Insanely slow HDD random read/write

mc510 · 20 Nov 2017

I'm playing tech support for a relative, and her (ASUS K53E) laptop SATA HDD has insanely slow random read/write. Sequential r/w is around 74 MB/s, which seems fine, but random is around 1 MB/s. Hard disk health is fine according to S.M.A.R.T. Win10 1709 Pro x64. Pentium B960; HM65 Express chipset using the Microsoft Standard SATA AHCI Controller driver. Windows update doesn't have any driver updates; Intel driver tool returns nothing; Asus website has no Windows 10 drivers. I'm at a loss, any suggestions?

Insanely slow HDD random read/write-untitled.png

Helmut · 20 Nov 2017

Looks OK. Don't see any problem.

Geneo · 20 Nov 2017

That is about what you might expect of a 5500 rpm spinning disk drives. The seek time, on the order of 10 ms or more, and hence latency kills rates for random small sized i/o.

mc510 · 20 Nov 2017

Hey, thanks Helmut and Geneo; I guess this just shows how long it has been since I've had a computer with a spinning HDD as its primary drive. How did people ever put up with this? But y'know, even with those random-RW stats looking correct, this laptop seems to be performing very poorly. For example, I took it back to a recent Restore Point, which took 45 minutes to complete. Is that normal?

[EDIT] Okay, Google tells me that it's not unheard of for recovery to a Restore Point to take 45 minutes, so I guess I need to just chill out about this. Or buy my relative an SSD. [/EDIT]

Helmut · 20 Nov 2017

"How did people ever put up with this? "

They don't have to as Windows and Applications use a HDD very differently to a Benchmark test such as that.
Windows and Applications use techniques like prefetch to load and run applications faster for users.

A benchmark test is designed to seek out very small differences in say a WD drive to a Seagate drive of the same type, a very different objective.
Almost completely opposing objectives.