Slow SATA Transfer Rate Problem

I have a Sony VAIO - VPCEB23FM with Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit installed. I notice lately that my laptop became slow to boot-up. I tried already the diagnostic boot-up but it still takes to long to process my desktop. When I look to the Disk Performance under Resource Monitor, most of the time it is "100% highest active time". I already tried to reformat but its still the same. When I check my Intel Rapid Storage Technology, it indicates that my sata transfer rate was Generation 1 or equivalent to 1.5GB/s. My SATA hdd is ST9500325AS Momentus 5400.6 SATA 500-GB Hard Drive and it is capable to transfer 3GB/s maximum. I already check and update all my drivers, but its no good. My chipset is Intel 5 series/3400 series and it should detect my SATA II.

Is there any other way to boost my internal sata transfer rate to have 3gb/s?

 

Yes, get a faster HD. If I plug in eSATA with my backup 5400 RPM HD, my system freezes. Get an updated 7200 RPM HD and relocate that old 5400 to system backup duty. Nowadays, that's all it's good for.

 

@OP

The SATA transfer rate of 1.5 Gbps, SATA II rate of 3.0 Gbps, or SATA III, rate of 6.0 Gbps are theoretical maximums. No current platter based drive is able to even reach that maximum. The fastest platter based hard drives are capable of maybe at most 100 MB/s which is about 800 Mb/s.

Note that MB and Mb are not the same. Mb is megabits and MB is megabytes. Each byte is made of 8 bits. Each bit is a 0 or a 1; essentially a switch. Hence each byte can be one of 2^8 possibilities. GB is gigabytes and Gb is gigabits. One GB is 1024 MB and one Gb is 1024 Mb.

Now, you should probably get an SSD if you really want to use the full capability of SATA II, assuming that you VAIO supports SATA II. Otherwise, if an SSD is too expensive or has too little space for your use, then get a newer generation hard drive that is at least 7200 RPM.

It is possible that your laptop is slow to boot-up due to the programs you have running at start up.

@Krane

Your system freezing due to using a 5400 RPM HD is not correct. Your system is freezing cause of the eSATA chipset employed by your computer or by your enclosure for your backup drive. Otherwise, it is possible that your backup drive itself is near failure.

1. A drive which does not host the OS will not cause the OS to freeze because of its (drive's) spindle speed.

2. A drive that does not host the OS can cause the OS to freeze if programs are loading from that drive and the drive itself is suffering some sort of failure or is near failure. We assume that everything else is defect free.

3. A drive that does not host the OS can cause the OS to freeze if the controller to which the drive is attach is poorly designed and does not deliver a timeout message to the OS, hence causing the OS to repeatedly poll the controller for data. We assume that everything else is defect free.

 

Thanks for the quick replies. I know that the maximum transfer rate consider if we have sata II is 3Gb/s and of course we cannot get that value as exact because that was just a theoretical speed.

The problem that I notice to my laptop is the transfer rate value detected of my Intel RST which is 1.5Gb/s only. Based on the website of Seagate, my HD is capable to have a transfer rate of 3Gb/s.



Is this normal?

 

Then it is a limitation of your laptop chipset and storage controller.

 

I don't think so.. my processor is i3 and my chipset is Intel 5 series/3400 series so it should detect my hd as sata II.
Is there anybody experienced this problem?

 

SATA I is not a bottleneck, so really it does not matter.

 

This could be a software/driver issue (there is only one drive bay in your system for a HDD, correct?) this is what I might be trying at this point:

Go to Device Manager and uninstall the SATA drivers/controllers - make sure you click the 'delete drivers too' checkbox. When the system reboots, do this again, repeatedly until you can no longer uninstall SATA AHCI drivers (it should get you to MS AHCI Drivers v1.0 or something like that).

Now, if you do an install of Intel RST drivers (10.6.1022), hopefully your issues are solved.

This will only take care of this little 'glitch' (well, I hope it will).

The issues you are having with a slow boot are indicative of something else though. Do you have all your other drivers up-to-date? Were they installed in the correct order? Are there any yellow exclamation marks in Windows Device Manager?

What software do you have installed on the system (is there updates for these titles?) and how does your Task Manager look like (how many processes are running at startup?), maybe you can post a screen shot?

I would also check to see if there are any BIOS updates (or actually, BIOS settings too that might affect these issues) and you might also want to reset the BIOS to 'defaults' to see how that affects things.

Hope one of these suggestions give a clue to a fix for your system.

Good luck.

 

It is a VAIO, we're talking major bloatware here like 100+ processes out of the box if he didn't clean up his startup. This is one thing slowing down his boot times for certain, the fact that he is on a 5.4K RPM drive doesn't help either the drive should be detected as a SATA 3Gb/s one though even if the drive is too slow to achieve that kind of throughput.

 

Yes, I have only 1 drive for HD. I already check and update all my drivers including my chipset and sata controller but its still the same.

 

These are the details of my laptop...

 

The main thing that jumps out at me is the PMBVolume Watcher Vaio bloatware/garbage software, along with the VC Agent/Care/Listener and the Symantic Service Framework - again, a fresh, clean install is highly recommended (with just necessary drivers, not everything the VAIO shipped with).

To put this in perspective: just previous to a clean install, I was ready to sell a 2008 VAIO. However, on these forums, I learned how I could do a clean install (Vista!) and that made the system 'current' and viable again. No need to buy a new system.

Within a few months, Win7x64 came along and again, totally transformed the system so that a new platform was simply not needed. Within a year or so later, 8GB RAM and finally an Intel 320 160GB SSD and there is still no real reason to 'upgrade' this platform/system that 3 yrs ago I wanted to sell because it was so slow and unusable.

I realize that you have PS running in the above screenshots, but I would still recommend 8GB RAM (with Win7x64). 52% Physical Memory used is not an option when 4GB more RAM is less than $25 and can give performance benefits of almost getting a new platform/system.

Get rid of all the Sony/VAIO junk with a clean install and see how your system is really meant to perform.

I have the same processor/platform in my ASUS U30Jc and there are times that having ThrottleStop 4.00 running gives me noticeably better performance - even with an Intel 160GB 320 Series SSD installed. You may want to give this a try too. Set your power options to 'Performance' and the Processor Minimum and Maximum states to 100% and set ThrottleStop as shown in the included screenshots.

Good luck.

 

Usually most of the Intel software GUI has not to be loaded during Boot/Startup.
For AHCI only the driver of the Intel Rapid Storage package is needed.
Same for the WiFi adapter. The GUI for the Intel graphic has also not be loaded during system start.
In general the Intel software GUI can be invoked via the entry in the Start menu, so they can be deactivated in Systemstart.