stuff if you can afford it Drezha, so many plus points for them.

DT.

7

A bit more googling later . . . .

Is the disk in PIO or Ultra DMA mode ?

8

I had been toying with an SSD to be honest - whack a 40Gb SSD in there, purchase a NAS/external USB at the same time - therefore you have a quick internal for Windows and basic programs and then the USB drive for data storage and portable programs.

TFW - It’s currently in DMA Mode 2, HD Tune says it can run in DMA Mode 5 so I’ll try and up it.

EDIT - No luck on that, tried new drivers and tried uninstalling the others. No go, still UDMA mode 2.

My only qualm about buying a new HD is that I might be throwing money at a problem that is caused by the rest of the machine. I guess regardless of if I buy one or not, I can have an external drive from it :shrug:

9

Now it seems to be behaving itself :shrug:

Here’s the data - I’m guessing that very possibly it IS my CPU holding me back looking at the CPU usage? Doesn’t seem to have much disk I/O.

Idle - Everything left as idle as possible

Running Syncback to copy new files to USB drive

Opening Chrome, HSBC website, GNUCash

EDIT: Whilst typing this, Syncback has launched my backup Chris folder and that has slowed typing down here considerably… :frowning:

10

Sorely tempting to forgo my NAS and instead buy myself this and this and still have change left over from a laptop I was considering!

11

ATOM processor will shift down to 800 Mhz if it likes at strange times. Wife had a lappy for 3 months and was fun toy, but what a dog. I/O read/writes at times were yuck! I played in BIOS, but very little to play with for sure. I think it is within the chipset to just plain ole slow down…I wonder if it is just the n-Bridge chip and drivers. I would check to see if there are newer intel drivers. If it is ION it would surprise me, but intel is always updating I/O, Video weekly it seems.

12

EDIT:

Updated drivers just to see if anything DOES change.

13

Make sure power profiles are set to max performance else power save functions and as pointed out by Step2000 cpu speed/bus can change.

This will hinder performace in a way like your seeing- many of the sites on the net dealing with these netbooks/atomboxes have noted these issues in relation to HD / SSD performance drops.

14

Performance now set to max and a Seagate Momentus ordered. Just quite justify an SSD yet :frowning:

15

that’s the drive in my laptop, 200Gb 7200rpm 2.5, it shows a massive performance difference in general OS usage to the slower one in a pretty much identical laptop to mine that jHorner uses.

DT.

16

Should also point out drive performace as measured in an os can differ to real performance due to the way the OS may write background information to the drives and taint the results.

So always take your atto/hdtune/crystalmark results with a pinch of salt unless being tested as a 2nd non os drive within a system.

More so when the drives getting full and it has to deal with a lot of fragmentation issues in trying to place files on the drive.

17

Cheers for the heads up Paul. I thought this was the case so I ran the test a few times and it was pretty similar results all the time.

The reviews of the Seagate drives seemed positive so I thought it was worth the risk - if the PC doesn’t improve a bit I can always whack it into a portable case.

I was after the 250Gb drive but everywhere has sold out so I ended up with the 160Gb as I bought myself a Cordles Optical Trackman which wasn’t cheap lol - that and I’m going to be purchasing a 1Tb NAS or USB drive (has to wait now due to this replacement :frowning: ) which will do the majority of the storage.