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hd tach 2.61 slow speeds in windows 95


cov3rt

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i was wondering if anyone has experience with hd tach 2.61, the benchmark tool that does read testing in the free version. i feel like im getting very poor speeds. i tested recently some hard drives and even an ssd today, many of them were on 440bx chipsets, i looked into pio vs dma modes and the drives i used always had dma checked in device manager, with also the 64 KB option selected for direct memory access controller. i noticed that based on hd tach 2.61, i got no more than 27.9 mega BITS per second on any of the last tested drives, the 27.9 mbps came from the western digital blue 160 GB hard drive, one of the last and fastest pata hard drives too, but i got only about 3.5 MB/s max. i tested a supertalent 8 GB ssd today and got about 20 mbps, which is about 2.5 MB/s, slower than the western digital hard drive, which i find weird because there shouldn't be any reason that its slower in ANY way. i make sure to always apply the early 440bx patch in all builds which always helped with performance, i would get even slower numbers if i didn't apply this patch and just went straight to the newer chipset update which i apply later on.

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20 hours ago, jaclaz said:

NOT what you asked, but why don't you try ATTO and/or CrystalDiskMark to compare/verify results?

jaclaz
 

the oldest version of crystaldiskmark i found only works on windows 98SE and newer, i tested it before, i couldn't find any atto disk benchmark for windows 95, google did come up with one person saying to use SiSoft Sandra 2000, i went on the official site and used waybackmachine and found SiSoft Sandra 2001 se which was one of the last disk benchmark tools provided by them to work on windows 95, i couldn't download the links though, the name is "san750.zip" i believe, though san752.zip might work too, according to one person, san811.zip required w98 and newer so i could try to find san752.zip in the meantime.

Edited by cov3rt
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update

if you type SiSoft Sandra 2001 in filewatcher and download the SiSoft Sandra 2001.zip file, it gives you the appropriate utility i believe as i just installed it on my main system and it mentions it was for windows 95 and 98. i guess i'll test this on windows 95. 

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it seems that everest and sisoft sandra software conflict, i had to uninstall everest 1.51 to install sisoft sandra 2001. im seeing which one is better to keep, this sisoft software is really neat, i dont know if i looked into everest completely but it seems that this sisoft software is better in features provided, except that with everest, you're able to have a broader view of specs in one window and it has support for newer hardware, im having a little problem too with the sisoft crashing too right now on drive benchmarks which was the basis of the thread.

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honestly, although sisoft sandra has more features than everest, i like everest more, it seems more stable and also shows hard drive temperature. also i like hd tach 2.61 more than the hard drive benchmark of sisoft sandra 2001, sandra's benchmark result for the hard drive seem a little vague, i think it mentioned like 197 MB/s for the ssd which seems too high, but also none of the other areas scored around that 2.5 MB/s that hd tach gave, and i know they are two different utilities, but i just don't like sandra's that much. hd tach 2.61 did perform weird for me up to this point too but im gonna keep it still. however, i looked into the aida32 utility and the last version is almost exactly the same program as everest and everest basically replaced aida32 the same year i think, aida32 did not need to be installed through the windows setup, i placed the unzipped program in program files and was able to use it with sandra in the same system so now i have a utility specifically for information and hard drive temps, and the other (sandra) for cpu benchmarks or other information not specifically provided by aida32 with of course hd tach 2.61 and also speedfan 4.28 in the same windows 95 system.

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Version 2.34 of Atto Disk Benchmark has been reported as working in Windows 95 :unsure::
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=44820

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=44820#p477064

Here is another download of 2.34 (mislabeled as version 2.32):
http://ht4u.net/download-details/234/1355/

jaclaz

 

Edited by jaclaz
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i tried atto disk benchmark 2.34, not really what i was looking for, apparently it only does sequential speeds according to one website and im mainly looking for random read / write, specifically queue depth 1
with access time.

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9 hours ago, jumper said:

> many of them were on 440bx chipsets
Sounds like you've tested with multiple motherboards.

Are you using a high-speed EIDE cable or an older IDE cable?
Have you tested in DOS?

for the desktops, the two i tested were nearly identical, for the cables, i used new 80 conductor ide cables so i guess that would be the high speed ones? the other system recently tested was a laptop, it was a gateway solo 9300 with windows 95 installed, 450mhz cpu, 256 MB ram, 8 GB ssd, chipset drivers were installed, although the access time was more or less accurate for an ssd in hd tach 2.61, about .3 ms, the mbps was only about 20 mbps compared to a desktop system that had the same speed processor at 450mhz, but used a western digital blue ide 160 GB hard drive formatted to 7.8 GB due to the board's limitation, this system did about 27 mbps from hd tach 2.61's reading.

440bx is limited to 33 MB/s for the ATA specs but i didn't even get a 1/4 of that, so i was wondering if hd tach 2.61 is just designed in a way to indicate lower numbers or if im not doing something right. the systems i used weren't slow, they were actually fairly quick, the one with the ssd actually played a mp4 using vlc player on windows 95 smoothly on the gateway solo 9300 laptop that only had a 4 MB gpu and the other specs i mentioned earlier, i actually tested other laptops before that weren't 440bx, but newer chipsets like 845pm, and i think some of them with old mechanical hard drives only indicated like 3 mbps in hd tach 2.61, but those like i said were old and worn out probably a lot, affecting their speeds and most were lower end drivers too. i guess im concerned in one way if it's worth it to buy ssd's in the future or just settle for mechanical hard drives and not worry about the hd tach 2.61 numbers that much. 

but yeh, i was kind of stunned to see that 20 mbps score on the laptop with ssd though, the ssd on the laptop was used though so there is a small chance that it slowed down a lot from previous use, it was a 8 GB super talent ssd which i can't find on supertalent's site so it probably had a lot of use perhaps, who knows. i guess one way to really find out is to test a new ssd on both a desktop and laptop, ( same ssd on both systems would be best ). oh and those two desktops i mentioned earlier were all built from new parts.

i haven't tested in dos. do you mean where it gives you the option to boot into ms-dos mode from the shut down menu?

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> new 80 conductor ide cables so i guess that would be the high speed ones?
Yes.

If the drives are nearly full or otherwise well-used, the test files that are written will be highly fragmented. Defrag or use an empty partition.
Check System Properties->Performance for "Drive X is using MS-DOS compatibility mode file system."
Check System Properties->Performance->File System->Troubleshooting for any checked boxes.

You can shutdown to DOS, or better yet, boot to DOS by pressing F8 or using a boot floppy (EBD) or CD.
HDDspeed is one DOS program to try.

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  • 4 weeks later...

yeh, there's definitely something weird going in. i just tested a pretty old 6 GB bm dada 26480 hard drive on a 440bx laptop and it had a faster read speed ( 28.9 mbps ) than the western digital blue 160 GB i tested which was 27.9 mbps and that drive was new. only the access times differed where the western digital blue was obviously faster, of course the ssd i tested which i mentioned from before did have a lower access time as expected, the read speed was even lower than both of these drives. i hope someone can give some more insight on these weird benchmark results.

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i just noticed now that even though the hd tach 2.61 utility gives the abbreviation of mbps, it also says megabytes per second and not megabits per second so i guess the numbers would be about right, just under 33 MB/s....that is if it is calculating mega BYTES and not mega BITS per second. though, the slower speeds by the ssd and western digital blue still don't make sense, i don't see what would be hogging resources if it was a resource problem in those builds. the ssd was a bit old but from what i researched, read speeds generally stay the same on ssd's and don't become affected by age, it's the write speeds that seem to diminish by wear.

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