Slow HDD and Computer During Multiple File Operations

Question

My computer frequently slows down majorly when I have multiple file operations occurring (such as transferring large chunks of data between partitions on the same drive). During this time anything that requires the HDD will be very slow. For example unloaded applications take forever to open/respond, and videos playing in VLC will stutter or pause.

My specs:

Core2duo E8400 (3.0GHz), 4GB of DDR2 Ram, Western Digital 7200RPM, 2TB Caviar Green, Windows 7 64bit, fully updated

I have ensured I installed all the I/O drivers for my motherboard and even switched to AHCI mode in bios (and installed the appropriate driver).

This does not seem like normal behaviour because my MacBook with a far slower HDD has no issues with many file operations occurring at once without general computing suffering. I am guessing I have something not set up correctly in Windows. The other possibility is that Windows has shoddy I/O scheduling, but I have never heard complaints from others so I assume that is not the case!

In other cases I don't notice any issued with the HDD, so I am hoping it is not itself damaged.

Thank you very much for your input :).

Answer 1

Western Digital 7200RPM, 2TB Caviar Green

You are aware that the green series from WD normally do not guarantee an RPM? It’s an "up to 7200", and I think at least 5600 or sth.

It is SATA? The problem could be your SATA controller. Check and maybe update your motherboards bios. Then you may want to check if you installed a SATA driver and remove it or install one. The nForce drivers for example also include SATA drivers. But I once had issues with them, and the default Windows ones worked better.

It could also be how your devices are distributed in your Motherboards data channels. Check your BIOS settings. (Sorry, I can’t give you the full details and names out of the top of my head.) The idea is: Your motherboards distributes different devices (graphics card, sound, keyboard, mouse, USB, SATA, etc) on it’s channels. Now, they should of course be distributed in an efficient way. Misconfiguration may obviously cause problems.