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    Slowdown when writing to hard disk

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by Shadows1990, Jun 17, 2009.

  1. Shadows1990

    Shadows1990 Notebook Evangelist

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    Ever since I've been using Windows 7, I've noticed my system becomes really sluggish, and slow to respond whenever I'm doing something that is writing to the hard drive (installing a game, defragging, etc)

    I know it's not the drive itself (used Western Digital's hard drive health program, and HD Tune), so I believe it has something to do with Windows 7 itself.
    I switched back to Vista for a short period last month, to see if it there was any problems there, which there wasn't.

    As for the drive, I have tried enabling/disabling write caching, and the 'buffer flushing' options in Device Manager.

    Anybody else experienced something like this, or know any fixes/workarounds?

    edit: I know that it be a little slower, due to all the I/O operations, but it seems about 10x more obvious than it did in Vista.
     
    Shadows1990, Jun 17, 2009
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  2. davepermen

    davepermen Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    i guess it's sata, right?

    i just remember in xp days, ide drives sometimes felt back from dma-5 or 6 to pio mode, which was terribly slow. other than that, no idea from my side right now :(
     
    davepermen, Jun 17, 2009
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  3. Shadows1990

    Shadows1990 Notebook Evangelist

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    Hi Dave,
    It's not really the fact that the disk transfer speed is low (in fact, it's right on par), it's how much it slows the system down when it's been heavily used.
     
    Shadows1990, Jun 17, 2009
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  4. davepermen

    davepermen Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    hm. can't comment on that because a) i haven't noticed it but b) i only use ssds nowadays and c) i'm quite biased against win7 compared to most others anyways :)

    haven't heard anything similar yet, though..
     
    davepermen, Jun 17, 2009
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  5. Shadows1990

    Shadows1990 Notebook Evangelist

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    Just a quick update:

    I've fixed the problem.
    It seems Windows Defender had somehow re-enabled itself (active protection), which was causing the slowdowns.
     
    Shadows1990, Jun 21, 2009
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  6. qhn

    qhn Notebook User

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    Strange. I do not have this issue - running W7 64bits stock on P-7811FX

    cheers ...
     
    qhn, Jun 22, 2009
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  7. Shadows1990

    Shadows1990 Notebook Evangelist

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    It is a bit odd, yeah.
    Let's hope they smooth it out a bit before release :cool:
     
    Shadows1990, Jun 22, 2009
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