Samsung HD503HI Very Silent... But slow... what's wrong??

[jcoffin1981]

I wanted a faster and quieter drive than my Seagate 7200.7 150GB. This drive was a great replacement, but it's not running as fast as it should. You can see the burst speed that I've benchmarked is half of what others have tested. The old drive was IDE interface and my new one is SATA. XP SP2 was able to detect the new drive and install it so that would mean that SATA drivers are not necessary? Is this simply a BIOS issue? I have done extensive research and have not come up with an answer. I can't be the first person to have this problem. Does anyone have any thoughts? Thank you

[Fire-Flare]

Your old drive spun 2000 RPM faster than your new one.

SATA has always had higher maximum throughput than IDE, but the real time speed is determined by how rapidly the data can be written to or read from the platters.

[jcoffin1981]

Hmmm, right I understand this drive spins slower, but it is supposed to have much greater performance than the original drive. Even though it is an SATA it seems to be running as an IDE or "ultra ata/133." I've been playing with the bios settings for hours and can't seem to fix it.

[dhanson865]

Are you using more than 150GB worth of data on the 500GB drive?

If you format it at 250GB instead of 500GB you'll force the data on the fastest half of the drive and get better access times as well.

If you really want to push it you can format it even smaller and get better performance but if it's your only drive you may need more capacity.

The screenshots you posted look like it's running on a SATA II connection. Oh I see your burst rate is lower. Hmm maybe the drive is in SATA 1 compatibility mode? Looks like the HD503HI doesn't use jumpers for that so it'd be a BIOS setting if that is the case.

What motherboard are you using?

[jcoffin1981]

Yes perhaps, but I've played with every possible bios option and no dice. I have a theory... when installing OS I think that all PCI cards- sound and video must be removed. I noticed that the Radeon Xpress 200 chipset was never recognized, probably because the cards just disable it. It mainly controlls graphics but does also control sound and.... SATA... according to WIKI. So, pain in the butt... but im just gonna reformat the drive again and reinstall. I tried to just install hardware and install drivers but didn't work properly. Whatdya think???

[flapane]

The second screenshoot seems like one of those I made years ago when I bought the drive.
Your different HDtune benchmark makes me think that either the drivers or the sata controller is slowing down your HDD (maybe I'd also check if the BIOS is updated).
I have a P43 (ICH10) chipset and the benchmark didn't change much when I passed form Win XP to 7 x64.
By the way, the average speeds are quite similar (89 vs 84 MBps), even if the burst speed and the cpu usage (that's up to the chipset) are quite different.

[dhanson865]

I install XP with PCI cards present all the time. Can't see that being a problem.

I was thinking about this as I went to sleep last night and I remembered a newegg review I read recently. The person had bought a drive and it came with a SATA cable but the one that came with it was SATA I (1.5Gb/s) instead of SATA II(3Gb/s) or was 3Gb/s instead of 6Gb/s. How about buying or borrowing a better SATA cable and see if that fixes the issue?

18 Inch SATA blue 6 Gb/s $1.84

36 Inch SATA black 6 Gb/s $2.37

Could be the answer you are looking for.

[jcoffin1981]

I agree this is definitely a driver issue. HD Tune does say that it is running in ATA mode and not SATA. I am willing to try a new cable just to rule it out, although I highly doubt it. I will try and obtain one. (this one does say that it suports 3GB/S) I'm trying not to spend much more money. The board manufacturer has told me that there are no more bios updates for my board, that mine is the most recent. Thanks for the suggestions! I reinstalled windows and the "radeon xpress 200" chipset again is not being recognized. It is being recognized instead as a multimedia controller, a PCI bus controller, SM bus controller, and a video controller, all under PCI devices with a yellow exclamation next to them. I do have the proper drivers if need be but in the past it was immediately recognized and the proper software installed without any intervention from me. Grrr I dunno. I'm baffled and frustrated. I'm ready to buy a new board. But all the same I enjoy problem solving!

[jcoffin1981]

Are you using more than 150GB worth of data on the 500GB drive?

If you format it at 250GB instead of 500GB you'll force the data on the fastest half of the drive and get better access times as well.

If you really want to push it you can format it even smaller and get better performance but if it's your only drive you may need more capacity.

The screenshots you posted look like it's running on a SATA II connection. Oh I see your burst rate is lower. Hmm maybe the drive is in SATA 1 compatibility mode? Looks like the HD503HI doesn't use jumpers for that so it'd be a BIOS setting if that is the case.

What motherboard are you using?

I don't really need all the storage on my drive, but I'm not really interested in short stroking it. I've heard mixed reviews. But I may experiment if I ever solve this issue. My board is a Foxconn RC410M01X1-6LRS2. Correct, no jumpers.