Blue Palmetto Jan 28, 2016 @ 12:24pm
Are these good hard drive speeds?
I bought a hard drive second hand from eBay a few months ago and it works fine, but I'm not sure if the read speeds are slow and if buying a newer hard drive would help. Are these speeds good or abnormally slow for this machine?

HD Tune: SEAGATE ST3750640NS Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 29.9 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 79.9 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 60.3 MB/sec
Access Time : 15.7 ms
Burst Rate : 3.5 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 4.8%

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 5.1.1 x64 (C) 2007-2016 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
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* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 56.305 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 40.940 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 0.458 MB/s [ 111.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 0.585 MB/s [ 142.8 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 58.090 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 41.314 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.320 MB/s [ 78.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.533 MB/s [ 130.1 IOPS]

Test : 1024 MiB [C: 80.3% (557.1/693.8 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2016/01/28 17:04:10
OS : Windows 10 Professional [10.0 Build 10586] (x64)


My System:

Dell Dimension 9200/XPS 410
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz
MSI Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 Gaming 100 Million Edition
8GB 667MHz DDR2 RAM
Seagate Barracuda ES 750GB HDD (ST3750640NS)
Windows 10 Pro
Last edited by Blue Palmetto; Jan 28, 2016 @ 2:59pm
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Showing 1-15 of 15 comments
Bad 💀 Motha Jan 28, 2016 @ 12:33pm 
Crystal Disk Mark is much more accurate.
Every time I have tried drives (especially mechanical ones) using HD Tune, the tests are always way off. And even though mechanical drives will not fully saturate SATA3; you are not running your SATA drive at full speed if on SATA1 or 2 ports; also you need to have the SATA Mode set to Native/AHCI Mode (prior to OS install). If your SATA Mode is on Compatibility/IDE Mode, good luck getting anything close to what the drive's performance should be.
Last edited by Bad 💀 Motha; Jan 28, 2016 @ 12:35pm
rotNdude Jan 28, 2016 @ 12:42pm 
That seems about right to me for a mechanical drive at 7200RPM.
_I_ Jan 28, 2016 @ 12:55pm 
thats most likely limited by the chipset/mobo
unless its ramdom reads/writes

seq should be closer to 75-100MB/s
If you are concerned about speed, switch to SSD for main use and HDD for off machine storage (NAS) for media files, backsup etc.
Last edited by The Muppet Surgery Special; Jan 28, 2016 @ 12:57pm
Azza ☠ Jan 28, 2016 @ 1:06pm 
It's a Barracuda ES enterprise hard drive. 7200RPM (standard), suitable for NAS (network attached storage), backup and storage purposes.

Designed for: Average speed, but prolong lifespan.

If you wanted better performance, consider a small SSD (Solid State Drive) for your Operating System / Boot, such as a Samsung 850 PRO SSD 128-250GB. Then use the hard drive as storage for the rest.

Or a Western Digital Black Edition HDD 3TB, 7200RPM with 64MB cache, if you wanted a high-end hard drive.

---

ps: Is your PC seriously still on DDR2 RAM? It must be a very dated first generation motherboard. Not really worth upgrading to be honest. Since we have 6th Generations (redesigned Intel Motherboards and CPUs) would would reduce bottlenecking by 75% just on the 2nd Gen PC. Those SATA ports on your current Dell motherboard wouldn't support the full bandwidth of the hard drive either, so you have capping there (the hard drives supports SATA version 3, but I believe you are still on 1?).
Last edited by Azza ☠; Jan 28, 2016 @ 1:12pm
Bad 💀 Motha Jan 28, 2016 @ 1:07pm 
WD Blacks get around 120 - 200 MBps for the 1TB models and higher
Last edited by Bad 💀 Motha; Jan 28, 2016 @ 1:07pm
Blue Palmetto Jan 28, 2016 @ 2:19pm 
Originally posted by Azza ☠:
It's a Barracuda ES enterprise hard drive. 7200RPM (standard), suitable for NAS (network attached storage), backup and storage purposes.

Designed for: Average speed, but prolong lifespan.

If you wanted better performance, consider a small SSD (Solid State Drive) for your Operating System / Boot, such as a Samsung 850 PRO SSD 128-250GB. Then use the hard drive as storage for the rest.

Or a Western Digital Black Edition HDD 3TB, 7200RPM with 64MB cache, if you wanted a high-end hard drive.

---

Those SATA ports on your current Dell motherboard wouldn't support the full bandwidth of the hard drive either, so you have capping there (the hard drives supports SATA version 3, but I believe you are still on 1?).

To be honest, I can't really tell if it is SATA II or I. I didn't realize the drive was for NAS. Since I'm not having any issues with it I may end up getting an SSD.

Thanks everyone.
Originally posted by Blue Palmetto:
Originally posted by Azza ☠:
It's a Barracuda ES enterprise hard drive. 7200RPM (standard), suitable for NAS (network attached storage), backup and storage purposes.

Designed for: Average speed, but prolong lifespan.

If you wanted better performance, consider a small SSD (Solid State Drive) for your Operating System / Boot, such as a Samsung 850 PRO SSD 128-250GB. Then use the hard drive as storage for the rest.

Or a Western Digital Black Edition HDD 3TB, 7200RPM with 64MB cache, if you wanted a high-end hard drive.

---

Those SATA ports on your current Dell motherboard wouldn't support the full bandwidth of the hard drive either, so you have capping there (the hard drives supports SATA version 3, but I believe you are still on 1?).

To be honest, I can't really tell if it is SATA II or I. I didn't realize the drive was for NAS. Since I'm not having any issues with it I may end up getting an SSD.

Thanks everyone.

NAS drives are spindle balanced and have different power up down profiles for longitivity. Do not use a non NAS rated drive in a NAS:) It will die.
Last edited by The Muppet Surgery Special; Jan 28, 2016 @ 2:20pm
Blue Palmetto Jan 28, 2016 @ 2:24pm 
Originally posted by The Muppet Surgery Special:
NAS drives are spindle balanced and have different power up down profiles for longitivity. Do not use a non NAS rated drive in a NAS:) It will die.
What about NAS in a regular desktop? That's what I did.
Originally posted by Blue Palmetto:
Originally posted by The Muppet Surgery Special:
NAS drives are spindle balanced and have different power up down profiles for longitivity. Do not use a non NAS rated drive in a NAS:) It will die.
What about NAS in a regular desktop? That's what I did.

That's fine.
_I_ Jan 28, 2016 @ 2:46pm 
a spinning 7200rpm hdd is not limited by sata1
sata1 has a 150MB/s limit
sata2 = 300mb/s
sata3 = 600mb/s
Originally posted by _I_:
a spinning 7200rpm hdd is not limited by sata1
sata1 has a 150MB/s limit
sata2 = 300mb/s
sata3 = 600mb/s

You could use Sata Express (now defunkt though) if you want speeed. 16 Gbps or M.2 or NVMe. All of these use PCE lanes.

SATA 3.2 uses M.2 connectors. NGFF (M.2) is the future for internal storage. What replaces SATA Express for external use?
Last edited by The Muppet Surgery Special; Jan 28, 2016 @ 2:54pm
Blue Palmetto Jan 28, 2016 @ 3:00pm 
Originally posted by The Muppet Surgery Special:

You could use Sata Express (now defunkt though) if you want speeed. 16 Gbps or M.2 or NVMe. All of these use PCE lanes.
I'll look into that.
Bad 💀 Motha Jan 28, 2016 @ 3:05pm 
Originally posted by _I_:
a spinning 7200rpm hdd is not limited by sata1
sata1 has a 150MB/s limit
sata2 = 300mb/s
sata3 = 600mb/s

But even if say a WD Black nets u around that 150mbps; that is too much for a single drive to do actually when connected to an old SATA1 port.

You need a reserve of bandwidth to really get what you should. Plus it depends on SATA chipset u are using too. Intel will always fetch more than AMD as far as native SATA chipsets go.
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Date Posted: Jan 28, 2016 @ 12:24pm
Posts: 15