Why is my HDD running at a crawl??? (1 Viewer)

[kiwijunglist]

I have a 750GB 7200rpm WD HDD, fairly old

750GB - 2 Partitions
C - 100GB - System Drive
D - 650GB - Storage (not RAIDED)

I have 4x other HDDs (3TB ea, not RAIDED) in my HTPC.

Currently the D partition is running at a crawl ~ 1.5mb/s Read rate
C partition (same physical disk) and the other HDDs are running at a normal rate ie >25mb/s

Windows defrag reports 0% fragmentation
D currently is at 97% capacity with ~15GB Free
Chkdsk (on C+D) reports no problems
SMART data is reported by crystal disk monitor as "good"

I rolled back to an earlier version of windows from 2 months ago using a system image of C-drive and this didn't fix the problem.
Resource monitor shows nothing out of the ordinary

What should my next step be?

PS. Chkdsk on D drive runs at really slowly it seems to get to 23% then hits a mini wall and slows right down.

(D) CHKDSK /F /X /R

Spoiler

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)...
100864 file records processed.
File verification completed.
33 large file records processed.
0 bad file records processed.
0 EA records processed.
47200 reparse records processed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)...
114394 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
0 unindexed files scanned.
0 unindexed files recovered.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 5)...
100864 file SDs/SIDs processed.
Security descriptor verification completed.
6766 data files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
35972352 USN bytes processed.
Usn Journal verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
100848 files processed.
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
3423550 free clusters processed.
Free space verification is complete.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.

630038527 KB total disk space.
616060852 KB in 89589 files.
46812 KB in 6767 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
236663 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
13694200 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
157509631 total allocation units on disk.
3423550 allocation units available on disk.

 

[mm1352000]

Is the D partition aligned randomly or something? A bit strange...

 

[kiwijunglist]

What does aligned randomly mean?
It was working well 1 week earlier
Same setup >6 months.

For the last 2 months it has been frequently alternating between 80-100% capacity with ongoing downloads which are then moved off the D-drive. However it's not dragmented atleast according to Win7 (right click HDD, properties, degrag, analyse+defrag) However it doesn't show a fragmentation table like I am used to seeing, it just shows 0%.[DOUBLEPOST=1373522661][/DOUBLEPOST]Add: I tried terracopy it has I/O device errors when copying...

 

[mm1352000]

What does aligned randomly mean?

Well for example certain newer and larger drives have 4 KB sectors and partitions must be aligned as such. This is as opposed to the traditional 512 B alignment.

It was working well 1 week earlier

Same setup >6 months.

Right, that would have been useful to know.

So you're running W7, right?
What does the task manager performance or resources area tell you when you attempt to use that partition?
I take it you've cleared the recycle bin so there is nothing that Windows is holding onto from that partition?

 

[mbuzina]

I would move the data off, delete partition, recreate (opt. fix 4k alignment), format (not in quick) and move data back.

 

[kiwijunglist]

I tried terracopy it has freq I/O device errors with that partition when copying...

W7 x64 Pro
Nothing in resource manager that is strange
Recyclebin is empty[DOUBLEPOST=1373523119][/DOUBLEPOST]

I would move the data off, delete partition, recreate (opt. fix 4k alignment), format (not in quick) and move data back.

that's what I am thinking however in windows it copes at 1.5mb/s and has errors. I have booted off Win7 ext HDD and will try from dos prompt [DOUBLEPOST=1373523592][/DOUBLEPOST]I ran diskpart from dos prompt on win7 boot hdd.

Disk 1 (750GB)
Partition 1 (unused) 350mb offset 1024kb
Partition 2 (C) ~100gb offset 1351mb
Partition 3 (D) ~650GB offset 97gb

 

[mbuzina]

Good luck recovering the data!

 

[kiwijunglist]

What program should i use to "repair the data" prior to copying? In current state it is difficult to copy files. I assume I can run the reapair software from my normal windows boot, since the other partition is working ok at the moment.

 

[mbuzina]

Had no issues with something like that, but lmgtfy provides: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/291895-32-best-data-recovery-software

 

[kiwijunglist]

YES! All fixed

I used robocopy to copy some important files, with retry set to 0 so it skipped any bad files.
Then deleted partition -> low level format (to check writing each sector, no bad sectors) -> WD Tools 'scandisk', no bad sectors.
So D:\ is back to normal speed (35mb/s instead of 1.5mb/s and errors)

Thank fully I had backed up a lot of data previously so I only lost ~300gb of active downloads and ~1gb of non-backed up music.

I suspect the problem was I use a program called snapRAID to backup my data. It has an addon that creates a folder with symlinks to all my backed up media. So if you can imagine 9TB of symlinks that is A LOT of symlinks, and I think it may of somehow messed up the HDD's filetable. I think perhaps windows was doing a scheduled defrag at the same time I was recreating the symlinks.