Does this look noraml-HDD

[JJFIVEOH]

I have a Caviar Black 1TB 6 Gb/s 7200 RPM HDD that always seems to be running. And it's not quiet either. It becomes easily bogged down when browsing. I have run several tests and they all seem to come up fine but based on these tests it is always working. The first two images are at idle with absolutely nothing going on. No scans, no programs.... just a few minutes after start up. The last image is simply browsing one website. Is this normal? Am I being anal?

Sorry if this is in the wrong section, not sure which one to put it in.

[xeromist]

You might want to check if the indexing service is enabled for that drive. I know some people have seen all sorts of unexplained activity from that.

[JJFIVEOH]

xeromist wrote:
You might want to check if the indexing service is enabled for that drive. I know some people have seen all sorts of unexplained activity from that.

Sorry, I should have listed everything I have done so far to rectify this. I have turned off indexing, I have turned off automatic Windows defrag and I have recently run a defrag. When this happens and I open the task manager, CPU usage is at 1-2% so there is nothing going on like an update or a scan. What's weird is this problem is random. If I open my documents and go to my pictures folder, sometimes the thumbnails will pop up almost instantaneously, other times it takes forever. When it takes forever, browsing is also slow. This is when I can hear the HDD running. What gets me is that I have it connected to the 6Gb/s connector on the MB, it's a 6Gb/s HDD and the Caviar Black is "supposedly" a high performance HDD... so accessing my pictures and/or opening a site shouldn't have much of an effect on it's performance. I don't think those graphs should drop down to the bottom the way they do by simply doing simple tasks. When the HDD is running constantly and I browse or open my pictures, I can't do anything else while it's loading. But, I can turn it on later at night and it will run like a champ. I don't get it.

[Spathi]

The first thing to check is that you have the latest AHCI/RAID drivers for all brands of disk controller on your board... with matching latest firmware.

Firmware RAID needs matching/compatible drivers for the code in the firmware.

With old BIOS we used to replace RAID code modules into the BIOS ourselves when ASUS dropped/slowed support, not sure what happens with this new type of firmware, so keep in mind you may need to track when/if drivers become incompatible over the years. (or keep an eye out for someone with the code base). Hopefully it will be supported for long enough though.

Whatever you do DO NOT update disk controller drivers through windows update. Always download it yourself and read the readme(s).

For example for GENE-Z you need to track this...
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=eng&ProductFamily=Chipsets&ProductLine=Chipse...
and this (eSATA so does not matter as much)...
ftp://driver.jmicron.com.tw/SATA_Controller/Windows/

...keeping in mind what controller versions are in the bios at any time.

The second thing to check is defrag, windows will protect certain parts of the disk from fast access at certain times and defrag will reduce the likelihood of generic benchmarks hitting these sections at the wrong time. There are one or two benchmarks that know where these sections/files are and avoid them (like PC mark), most other benchmarks just pick parts of the disk sequentially or at random so this can cause the above effect as well.

Check driver versions and firmware first though.. last thing on earth you should do is defrag with wrong driver ;oP (also a good idea to backup before changing drivers and firmware.. especially if you change the controller mode from AHCI to Raid or something like that.)

[JJFIVEOH]

Currently I have version 10.​6.​0.​1002 installed. I will try 10.​6.​0.​1022 which was released on the same day. Thank you!

[JJFIVEOH]

Latest version shows 10.​6.​0.​1022. I think I tried that previously, I'll do it again and see.

[Spathi]

Ultimate Defrag or some of the third party apps in JkDefrag GUI will do good quality boottime defrags if you want to go the whole hog.

For the spinner drives I do one defrag sorted by file/folder each year and then just a standard "fragmented file only" after that each day for the rest of the year.

I suppose if the disk slowdown was as bad as what is in your pics I would look in SMART for read misses, test the disk and google the disk model number a bit as well first.

You can also use Filemon.exe to see if there is anything wacky thrashing the disk.

[JJFIVEOH]

So at least we're in agreement those graphs don't look right?

BTW thanks the for the defrag advice. 😉