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View Full Version : Strange HDD Throttling


conzymaher
06-22-2008, 09:18 AM
I'm using a Dell Poweredge SC440 as a File server / Folding box and I sometimes notice poor performance when copying files, I just assumed it was my network but today I was copying files between two drives on the server and it took maybe 6 minutes for a 350mb file!

So I downloaded HDtune and ran it for every drive, 3 drives performed as expected, but two drives ( one of them IDE and one of them SATA ) were capped to exactly 2 MB/s

I ran some diagnostics on the drives and they appear to be fine so I think they are being throttled for some reason, The server has 4 sata ports but only 2 drive bays, I have the other drives in caddies. Could it be a Dell "feature" to cap the drives to encourage people to go for a more expensive controller or something?

Anyone encounter this before? Any solutions or will I have to buy a sata controller? Its probably cheaper buy a 1TB drive to replace 3 of the drives :/

One_Hertz
06-22-2008, 09:28 AM
Are they in PIO mode?

conzymaher
06-22-2008, 09:42 AM
Possibly :o

Look at the attached screenshot, its hard to know...

But this doesn't explain why a sata drive has identical behaviour / performance

conzymaher
06-22-2008, 02:35 PM
I checked with HDtune and every drive is in UDMA Mode 5 or above...

What the hell could it be?!