Performance Tip of the Day
Posted on February 5, 2008
3 Comments
My home machine is ailing. Spontaneous reboots, odd errors, blue screens, etc. After some tests I believe I either have a bad SATA card (likely) or the 400 GB SATA drive hanging from that card is going south (less likely considering the symptoms). As I don’t have spares of either — and I want stability — I’m just going to pull both.
However, before I pull ‘em I need to get the data off that drive. Fortunately, I only had 50 or 60 GB so my remaining pair of 80 GB drives can absorb it easily enough… So much for headroom, eh? No big deal though, I’m pretty much a minimalist when it comes to keeping large amounts of media around.
While doing the copying from one drive to another I noticed two things:
- The copies seemed really slow
- CPU utilization was really high
Here’s the tip: Temporarily disable the antivirus real-time file scanning when moving lots of files around! It was amazing how the CPU load dropped and the copy speed increased.
Sure, it seems like a silly obvious thing… but I bet I’m not the only one that needs a reminder from time to time.
Tags: antivirus, drives, performance, SATA, tip
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3 Responses to “Performance Tip of the Day”
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… and maybe I’m hasty in blaming the card. I just noticed that the boot drive is hanging from that same SATA card. (I’m blushing, I forgot my Raptor was SATA!)
So maybe the big drive is bad — or the cable?
SpinRite blew up each of the three times I tried to have it scan that big drive, that’s what got me looking at it.
Well, if it is *hanging* that might be your problem, try setting it down on something. (badum bum)
Seriously though, have you tried any of the manufacturer’s diagnostic tools? (The card is a possible subject for testing - after all, tests are free)
*rimshot* Shame on you.
If SpinRite crashes when accessing the drive, I’m nervous to try the WD diags. But I think I’ll go with a variation on that — I’ll bring the drive into the office and toss it in a spare machine to run spinrite and the diags. If it lives through that, then I know I have to look harder at the card and/or cable.
Thanks for the nudge