Read/Write problems with WD Blue

[FizzyFantom]

I've been having some problems with my WD Blue in my new PC. I used Crystal Disk Mark to test the speed, and the results were 156.7MB/s Read and 16.08MB/s Write.

This seems terribly slow, and the drive didn't behave this way in my old PC. I've checked my BIOS settings, and the drive appears as an ATA device in HWiNFO32 without showing any other information.

Any help with this would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance

[alpenwasser]

Have you run a S.M.A.R.T. test on it?

Also, how full is the drive? How fragmented is the data on it?

[FizzyFantom]

Have you run a S.M.A.R.T. test on it?

Also, how full is the drive? How fragmented is the data on it?

How would I run a S.M.A.R.T. test? Ive looked over it in Crystal Disk Info and it says its "GOOD". The drive is 85% full, but I dont know how fragmented the data is, is there a way to find this out?

[alpenwasser]

How would I run a S.M.A.R.T. test? Ive looked over it in Crystal Disk Info and it says its "GOOD". The drive is 85% full, but I dont know how fragmented the data is, is there a way to find this out?

CrystalDiskInfo might be able to run a SMART test, I recommend having

a look at its manual for more info (I've never used it since I'm mostly a

Linux guy).

Alternatively, have a look at this Wiki site, maybe there's something

in there that might be of help.

As for fragmentation: right click on the drive, select "properties", then

the tab "tools", there should be a button for the defrag utility in there.

[FizzyFantom]

CrystalDiskInfo might be able to run a SMART test, I recommend having

a look at its manual for more info (I've never used it since I'm mostly a

Linux guy).

Alternatively, have a look at this Wiki site, maybe there's something

in there that might be of help.

As for fragmentation: right click on the drive, select "properties", then

the tab "tools", there should be a button for the defrag utility in there.

Thanks for the help, the S.M.A.R.T. status seems to be alright, and Windows reports that it is 0% fragmented. Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

[alpenwasser]

Thanks for the help, the S.M.A.R.T. status seems to be alright, and Windows reports that it is 0% fragmented. Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

Huh, curious. Is there anything unusual going on with your system (high CPU

load, otherwise strange behavior)?

Also, do you have another disk to test?

[FizzyFantom]

Huh, curious. Is there anything unusual going on with your system (high CPU

load, otherwise strange behavior)?

Also, do you have another disk to test?

Well right now I can't open the Task Manager, but up to now I had checked and there hasn't been much load on CPU or GPU.

I do have 2 drives in this system, the WD Blue and a 1TB Seagate Barracuda.

 

Edit: The Seagate Barracuda is performing normally with 122MB/s in both Read and Write.

 

Another edit: I've tested the drive with WD DLG. It claims that the S.M.A.R.T. status is not available, however the drive passed both the quick test and the extended test. What is causing this problem? Please help!

[alpenwasser]

Hm, that is very curious. Sorry to say, but I think I'm just about out of

ideas. The only other ideas I have are:

- format the drive (if you can backup the data, otherwise this is obviously

not a very smart thing to do), create a new partition on it, test read/write

speeds. If all is OK, put the data back on it and again test read/write speeds.

This should tell you if the problem had something to do with either the

partition or the data on the drive (not likely in my opinion, but one never

knows).

- put the drive in another machine (with the data on it), test read/write

speeds. If they're not OK, do the same as above, but in the new machine.

This should tell you if the problem is in the interaction between your

machine and the drive.

I'm not sure how feasible these suggestions are for you, but other than

that I don't really have anything else. In a last ditch effort you could

also reinstall the OS, but since your Seagate drive performs normally

I seriously doubt that this will solve your problem.

It really is a bit curious that both the short and extended SMART test bring

up no errors.

Still, if you can't find an error source I would make sure that any important

data is backed up. There might be something wrong that SMART can't detect

(it can test for a lot of criteria, but not for every possible point of

failure).

Finally, I recommend running a thorough anti-virus/anti-malware scan if you

haven't already, maybe your system has caught something bad for its health.

[FizzyFantom]

Hm, that is very curious. Sorry to say, but I think I'm just about out of

ideas. The only other ideas I have are:

- format the drive (if you can backup the data, otherwise this is obviously

not a very smart thing to do), create a new partition on it, test read/write

speeds. If all is OK, put the data back on it and again test read/write speeds.

This should tell you if the problem had something to do with either the

partition or the data on the drive (not likely in my opinion, but one never

knows).

- put the drive in another machine (with the data on it), test read/write

speeds. If they're not OK, do the same as above, but in the new machine.

This should tell you if the problem is in the interaction between your

machine and the drive.

I'm not sure how feasible these suggestions are for you, but other than

that I don't really have anything else. In a last ditch effort you could

also reinstall the OS, but since your Seagate drive performs normally

I seriously doubt that this will solve your problem.

It really is a bit curious that both the short and extended SMART test bring

up no errors.

Still, if you can't find an error source I would make sure that any important

data is backed up. There might be something wrong that SMART can't detect

(it can test for a lot of criteria, but not for every possible point of

failure).

Finally, I recommend running a thorough anti-virus/anti-malware scan if you

haven't already, maybe your system has caught something bad for its health.

Thanks for your suggestions, I can put the drive back in my old PC to test it. I have scanned with my antivirus programs just out of habit, and they returned nothing. Worst case scenario I can probably back up the data and reformat, but I will put it in another machine before I do that. Now the SMART is responding and is giving a "pass" on everything in WD DLG.

 

Edit: extra strange things happening now. I've put it back in the old PC and speed tested it, and the results were 155.9MB/s Read and 52.7MB/s Write. This is higher in both, but the write still seems too low. Also it concerns me that they are both higher in this machine. Maybe this is to do with the way that the AMD chipset handles data compared to the way the Intel chipset on the old PC handles it with Intel RST, but I don't know. It is now reporting a higher read and write on both machines.

I'm going to back up the data on the drive and reformat it soon. Im in the UK by the way and its past midnight here, so I'll report back in the morning.

Any more suggestions given this information would be helpful

[FizzyFantom]

Hm, that is very curious. Sorry to say, but I think I'm just about out of

ideas. The only other ideas I have are:

- format the drive (if you can backup the data, otherwise this is obviously

not a very smart thing to do), create a new partition on it, test read/write

speeds. If all is OK, put the data back on it and again test read/write speeds.

This should tell you if the problem had something to do with either the

partition or the data on the drive (not likely in my opinion, but one never

knows).

- put the drive in another machine (with the data on it), test read/write

speeds. If they're not OK, do the same as above, but in the new machine.

This should tell you if the problem is in the interaction between your

machine and the drive.

I'm not sure how feasible these suggestions are for you, but other than

that I don't really have anything else. In a last ditch effort you could

also reinstall the OS, but since your Seagate drive performs normally

I seriously doubt that this will solve your problem.

It really is a bit curious that both the short and extended SMART test bring

up no errors.

Still, if you can't find an error source I would make sure that any important

data is backed up. There might be something wrong that SMART can't detect

(it can test for a lot of criteria, but not for every possible point of

failure).

Finally, I recommend running a thorough anti-virus/anti-malware scan if you

haven't already, maybe your system has caught something bad for its health.

I tried the things you suggested, formatting the drive and testing it on a different machine, but it still reports to have fast reads and slow writes.

Testing on a different machine reported a read of 178.4MB/s but a write of only 28.31MB/s...

I'm clueless as to what the problem is, I figured it is unlikely to be a mechanical fault as the tests reported it to be healthy and a mechanical fault would likely affect writes and reads.

Any other suggestions would be awesome. Also should this thread be in "Troubleshooting"?

[FizzyFantom]

With even more testing I've found that sometimes the WD performs as expected with read and write speeds over 180MB/s, however when the WD works my Seagate drive reports poor speeds.

[alpenwasser]

I tried the things you suggested, formatting the drive and testing it on a different machine, but it still reports to have fast reads and slow writes.

Testing on a different machine reported a read of 178.4MB/s but a write of only 28.31MB/s...

I'm clueless as to what the problem is, I figured it is unlikely to be a mechanical fault as the tests reported it to be healthy and a mechanical fault would likely affect writes and reads.

Any other suggestions would be awesome. Also should this thread be in "Troubleshooting"?

This really is very curious. The only other things that comes to mind is

a firmware bug, other than that I'm pretty clueless at this point myself.

And both subforums are acceptable I think.

 

 

With even more testing I've found that sometimes the WD performs as expected with read and write speeds over 180MB/s, however when the WD works my Seagate drive reports poor speeds.

Well that's even more perplexing considering that when you put the drive

into another machine its write speed is also insufficient. If you only

had the problem in one PC I'd guess it might be the SATA controller you

have them hooked up to.

Sorry buddy, but I'm afraid that's about the end of my guesswork.

[FizzyFantom]

This really is very curious. The only other things that comes to mind is

a firmware bug, other than that I'm pretty clueless at this point myself.

And both subforums are acceptable I think.

 

 

Well that's even more perplexing considering that when you put the drive

into another machine its write speed is also insufficient. If you only

had the problem in one PC I'd guess it might be the SATA controller you

have them hooked up to.

Sorry buddy, but I'm afraid that's about the end of my guesswork.

I have no clue what is going on, I messed about with cables and now the WD is reading and writing at over 180MB/s and the Seagate is reading and writing at over 100MB/s. The Seagate sounds a little slow, but at least they're both working properly now. I might just leave it as it is now and see if its alright tomorrow.

Thanks very much for all of your help, I wish you the best of luck going forward