How to increase hard drive transfer speed

Question

This is my motherboard

GA-M61PME-S2

(SATA upto 3.0 Gbps)

and This is my Hard Disk

Samsung hd502hi

Capacity    500 GB
Cache   16MB
Disks / Heads   1 / 2
Interface   SATA 3Gb/s
Spindle Speed   5400 RPM
Sustained Data Rate OD  100 MB/s
Average Seek    8.9 ms
Average Latency     5.56 ms
Data Transfer Rate  300 MB/sec
Weight  470 grams
Power: Idle / Seek / R-W / Spin-up  3.9W / 4.8W / 5.1W / ~24W
Acoustics (sound power) 2.2 / 2.7 Bel (idle / quiet seek / performance seek)

When I copy things from one partition to another they transfer at a maximum of 30 MBps. However the drive supports upto 300 MBps right ?

How do I increase the transfer speeds?

P.S - Using Windows XP, All partitions are NTFS.

Answer 1

The drive "interface" or drive controller supports 3.0Gbps, but the drive itself does not have that kind of speed. The drive you have is a "green" oriented drive with a slower 5400rpm spindle speed and focuses on low power requirements (hence, the "green" label).

The 3.0Gbps rating is the SATA 3.0Gbps controllers potential throughput. The hard drive is connected to that controller, but that drive is not capable of those speeds.

30-40 transfer speeds actualy sound like a normal average transfer speed to me for that type of hard drive. You could make sure your operating system is very clean and running the latest motherboard/hd controller drivers to possibly speed things up a little. The most noticeable difference however would be seen if you upgraded to a better performing hard drive. One with at least a 7200rpm+ rotation and performance intentions. And if you got the $$$, SSD drives would bring you even more speed.

Answer 2

As Troggy has mentioned, the interface does not define the drives speed, it is simply the speeds that interface is capable of, the drive itself is a completely different story. There are many other limitations that prevent it from reaching the speed of the interface, much like how people don't usually see gigabit transfers on their gigabit network.

Even though it has a listed data transfer rate of 300 MB/sec, many things still prevent you from reaching this optimal rate.You said you are copying from one partition to another, which will have an affect on the outcome. You are essentially reading and writing to the same disk, and the actuator has to perform more movement. Don't forget, there are also other programs and background services on your machine that will be using the disk too.

Answer 3

One possibility for a slow disk is when Windows downgrades your device DMA mode when CRC error occurs along the interface. See this article:
The stuttering DVD drive or the lame hard disk.
If that's the case, you should check the hard disk for bad sectors.

Another possibility is if in the Properties of the drive, Hardware Tab and again Properties of the hard disk, "Enable write caching" and "Enable advanced performance" should be checked.

Answer 4

I'm only saying this because nobody else mentioned raid for faster transfers and you didn't explain your reasoning for using a single drive: if you want faster transfer rates use a raid setup. Your motherboard has a PCI express x1 slot, so you could use this raid card and add the new logical disk using the Windows xp disk manager.

Answer 5

A 7200 RPM or faster hard drive would give you more speed for not too much money. 30-40 isn't too bad for a 5400 RPM drive, maybe a bit low but not excessively so. Tom's Hardware has benchmarks on various drives if you want to pick out a fast one.