asked on

Computer Performance - Is the hard drive the culprit?

Having read a few articles about computer performance, I often come across the "big four", the four components of your computer that might be impairing performance: CPU, memory, hard drive, and NIC.

When a computer is running slowly, CPU and memory are pretty easy to check. Windows Task Manager does a nice job. When I want a little more information, Process Explorer is a great resource.

I've found analyzing the hard drive to be a little trickier. To check the health of the hard drive itself, I'll use HDTune. The graph is useful, and comparing the Access Time to published values is also useful.

More-often-than-not, the hard drive's health is just fine, but it's older, runs a little slow, and it's being over-utilized by one or more processes. To check this, I'll open Task Manager, sort on I/O Reads (or I/O Writes), and watch the bigger numbers to see if they're growing.

Alternatively, I'll fire up Process Explorer and sort on I/O Reads Delta (or I/O Writes Delta), looking for big values.

So what's my question? I'm looking for critiques of my process. Am I missing a key parameter? Are my existing steps misguided? Please be candid.

SOLUTION

Steven Carnahan

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

SOLUTION

Dave Baldwin

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

SOLUTION

derrrp

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

tyson-edwards

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

nobus

for analysing devices, best start from the beginning
in this case, look at it's specs : what is the model, RPM, and transfer speed? what ram cache does it have ?
that will give a good basic idea; you can then use HDTune to compare if needed

right now, i suggest everyone to use an SSD for the OS and programs - it gives a boost in speed i never have met by any other upgrade

Rojosho

jdana y et al,

Wow, excellent question and information - i am just monitoring this case to pick up some 'tricks of the trade'... although Nobus beat me to the comment of starting with the disk specs first. If you wanting a faster HDD subsystem, then using a 5400 RPM HDD is not a good starting point :) But, somehow I think you already knew that....

And yes, SSD are great and something that I am looking into right now, but I am not sure that the controller for the SSD is the same for SATA, and there for may need a complete OS install so that the right driver is picked up.

Rojosho...

nobus

the ssd has a normal sata interface...
the only thing that can influence it is the AHCI setting in the bios

Rojosho

My hero !!!
You all have a great weekend.

Rojosho...

jdana

ASKER

Thanks to all for a batch of terrific responses.
tyson-edwards - Great comments.
derrrp - Great links.
DaveBaldwin - "Look for the dips." I like it.
Rojosho - My new Crucial SSD is literally sitting on the shelf in my office waiting to be installed. (Of course, it doesn't do me much good sitting on the shelf.)