Samsung F2EG 1GB (HD103SI) very high access time 20-25 ms

[mastabog]

Hi,

I've ignored this for a very long time and finally found some time to post about it. Some time ago I purchased two of these drives. They came with AAM disabled and to my surprise I was getting 24 to 25 ms access time which is way too high even for a 5400 RPM drive.

I played with AAM settings and I found that they seem to be reverted for this drive, i.e. when setting AAM to low (128) then the access time decreases to 20-21 ms while when setting it to high (254) or disabling it, the access time increases to about 25 ms. I found some posts this abnormal AAM behaviour. Acoustically speaking, the AAM value seems to makes no difference to my drives at all; seeks are just as loud regardless the setting.

However, I've seen posts where this model exhibits lower access times of 17 and even 15 ms. I've tested these two drives on an ASUS P5K and now on a P5Q-Deluxe ... same thing, 21-25 ms.

Another problem is that I can't make the AAM setting stick between reboots ... my workaround was to schedule hdparm -M 128 at startup (works in Win7 x64 too).

Anyone has an idea of how to reduce the access time with this drive? Is there a firmware update for these drives? The firmware I have is 1AG01113.

Cheers

[mastabog]

*Bump*

Anyone, ideas?

[HFat]

I think I have one of these drives but I'm not interested in benchmarking it.

Why does the access time bother you? Maybe there is a workaround but it's pointless to try to improve a benchmark score. So what operations would you like to speed up?

[mastabog]

Why does the access time bother you? Maybe there is a workaround but it's pointless to try to improve a benchmark score. So what operations would you like to speed up?

I offered benchmark results in order for the others to actually see what access time I'm getting. How else would I measure it? I prefer saying more than "it's slow" when asking for help.

I never said that my goal is improving a benchmark score (although I guess I can tell what threw you off). I want to bring the access time down to speed up most of the things I use on a daily basis, which are big software like matlab, Altera Quartus, etc. These are faster even on my laptop drive (which is also 5400 rpm).

If I was to be a casual user that starts Windows, plays solitaire, watches movies or other similar intensive work-related virtual activities, then I would not mind, obviously. Unfortunately, my HDDs are constantly being accessed (not by benchmarks), hence a post asking for help. Oh, and, I know a can a faster drive ... I don't want that. I want to bring the access time down to a more usual value, which should be considerably less than 25 ms.

I think I have one of these drives but I'm not interested in benchmarking it.

Why bother replying then, given the object of my cry for help?

I'd really appreciate if anyone is actually interested in offering some tangible help or even willing to perform some quick (HD Tune) benchmarks to at least compare to see if what I'm getting is normal.

[HFat]

No need to make a scene. You didn't ask for that before:

perform some quick (HD Tune) benchmarks to at least compare to see if what I'm getting is normal.

I verified I have the same drive with the same firmware. HDTune says I have an access time of 15.9ms (I ran it twice with the same result).
So something seems wrong with your drive or your environment. Have you tried to benchmark it from another system you know for sure is clean and won't issue unsollicited commands to your drive while you're benchmarking it?

You assume much when you say "quick". I had to hook the drive to a box on which I could boot Windows. I don't normally run Windows on devices which have SATA ports and I don't use this drive as an internal drive.

In my opinion it's not a huge deal to have 25ms of access time. It's not much higher than 16ms. I long used a 4200 rpm drive as a system drive. What really kills HD performance in my experience are concurrent accesses, dumb software and lack of cache. So you have to be careful about the software you use and its configuration if you want performance. I used to configure RAM drives and to tweak a certain operating system with IO issues to use more cache.
I'm not sure what help I can give you besides telling you to ask people knowledgeable about the software you're using how to mitigate such bottlenecks. Bringing your access times down to 16ms (if it was possible) will only help you so much. Proper configuration (and upgrades if need be) could well give you much more of a performance boost than that.
Well, there's something you could do but you probably already know about it: limit your accesses to a small portion of the drive near its beginning.

I find profiling the actual operations you want your hardware to do is much more useful than benchmarks.

[mastabog]

No need to make a scene. You didn't ask for that before:

No, I asked whether anyone knows how to reduce the access time on this drive. As much as I'd like to discuss software issues, my post was not about that. And I think I made as much of a scene as your reply lacked tact ... I wouldn't worry about it.

I tested these two drives on 2 different mobos on win xp x86 and win 7 x64. I might give one of them a try in a 3rd machine just to make sure but I'm not that hopeful since I tested a pair of caviar blues 640 GB (7200 rpm) and I get the usual ~12ms.

Thanks for running the benchmark. It looks like my seeks are indeed abnormally slow. The fact that you have the same firmware is not encouraging for me ... I may just have two bad drives (bought together, they are from the same batch, s/n differs by only the last digit)

From the hardware pov, what kills a hdd are slow seeks and hence low iops (go sdd). I can't do anything about the cache and i wouldn't call the software I'm using dumb. I also have lots of cache allocated for file IOs, a ram disk for temp files, etc. I'm already shortstroking, so to speak (most accessed partitions at the outer end). I know the tricks. But all this is off topic ... I'd like the seeks to have a value more close to normal and was hoping that maybe there was a firmware update of some sort or someone knew a trick to bring the seeks of the drive to a decent value ... again, I may just have 2 bad drives