Optimizing a slow hard disk

[TheCherryKing]

I have purchased a new hard drive a few months ago but the speed is much lower than it used to be. The 6 TB drive is about half full. Current sequential speeds are around 160 MB/s. Originally the sequential speeds were are around 230 MB/s. According to Hard Disk Sentinel, the drive is in perfect health. Are there any free utilities out there that come optimize the drive? 

[AvocadosGuac]

defragment... HDD's slow down over time.

[TheCherryKing]

Just now, Jrock said:

defragment... HDD's slow down over time.

I have used the built in defragmenting tools in Windows. From what I remember the outer part of the hard drive platters are able to be accessed faster than the inner part of the platters. Is there anything that I can do to move the data from outer part of the platters to the inner part of the platters?

[Windows7ge]

23 minutes ago, TheCherryKing said:

The 6 TB drive is about half full

It is to be expected to slow down as you go beyond about 30% of the capacity of the disk. Physically the disk has a further distance to travel between a chunk of data you want to access and the next. Same applies to the read head if you're accessing data on the outermost edge of the disk vs the innermost edge. I don't think any utilities will speed it up again. If you want performance but it's being hindered due to how much space you're using your cheapest option is to look into RAID. In particular RAID0.

 

There IS one other solution I have in mind but it's a little unorthodox. I remember reading a guide on how to get the most performance out of a hard drive. It involves putting multiple partitions on the drive.

[TheCherryKing]

1 minute ago, Windows7ge said:

It is to be expected to slow down as you go beyond about 30% of the capacity of the disk. Physically the disk has a further distance to travel between a chunk of data you want to access and the next. Same applies to the read head if you're accessing data on the outermost edge of the disk vs the innermost edge. I don't think any utilities will speed it up again. If you want performance but it's being hindered due to how much space you're using your cheapest option is to look into RAID. In particular RAID0.

 

There IS one other solution I have in mind but it's a little unorthodox. I remember reading a guide on how to get the most performance out of a hard drive. It involves putting multiple partitions on the drive.

Hopefully I can find another good deal on eBay for the same drive. I can do RAID 0 with the on-board LSI 3008 RAID controller. 

[ARikozuM]

You can try short-stroking the HDD. 

 

Just grabbed the first link: http://lifehacker.com/how-to-short-stroke-your-hard-drive-for-optimal-speed-1598306074

[TheCherryKing]

Just now, ARikozuM said:

You can try short-stroking the HDD. 

 

Just grabbed the first link: http://lifehacker.com/how-to-short-stroke-your-hard-drive-for-optimal-speed-1598306074

I'll try that. Thank you very much.

[TheCherryKing]

2 minutes ago, TheCherryKing said:

I'll try that. Thank you very much.

I ran the benchmark in HDD Tune for that drive. The drive is running at its full speed of 240 MB/s.