Seagate 500GB 7200rpm in - T61 limits speeds to 80MB/s :( ..

[miro_gt]

http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/4157/h ... 042yx0.png

well .. it's my T61 that limits to 80MB/s The HDD by itself works fine as if I continue the line from the middle to the left as it's supposed to be, it will most likely hit those 100MB/s at the beginning. However, that's not happening on my computer. How lame that is for Lenovo...

it's much faster than my old HDD though, but still

I've tried in compatibility mode too - same thing. This is the third graph with same results.

[Marin85]

A few things:
1. I didn´t know that the Seagate 7200.4 are available so soon
2. How could you know that this is Lenovo´s hardware flaw? I would rather say that the Seagate HD doesn´t perform as good as they claim Your almost 17ms access time is just "amazing" - Seagata datasheet claims about 11-12 ms... (For the record: the access times of my 7200.3 are also worse than the ones stated by Seagate, I don´t have problems with the transfer rates though)
3. Try HDTach and compare the results (just to make sure it´s not the program).

Marin

[bill bolton]

well .. it's my T61 that limits to 80MB/s

If your ST9500420AS drive was providing data faster than the T61 could handle it, then you would have a flat line at the start of the graph.

You don't have that, so its unlikely to be anything to do with your T61 limiting drive performance.

Cheers,

Bill B.

[miro_gt]

^ I hope you're correct. However, everybody else who bought this HDD shows close to 100MB/s speeds at the beginning.

[Marin85]

^ I hope you're correct. However, everybody else who bought this HDD shows close to 100MB/s speeds at the beginning.

It could be also a faulty drive

[miro_gt]

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/4890 ... 042cv9.png

check this out

I upgraded the HDTune version from 2.54 to 2.55 .. and I got same results as before.

However, I changed the benchmark to test at 128KB blocks instead of the default 64KB for the new version, and I got this ^ graph

so it's not my T61 .. yey

[Marin85]

Wow, that looks pretty impressive now So, eventually it turned out to be the program, neither the laptop, nor the HD. Yet, I would have expected better access times (16.1 ms is pretty far from my 14.6ms with 7K200 and and way far from the 12-13ms claimed by Seagate)...

Cheers

Marin

[basketb]

So what do we learn from this thread? That benchmark programs are an artificial piece of crap that do not related to anything in the real-world -- as depending on the settings and how you test you can get bad results and feel really bad about it or get good results and feel good about it (if you are obsessed with such things)?

[Marin85]

So what do we learn from this thread? That benchmark programs are an artificial piece of crap that do not related to anything in the real-world -- as depending on the settings and how you test you can get bad results and feel really bad about it or get good results and feel good about it (if you are obsessed with such things)?

Indeed! The only problem is when you want to buy some product, you have to stick to all the reviews, which anyways use such benchmarking tools. There is no other way to give an objective idea of how a drive is performing. For that reason all we need is better and more reliable tools. Hardware is not some kind of theology or esoteric...

Marin

[Marin85]

@OP: BTW, if you really want to test your drive, just try to copy some 500 MBs, then some 2 GBs and then some 4 GBs and read the speeds. Or alternatively get a similar drive put it in the ultrabay and test the copying speeds from the one drive to the another and vice versa.

[yak]

I think that using benchmark tools is still a better idea than copying files. HDTune tells you the raw performance across the whole disk surface. Sure, there are variables like this block setting but in file copy test you get a lot more variables and you're not only measuring the drive speed but also that of the file system.

You're right about the need for more reliable benchmarking tools.

[Marin85]

I couldn´t agree more! Just an observation: actually more and more tools that try to simulate real-life performance environment seem to appear in the software world (however, it´s another question how good these are... ).

[mybellyisempty]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v252/ ... MH080G.png

You're probably still hitting your limit at the very beginning. On my wife's HP (same chipset), I was getting 180MB/s

[hellosailor]

I've seen other threads indicating it is the drive bus in the T61's that is limited to SATA1 speeds, rather than SATA2.

Upgraded here to a Seagate 320GB/7200RPM drive from the stock 5400rpm drive, and the transfer speeds still max out curiously AT the Sata1 limit--indicating this is a hardware bottleneck in the computer.

[Marin85]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v252/ ... MH080G.png

You're probably still hitting your limit at the very beginning. On my wife's HP (same chipset), I was getting 180MB/s

I've seen other threads indicating it is the drive bus in the T61's that is limited to SATA1 speeds, rather than SATA2.

Upgraded here to a Seagate 320GB/7200RPM drive from the stock 5400rpm drive, and the transfer speeds still max out curiously AT the Sata1 limit--indicating this is a hardware bottleneck in the computer.

Sorry to blast your bubble, guys, but the performance of 7200.3 is pretty far from reaching the limit of SATA-150... SSDs are whole other story, still the above benchmarking of the Intel drive is also far from SATA-150, it´s actually pretty far from the specs given by Intel... BTW, HDtune is no good for testing SSDs... Whatever... but the SATA-150 is not the reason for the OP´s problem, which btw found its resolution (the problem was apparently bad benchmarking). I simply fail to understand this obsession with SATA-150. It´s everywhere in this forum... and probably it´s gonna be blamed for the financial crisis as well...

Just my 2 cents

Marin

[yak]

I simply fail to understand this obsession with SATA-150. It´s everywhere in this forum... and probably it´s gonna be blamed for the financial crisis as well...

My thoughts exactly.

Sorry for a useless post.