problem with spinpoint 2tb on windows xp

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I recently purchased a samsung spinpoint hd204ui 2tb. Following directions I saw here I formatted the drive on windows 7 using the defaults thinking it would align it. Installed the drive on the windows xp machine and it does not appear to be working correctly. I don't want to uninstall the drive and swap it back in to the windows machine, so I downloaded gparted if I need to redo the partition again. Does this look like a mis-alignment problem?

It is showing that drive as being optimally aligned using paragon alignment tool. Already tried another SATA cable and different SATA port. Can anyone help? Thanks!

 

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Another thing I've noticed is in HD tune when I run a error scan it will scan really quick for a second, then slow down for a few seconds, then scan really quick, then slow down for a few. When I do the same quick scan on my wd 740 gig it scans about the same speed all the way through. It's almost like it's bottlenecked by something.

 

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no one?

 

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starting to wonder if I just got a dud drive. May bring it back and just get the WD EARS drive. May not be as fast, but I've had good luck with WD and these drives are for storage only so doesn't need to be crazy fast.

 

[aE0n]

It looks like another program could be accessing the drive during your benchmark/scans. Could be antivirus, indexing, or something else. Benchmarks should be run on drives that are not the OS drive for the best results.

 

[push]

It looks like another program could be accessing the drive during your benchmark/scans. Could be antivirus, indexing, or something else. Benchmarks should be run on drives that are not the OS drive for the best results.

This is a non-OS drive and has nothing on it. Ran the benchmarks after a fresh format. There is no anti-virus installed on the pc either.

 

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Bah, think I'm bringing it back and picking up a WD20EARS. I have had good luck with WD drives.

 

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Looks like I figured out why the drive was performing so weird. Running HDD Health while hdtune was running causes the terrible drops in the graphs. Not sure what it's doing, but it is causing the drive to bomb. First 50% of the test I had HD Health running, then I clicked exit on the 2nd half of the test. I have flashed using f4eg to the latest firmware, did I use the wrong flash utility and that's why it's bombing or is hd health doing something weird?

One thing I did notice in HD Tune was the when it polls the S.M.A.R.T. information it does take a second for it to come back at which point the app becomes a bit unresponive. I'm betting the constant polling of S.M.A.R.T. was causing the drops in the drive performance.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm betting the constant polling of S.M.A.R.T. was causing the drops in the drive performance.

That would seem obvious.

 

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That would seem obvious.

What's with that comment? I understand polling of SMART data is not without consequence, but on my other drives it is hardly noticeable. This is the first drive I've ever owned that when polled for SMART data is drops down to .3 MB/s for that kind of duration.