I'm concerned for my new SATA-III HDD, is this slow?

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WDCB 640GB SATA-III

As stated above, I really expected this to be faster - as loading times for games really have't improved much against my old low-quality SATA-II drive!

k9x5jp.png


How does that look?
I need anything that can speed this thing up.
Help is much appreciated.
 
Soldato
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That bench looks about right for a mechanical drive.

SATA2 vs SATA3 makes no difference for mechanical drives, the bottleneck is in the drives themselves, not in getting the data from the drives to your motherboard. SATA2 isn't limiting unless your drive itself is capable of more than around 270MB/s

You don't need SATA3 unless you have a Crucial C300 SSD. This is the only drive that can make any use of the extra bandwidth at the moment.

If you need to speed things up, and can't afford an SSD, build a RAID0 array. 3 or 4 drives in raid0 would provide great loading times in games. Each drive you add increases the risk of you losing all the data though, so make sure you have a good backup method.
 
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Caporegime
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Yup, its just like a sata 3 USB memory stick, the memory inside is the same as before, so you'd still get 10mb's writes and it will still suck.

The internals, bar the connection, are the same, the same platter, chips, heads, etc, etc. Its entirely no faster than a Sata 2 drive and Sata 3 is useless for the vast majority of people right now.

Even the only sata 3 drive that can peak above sata 2 limits in the C300 from Crucial, really doesn't need it as most people use SSD's for "general" performance and not things that require fast sequential speeds, its random read/write performance is still fantastic on a sata 2 controller and most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference between sata 2 and 3 with that drive, other drives, no one at all would see a difference.
 
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and it should be, so something tell's me it isnt running in sata3 mode. are there any jumpers on the back of the drive? if there are they set correctly?

the burst rate on my 2.5" wd black drive in my laptop is almost double yours, and thats a sataII drive.

wd320black.png
 
Soldato
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Make sure you bought a SATA3 cable as well as SATA2 apparently is at the very limit for a SATA3 drive so you may well lose performance. I had to buy a SATA3 cable just for my Intel SSD.
 
Soldato
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Even with a higher burst rate it's not going to be a quick drive because of the platter density. It's just a gimmick, a higher density drive would have been a lot more useful.
 
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well heres evidense that magnetic drives can have high burst speeds

35kiebq.png


so hence can someone tell this cool guy how to configure sata 3 on motherboard bios gggzzz
 
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Zarf

SATA2 vs SATA3 makes no difference for mechanical drives, the bottleneck is in the drives themselves, not in getting the data from the drives to your motherboard. SATA2 isn't limiting unless your drive itself is capable of more than around 270MB/s

You don't need SATA3 unless you have a Crucial C300 SSD. This is the only drive that can make any use of the extra bandwidth at the moment.

If you need to speed things up, and can't afford an SSD, build a RAID0 array. 3 or 4 drives in raid0 would provide great loading times in games. Each drive you add increases the risk of you losing all the data though, so make sure you have a good backup method.

I tend to agree... Theres no real world noticeable benefit to sata3 and mechanical drives, due to the drives physical limitations... With regards to Wonderlands post..

well heres evidense that magnetic drives can have high burst speeds

I was getting the same readings as that with my sata2 disks, 500gb Samsung F3's...
 
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I tested again

23t58n4.png


The burst rate should be a lot higher.
Possibly running in SATA-II mode.
How can I run it in Sata-III mode?
Should I make a new thread addressing this?
 
Soldato
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Your all living in the land of the fairys i think.

1)Even in SATA3 your burst rate still wont go over SATA2 limitations. Mechanical HD's just cant reach it. So even in SATA2 or SATA3 it will produce the same results.
2)Not all drives create the same speed there is to many factors. The biggest factor is controller and HD mixture. Some drives operate bteer on some controllers.
3)Also your SATA3 controller you have bought is not very good. We had one in the office and it went back in its box.

The moral here is your asking of to much of a mechanical HD if you wanted more go for a 10k drive of a SSD.
 
Soldato
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Your all living in the land of the fairys i think.

1)Even in SATA3 your burst rate still wont go over SATA2 limitations. Mechanical HD's just cant reach it. So even in SATA2 or SATA3 it will produce the same results.
2)Not all drives create the same speed there is to many factors. The biggest factor is controller and HD mixture. Some drives operate bteer on some controllers.
3)Also your SATA3 controller you have bought is not very good. We had one in the office and it went back in its box.

The moral here is your asking of to much of a mechanical HD if you wanted more go for a 10k drive of a SSD.
the burst rate of a mechanical drive is down to its onboard cache and the interface between the drive and the chipset. look a few posts up and look at the benchmark i posted of my own drive, where the burst rate is over twice the drives maximum sustained throughput.
 
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Ok so I assumed woolerland was talking about the BIOS, so I had a look and did what he said, it has certainly improved!

6gleeb.png


I suppose that's all I should expect from it - thanks for all the helpful information everyone - and thanks woolerland for the tip :)
 
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