Hi,

I've got a netbook on which Win7 has been hanging frequently. So I whipped out HDSpeed, and an initial HDD speed of some 73MB/s eventually dropped to extended sections of 2MB/s or even less.

The drive reports as healthy, and the critical SMART attributes 5, 196, 197, and 200 all have 0 raw counts. Chkdsk /r found nothing. I ran passmark's burn-in test, and got a nice big PASSED, with CPU temps nicely at around 66C and HDD temps at 40C, but I believe the OS hanging is connected with this reading.

I have updated all drivers and the BIOS, so I don't know what the next step would be, aside from taking a hit on the drive. Any ideas what's going on here? Thanks.

I've seen exactly that situation when a drive had problems, but other causes are also possible.

However, before making any further comments, personally I would need to see:

a) The full SMART data (including raw values) and
b) At least 3 graphs from HDSpeed reading the full disk drive, each showing the variation in throughput speeds that you mention.

I'm attaching the log file from HDSpeed. You will see a precipitous drop-off at 72%.

I'm currently running WD Data Lifeguard on the drive. This is the only diagnostic that hasn't slowed to a crawl at around 70%. That makes me wonder. Strangely, WD DL could not report any SMART data on its own drive, whereas HD Tune had no problem doing so. That makes me wonder equally as much. It says that will be the case for scsi drives, but this is a garden variety sata, I believe. DL passed the drive on the extended test.

BTW, I was getting the drop-off almost right away in early testing, but then did a chkdsk and the driver/bios updates. It seems I've pushed some of the problem farther out onto the drive.

Here's the only SMART data I could get, via HW-Info:



(S)ATA/ATAPI Drives -------------------------------------------------------


WDC WD2500BEVT-22A23T0 ----------------------------------------------------

[General Information]
Drive Controller: Serial ATA 3Gb/s
Drive Model: WDC WD2500BEVT-22A23T0
Drive Revision: 01.01A01
Drive Serial Number: WD-WXC1A4028364
Drive Capacity: 238,475 MBytes (250 GB)
Drive Capacity [MB]: 238475
Media Rotation Rate: 5400 RPM
[Drive Geometry]
Number of Cylinders: 16383
Number of Heads: 16
Sectors Per Track: 63
Bytes Per Sector: Unknown
Bytes Per Track: Unknown
Number Of ECC Bytes: 50
Number of Sectors: 16514064
Total 32-bit LBA Sectors: 268435455
Total 48-bit LBA Sectors: 488397168
Cache Buffer Size: 8192 KBytes
Controller Type: Not Specified
[Transfer Modes]
Sectors Per Interrupt: Total: 16, Active: 16
Max. PIO Transfer Mode: 4
Multiword DMA Mode: Total: 2, Active: -
Singleword DMA Mode: Total: -, Active: -
Ultra-DMA Mode: Total: 6 (ATA-133), Active: 6 (ATA-133)
Max. Multiword DMA Transfer Rate: 16.7 MBytes/s
Max. PIO with IORDY Transfer Rate: 16.7 MBytes/s
Max. PIO w/o IORDY Transfer Rate: 16.7 MBytes/s
Transfer Width: 16-bit
Native Command Queuing: Supported, Max. Depth: 32
TRIM Command: Not Supported
[Device flags]
Fixed Drive: Present
Removable Drive: Not Present
Magnetic Storage: Present
LBA Mode: Supported
DMA Mode: Supported
IORDY: Supported
IORDY Disableable: Supported
[Features]
Write Cache: Present, Active
S.M.A.R.T. Feature: Present, Active
Security Feature: Present, Inactive
Removable Media Feature: Not Present, Disabled
Power Management: Present, Active
Advanced Power Management: Present, Active
Packet Interface: Not Present, Disabled
Look-Ahead Buffer: Present, Active
Host Protected Area: Present, Enabled
Power-Up In Standby: Not Suppported, Inactive
Automatic Acoustic Management: Supported, Inactive
48-bit LBA: Supported, Active
[Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology]
Raw Read Error Rate: 200/Always OK, Worst: 200
Spin Up Time: 154/Always OK, Worst: 128 (Data = 1300)
Start/Stop Count: 83/Always OK, Worst: 83 (Data = 17305)
Reallocated Sector Count: 200/Always OK, Worst: 200
Seek Error Rate: 200/Always OK, Worst: 200
Power-On Hours/Cycle Count: 99/Always OK, Worst: 99 (Data = 898)
Spin Retry Count: 100/Always OK, Worst: 100
Calibration Retry Count: 100/Always OK, Worst: 100
Power Cycle Count: 99/Always OK, Worst: 99 (Data = 1244)
G-Sense Error Rate: 1/Always OK, Worst: 1 (Data = 1802)
Power-Off Retract Count: 200/Always OK, Worst: 200 (Data = 90)
Load/Unload Cycle Count: 139/Always OK, Worst: 139 (Data = 184337)
Temperature 102/Always OK, Worst: 94 (Data = 41.0 °C)
Reallocation Event Count: 200/Always OK, Worst: 200
Current Pending Sector Count: 200/Always OK, Worst: 200
Off-Line Uncorrectable Sector Count: 100/Always OK, Worst: 253
UltraDMA/SATA CRC Error Rate: 200/Always OK, Worst: 200
Write/Multi-Zone Error Rate: 100/Always OK, Worst: 253
HWiNFO32 Version 4.11-1825

Unfortunately I can't assist more, with only that data.

SMART info is incomplete (no obvious raw values for many parameters). HDDScan, smartmontools or many other utils provide it - personally I use smartctl from the smartmontools suite.

Before I replied last time, I looked for info on the HDSpeed utility that you mentioned. I found pages showing a graphical output (like HD Tach can produce) - assuming the pages refer to the same utility as you used. That graphical output is what I requested multiple examples of, to see if the speed "dips" are always in the same place. It also doesn't help that (according to the log you attached) HDSpeed seems to be changing the blocksize during the test. I'm not going to start putting that data in Excel and plotting it myself etc., when a tool to do all that already exists - HD Tach. Perhaps this is why I see people typically using that utility for speed testing instead.

Without all the info I requested in my last post, I can't give a good quality reply so I'll stop here. Perhaps you'll be lucky and others will reply, even with just that limited data.

Oddly, HDTune also produced zero SMART data on this drive. Let me look into the other issues. I appreciate your input.

One other odd thing. After running Data Lifeguard, I'm now running HD Speed again, starting at the problematic 69% mark, and now it's sailing through at an acceptable 55MB/s. Does Data Lifeguard have any healing function to it? I'm unaware of such.