Non-existant read performance below 4k size

[jrwalte]

I have a WD Green wd10eads 1 TB hard drive. I got this drive from a WD MyBook Studio. I removed the external case and placed this drive in my server (the drive had the 1.5 PHY jumper enabled and I removed it).

I've formatted the drive as NTFS with 64k allocation (though I tried with default allocation with no difference in the benchmark). I've performed a quick format and have not tried full format, if that would make a difference.

When running ATTO disk test, for some reason the first 3 read speeds, .5k, 1k and 2k are horrible, though the write speeds are fine. Once it gets to 4k, then the read performance is good.

What could possibly be causing these read speeds? Anything software related or is it a defective drive?

Even if ATTO is right and I can't fix this, with a 64k allocation and the drive being used to store movies, does this really concern me? Technically, the smallest any file can be written is 64k, and ATTO says 111MB write speed at 64k. So would .5-2k performance really concern me?

My biggest concern is does this mean something is physically wrong with the drive and my data is not safe?

By jrwalte

 

[TC91]

I don't think anything is wrong with it; hard drives are just really slow with small file reads.

 

[ElenaP]

Do a Google Image search for "ATTO benchmark" and you'll see that it is a most typical screenshot. There is nothing wrong with the drive.

 

[Ben90]

Hmm, I'm not a hard drive expert, but looking at other ATTO benchmarks, something does look wrong. Of course a mechanical drive is going to slow down with small files, but it shouldn't slow down over 250x by cutting the file size in half.

Maybe try running smart or another benchmark and post results?

 

[razel]

That is an odd result. Speeds usually go up. That one goes down, then suddenly skyrockets. Have you tried running it in safe mode to rule out any additional caching? I myself would just run WD Diagnonsis software since you're concerned about it's usability. You only need the SMART and quick test, skip the long. The one they have for Windows is a very small and simple install.

 

[jrwalte]

Thanks for the replys. I was getting answers on another forum. It turns out I was getting a SMART error due to excessive read errors. These excessive read errors were what was obviously causing the weak read speeds. I've RMA'd the drive and WD has sent me a new one.

 

[sub.mesa]

Do you happen to know which SMART property that was?

 

[jrwalte]

It was ID 01,'Read error rate'. It had somewhere in the 350,000 read errors.

When I determined that error, I immediately went and bought another 2TB drive locally. My system was already at a critical point, because I accidentally deleted a dynamic 1TB disc from my disk manager and couldn't get it to reconnect. I was going to rebuild, with FlexRAID, the 900GB on this disk. I learned the stupidity of setting up a dynamic disk when it isn't necessary. I keep them all basic now